EuroDisney and Musee d'Orsay

Since Tuesday was the 11th of November (Armistice Day), it was treated as a holiday in France, so everyone had the day off, including us.  So Elizabeth, Katie, Michele, and I spent our free day at Disneyland, which is just a little bit outside of Paris.  It was so much fun!  Disneyland had already decorated for Christmas, so when we first walked into the park, we saw this big, beautiful Christmas tree and listened to Christmas carols over the speakers.  It was so exciting!  They even had snow!  It was just bubbles but it actually looked like snow, so that was also really cool.  In front of us, behind the large Christmas tree, was Sleeping Beauty's pink castle, which was really pretty (Cinderella's is a bit better, but Sleeping Beauty's certainly wasn't bad).  We walked inside her castle (which had gothic architecture) where Sleeping Beauty's story was told in about 7 different stages with tapestries displaying different scenes in her story.  Then we walked around the park going on different rides.  I felt like I was a kid again--it was so happy.  They had a lot of the rides that are in Florida, but just are a bit different--and the majority of them are narrated in French.  We went on the Haunted Mansion ride, the Indiana Jones roller coaster, the Pirates of the Carribean ride (we even saw Jack Sparrow at the end of the ride who happened to be pretty cute), then we rode Peter Pan's flight, rode in the Teacups, rode the Space Mountain roller coaster, and then finished with the Star Wars virtual reality ride.  My favorite ride was definitely Space Mountain.  We also saw a parade featuring Mickey, Minnie, and their friends, all the princesses and princes, the villains of their stories, characters from other Disney movies like Mary Poppins and Toy Story, and then the parade ended with Santa Claus and his elves.  It was a bit cheesy, but really fun to watch.  All in all, it was a really fun day and a great way to spend our time off.

The next day we all visited the Musee d'Orsay.  I'm glad we finally got to go here because it is definitely one of my favorite museums in Paris.  The building itself is gorgeous because it used to be a huge train station and their are giant roman numeral clocks everywhere.  I just really enjoyed being inside the building.  I visited my favorite floor containing all the work of the impressionists--Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Cezanne, etc.  It was nice to look at works that I actually recognized.  Another exciting aspect of looking at these paintings, especially some of Monet's, was the fact that Monet painted some of the places and things that we've visited on this trip.  He painted my favorite cathedral in Rouen (four different times) and he also painted a couple of scenes from Etretat.  It was so cool to recognize that.  Then of course we saw some of the paintings he painted in his garden at Giverny, which we also visited.  So that was also fun to look at.  I also really liked looking at the post-impressionist paintings (the dot-like paintings)--that was really cool too.  I even got to drink a little espresso in one of the cafes in the museum which was situated behind one of the big clocks decorating the outside of the museum.  That was really fun and I got to taste a bit of the giant ice cream desserts that Elizabeth and Monika ordered.  After the cafe, Monika and I looked at a model of Paris that was housed under the floor of the museum with plate glass over it so that when you looked at it, you were walking over this model of Paris.  It was really cool, and the Opera was the center point of the model.  There was also a cross section of the Opera displayed on a table and that was cool to look at too because we recognized the rooms in the cross section because we had visited that building earlier.  We ended the visit with a pastel exhibit that displayed some works by Manet and also Degas.  We stayed until the museum closed--all in all very productive and interesting day.  Then I walked with Erika, Roz, Enna, and Lubaina along the Seine for about 30 minutes.  It was cool walking along the Seine at night.  The moon was full and bright and it was so cool seeing the lights of Paris and its bridges lit up by the water.  Very romantic.  After walking by the Seine, we all went back to Versailles, which for me wasn't easy because the trains were having some major issues, so it took me a lot longer than usual to get back, but I did eventually, and ate a really good dinner with my French dad and Amelie.  

This weekend we should be visiting the Catacombs, possibly the cathedral in Saint Dennis, and then the Paris sewers.  Yay!  Will update after the weekend...