Birthday Weekend

Last Saturday I turned 21! wahoo!!
A friend of mine, Luca, had an extra trip on his Eurorail Pass, so he decided to come up to Paris for the weekend (he's currently studying in Spain). He's been here before, so we skipped over all the big touristy things. On Saturday we went to Disneyland Paris (for free!). We did A LOT of walking.. I certainly grew a few foot blisters over Friday and Saturday.

On Friday, we pulled out my handy Paris Walking Tours book and decided to explore the Bastille neighborhood. The tour started on the outskirts, near Saint-Paul. Saint-Paul is a sort of mini-neighborhood, mostly Jewish and filled with shops and markets. The streets were tiny and most of the store names were in Hebrew. Walking through here, we got closer to Bastille. The Bastille neighborhood is a weird mix of traditional working class and modern boutiques and bars. I think it's dubbed the "SoHo of Paris," but it reminded me a lot of the new transformation of the Mission District in San Francisco. A mix of lower-class and yuppie. We walked by some very old buildings (including the Forney Library, which used to be some count's house I think - supposedly there is still a canon in the façade from the Revolution) and parks.

We even saw some old stones that used to be in the foundation of the Bastille Prison. Someone found them when they were digging tunnels for the metro.

On Friday we also went to the Luxembourg Gardens, which are right in the middle of the city. They are a flashier version of Golden Gate Park, and much smaller. It's a huge gated park around a big chateau, which used to be the home of some bigshot Parisian. I'm sure that in the spring and summer the gardens are more beautiful and blooming, but in the winter there wasn't much color. It was still a nice park though, and we spent a good 30 minutes walking around the paths and trails.

You can see my pictures for Friday's explorations here:

Walking through Paris, Februrary 20

Saturday morning, we got up very early and went to Disneyland Paris!! It's about 20 km from the city, kind of like the distance of Disneyland from Los Angeles. (Luca used to work at the LA Disneyland, and had two free passes that would work at any Disneyland park in the world - so of course we had to go in Paris!). It was weird because the Paris Disneyland was almost an exact replica of the American ones.. it felt like we were back in the US! There were some subtle (and some not so subtle) changes though. The Paris park is sooo spread out!! They have tons of space, and room to make extra paths. Some of the rides were better too - Space Mountain 2: Supernova (as they called it) was more of a roller-coaster than the original Space Mountain. The Peter Pan ride had a fast-pass line. Also, the second park (Disney Studios) had some cool rides, like a rock-and-roll themed roller-coaster and a Finding Nemo ride. It was a cool way to spend my birthday, and at the end of the day, we went to Disney Village where there are some clubs and bars. I had my first "legal" drink (legal for the US - here, they don't really care what age you are if you want to order a drink) at an American-style "Saloon."

You can see all my Disneyland Paris pictures here:

Disneyland Paris!