Disneyland Paris

before I start this blog I have one thing to say:

Oh my GOD!!! Oh my GOD!!! Oh my GOD!!! Oh my GOD!!! Oh my GOD!!! Oh my GOD!!! Oh my GOD!!! Oh my GOD!!! Oh my GOD!!! Oh my GOD!!!

I'm in DISNEYLAND!!!!!!!!!!¡!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok I'm ready to go.

So we arrived at Disneyland at 10 o clock the park opening time, we had day passes and we were ready to go,

 

 

as every child knows on the last day of school it feels as though a giant magnet is pulled from the sky by Peter Pan and at 3 o clock he sucks everyone out of school with the bait of candy and fun on his side.

It's exactly the same thing with Disneyland except 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 X stronger Drew and I found ourselves sprinting to frontier land.

Now I'll be talking about "lands" so heres is a map of the park to explain that.

 

 

 

 

Frontier Land:

Is themed on the Wild West. Some of the top rides include Phantom Manner and Big Thunder Mountain. Smallest of the lands but not by any stretch least exiting

 

 

 

 

Adventure land:

Themed on pirates of the Caribbean and treasure island, this water park has several rest rounds and the Swiss Family Robinson's tree house on an island with moat. Top attraction here is Pirates of the Caribbean, It's the second largest park.

 

 

 

 

 

Fantasy land:

Home to lots of rides, it is based on an old medieval village, this land is the place where you are most likely to meet the Disney characters. Most popular attractions include It's a Small World and Peter Pan's Flight, largest of the Disneyland parks.

 

 

 

 

Discovery land:

This land is mostly themed on voyages and space expeditions and is the home of Captain Nemo's submarine and the new, "Star Tours" based on Star Wars, top attractions include Space Mountain Mission 2 and Buzz Lightyear's laser blast. Second smallest park.

 

 

 

 

And finally

 

Main Street USA:

The disney stores await.

 

Ok so here we are in Frontier Land and we decided to hit Phantom Manor as soon as possible.

 

 

 

 

Naturally I wanted to ride again but Drew had other ideas, (mostly involving roller coasters) so, we went on our way.

 

 

After wandering round Disneyland for a bit we floated back to the childhood dream of It's a Small world, a snail pace boat ride showing the biggest collection of dolls in Europe, beautiful.

 

 

 

Finally we after a whole day of exploring we headed to the Rain forrest cafe, a restaurant completely covered with plants and mechanical animals that move every now and then. As we emerged however, it really started to rain! This was bad for us as we planned to catch the 11.00pm bus home after the fire works, and you can't have a firework show in the rain.

 

 

This is 6 o clock and considering it doesn't get dark till 9 this sky was a problem

 

 

But miraculously at 15 to 11 the clouds cleared. There was going to be a show after all! Best of all everyone else had gone home in the meantime, and there were no lines for anything - in fact we were asked if we wanted to ride some of the rides again and just stay in our seats!

 

 

The fireworks was spectacular. Here are some pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was such a late night but it was soooooo worth all the tiredness the next morning.

 

I think Disney land is a brilliant place for young and old to play and enjoy themselves in any genre that they can imagine, even teenagers were doing the merry go rounds.What makes Disney brilliant is the attention to detail, everything looks like it came out of a book.

No one could resist it - even a 3000 year old librarian who had only eaten bran and gristle their whole life would be laughing by the end.

And now I'm departing from the land of dreams, at least I know its still there waiting for me to return.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Missing you

 

 

 

 

Zoe

 

Swe of the mar

The louvre

Today we went to the Louvre, the biggest museum in France. It's more like a maze. We actually we got lost quite a few times.

Some things they included were:

 

1. The Islamic arts wing
2. The French sculpture gallery
3. The Mona Lisa
4. The hall of Italian paintings
5. Greek pottery
6. The Egyptian wing
7. Roman art
8. French frescos
9. Persian art
10. The hall of Christ
11. Ancient freezes
12. Old modding hall
13. Tile collection
14. Turkish poetry (what the whaaaaaaa)

As you can see without guidance it would probably have taken around 5 years to get all the way through the museum (with mum probably around 20, as she wants to read everything about everything) our solution was to go treasure crusading.

 

At 9 o'clock this morning we hit the road to the Louvre waiting for us at the gate was our cartographer: Daisy. She'd bought tickets for us ahead of time so we went straight in to the glass pyramid...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What most people don't resize is that the building around the Louvre is actually THE louvre, the glass pyramid is just the entry. Wow

 

Our guide explained to us all about the hunt for the sacred items, we would be splitting into 2 teams, then we would go hunting for several things you would never see otherwise, each thing would Bern worth a set amount of points, say the Mona Lisa: 10 points, the harder the things were to find the more points you got. Sometimes a bonus points can be found in the description of the artwork such as blah blah blah blah blah for 30 bonus points who came after emperor Corniglia.

After daisy had left we decided on 2 teams dad + me VS mum + drew, it was game on

I'll give you the treasure hunt summery

1. PHILIPPE POTS TOMB

Made: 1494

Use: coffin

 

Section/period: Gothic

Size: around 2 metres

 

 

2.MONUMENT OF THE SHRINE OF DUKE ANNE MORRAY

Made: 1571

Use: shrine

 

 

 

 

Section/period: Gothic

Size: around 1.5 metres

 

3. STATUE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

 

Made: 100 B.C

Use: NONE

 

 

 

 

 

Section/period: Romen

Size: around 30 centermetres

 

4. FREIZE AND TOMB DECOR OF DARIUS THE GREAT

 

 

Made: 510 B.C

Use: columns and decor

 

 

 

 

 

Section/period: The Persian empire

Size: lots of bits

 

5. PORTRAIT OF KING FRANCOIS THE I

 

Made: 15th century France

Use: portrait

 

 

 

 

Section/period: renascence

Size: around 0.5 metres

 

 

6. PALACE CERAMIC WALL TILES

 

Made: 13th-15th century B.C

Use: tiles

 

 

 

 

 

 

Section/period: Perasian empire

Size: would have covered a whole wall

 

 

7.AKEHNATON AND NEFERETITI

 

Made: 18th dynasty

Use: model

 

 

 

 

Section/period: Egyption art

Size: around 15 centimetres

 

 

8. THE CORONATION OF NAPOLEAN THE III BY DAVID

 

Made: 1804

Use: to decorate his castle

 

 

 

 

Section/period: Gorgian

Size: around 7 metres long

 

 

9.STATUE OF KING NECTANABO THE III PROTECTED BY A FALCON

 

Made: 134 B.C

Use: Protector in the afterlife

 

 

 

 

Section/period: 8th dynasty

Size: around 30 cm

 

10. BACTRIAN PRINCESS

 

Made: 3rd melenium B.C

Use: statuette

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately the statue had been hired out to another museum

 

 

 

Section/period: Bronze Age

Size: around 12 centimetres

 

 

11. LOUIS THE XIV ON HORSE BACK

 

Made: 1715

Use: statue

 

 

 

 

 

Section/period: 1715

Size: around 0.5 metres

 

12. CUPID REVIVING PSYCHE

 

Made: 1900

Use: tomb cover

 

 

 

 

 

Section/period: renaissance

Size: around 2.5 metres

This was my least favourite sculpture I saw today. My least favourite artwork is still to come.

 

13. GILDED CARTONNAGE OF THE LADY TASHERET-PE-ANKAH

 

Made: 332 B.C

Use: coffin/sarcophagus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Section/period:Egyptian

Size: around 2.5 metres

 

 

 

My favourite piece of art was a half statue half fresco of a lady who was grieving someone's death, i love who the artist creates so much emotion in her face yet the statue is completely neutral, like he is really gone forever. Maybe the woman is his mother, or she could be his bride, who knows.

 

 

 

 

My least favorite painting or artwork was this one

 

 

 

 

And I mean seriously, who can blame me.

 

 

Me and dad were on fire, we had a great team I did the booklet reading and dad navigated, I felt like I was in the amazing race, it was so typically camera drew had to explain it to you.

 

 

 

 

Out of all the museams I've been to, the Louvre is in the top 3

1. The Accadimia, Florence - best bit, the gallery of music
2. The Louvre, Paris - best bit, cann't decide!!
3. The Acropolis museum, Greece - best bit,the video on the plunders of the acropolis ruins

Maybe I'll find a better museum soon!

Missing you all

Zoe

 

Swe of the mar

Leaving the South of France

After our time was up in Fumel we...

1. Packed up our bags - not an easy task after a week being unpacked in a big house
2. Hit the road to the town of Rocamadour - a hot spot for pilgrims and basically built into a massive cliff face with buildings carved into the rock.
3. Explored Rocamadour then ventured further uphill to...
4. A Bird Park and show - involving condors, eagles, vultures, falcons, macaws (and Drew got a feather) and Aussie cockatoos. Many oohs and aahs greeted these.
5. Drove onto our new hotel in Chateau de rancay, an old castle/manor house thats been converted to a hotel - explored the massive grounds and beautiful interior and antiques in our chateau hotel. I even saw an owl swooping in a grove of trees and a squirrel that ran across the steps.
6. Drove to Orleans and caught the train to Paris - goodbye South of France

Here is a summary in pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Swe of the mar