Hey friends, it's Jacqueline at Pixie Dust PhD! My partner Adam and I are finishing up like a
two-thirds workday right now… I’m supposed to be working right now. And then we're off
to the airport so we can head out to Paris, France. Today is Monday. Weather on Wednesday
and Thursday is looking pretty hot. It's the highs back in the 90s. But the weather by
the time we're in Disneyland, if the forecast holds up, the high is only in the low 80s, so
I’m really excited for that. Not too many of you indicated you wanted to see actual Paris footage,
so I’ll probably sprinkle a little bit in in this video. We'll call this our many travel days to
get to Disneyland Paris. So we're leaving today on Monday; it's a red-eye, we will get in on Tuesday.
We don't have too many plans for Tuesday. I think we're going to try to do some shopping, go into
the Opera. If we're feeling energetic maybe Notre Dame. But yeah, I think we're going to be tired.
Wednesday is the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre. Thursday we're doing the Eiffel Tower, the Dior
Gallery, the Orsay museum, and then we have a fun dinner at Pink Mama. Friday is a zoo day,
and we've left a lot of time open just to meander around and do anything else that we want. Saturday
we're off to Champagne for a day trip. Both Adam and I are really excited for this; we are big wine
fans, so it's awesome to be able to go to actual Champagne. And then Sunday’s kind of like Friday
where we don't have any intense plans. We'll do some gardens, hit up cafes. But, you know,
pretty chill day. But then Sunday evening we are making our way over to the Disneyland Paris area.
We'll actually do Disneyland on Monday and Tuesday for real. Monday is apparently a huge bank holiday
in the U.K. so I am braced for crowds, but we'll see how it goes. And then we do have theme park
tickets on Wednesday. We are checking out of our Disney hotel on Wednesday--that is Hotel New York:
Art of Marvel--so I don't know that we'll do a whole day. We're definitely not doing
till fireworks, you know, 11 p.m. or whatever. But we'll do at least through 1 to 2 p.m., maybe even
5 or 6 p.m. We shall see. And then we're just off to our airport hotel to sleep that night there,
and then leaving on Thursday. We're flying business class on the way out there, so from DC
to France. And then just premium economy on the way home. We don't have too many strict plans
at Disneyland Paris, but we will be dining at Manhattan Restaurant inside the Marvel hotel;
we've also got a reservation at Silver Spur Steakhouse for lunch; and Chez Remy for lunch.
I’m definitely looking forward to the fireworks as well as Dream… and Shine Brighter! and the
5:30 parade. We may try to fit in Mickey and the Magician. I am not a big show person, but
that one looks pretty cool. And then I definitely want to get on Crush’s Coaster, Tower of Terror,
Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain… I think it's going to be a pretty ride heavy trip. Plus
of course you'll find me drinking champagne on Main Street. I am testing out some new mics,
so if the audio quality is maybe not what you're used to thanks for your patience. Yeah,
we'll finish up work, head off to the airport. I’ll show you a few bits and pieces, but otherwise I’ll
talk to you in like six and a half or so days once we're on our way to Disneyland. Can't wait!
Hi friends, it's been many a day since we last touched base. We were leaving the Washington DC
area for France. We spent the last five nights in Paris doing many many things. So we went to
the top of the Eiffel Tower; there was a long queue for that even though we had skip the queue
tickets. We climbed the stairs at the Arc de Triomphe. That was hard... --A work out. Both up and
down. --Yeah, physically taxing. That's for sure. But it's a really beautiful view of the city.
We went to the Louvre. I’m not gonna say we did the Louvre, because I think you would need like
weeks to do the Louvre. But we went to the Louvre. And it was very crowded and chaotic and very hot.
We hung out outside of the Louvre and just like… I don't know, took in the pyramids. --It's
really beautiful, for what its worth. --Yeah. It's a really wonderful building. What else did we do…? We went to the zoo
and we saw a red panda. And there were other animals but mostly we saw the red panda.
So cute. --Yeah. It's really cool to take in all the gardens, the--the culture, right. The food
was good. The drinks were better. It was really an experience. Right, that's for sure. --Yep. Ate a lot
of steak frites, and had a lot of house wine that was cheap price wise but still tasty. Like--like
a five, 4.50 or five euro glass of wine here is probably the equivalent of like a nine to twelve
dollar glass of wine back home in America, so that's pretty cool. --Yeah. It was a lot of
fun. We did things like take a scenic boat ride cruise tour and saw the Eiffel Tower lit up at
night. Every hour on the hour it sparkles, and puts on a show for five minutes. They timed it
just right so our boat tour pulled up, and they did a little countdown. It was really romantic.
--Yeah. So we had a lot of fun in Paris. Though it was very hot for a few days, and quite exhausting.
And now we are getting ready to head to Disneyland tomorrow! So we've already moved from Paris to
our off-site hotel in the Disneyland Paris area. We're at Val d’Europe--the like mall here. And
I’m sure there will be a room tour video for you soon… if it's not already posted… but yeah,
in the morning we're gonna wake up, we're going to transfer over to the Hotel New York:
Art of Marvel. Drop our stuff off, grab our magic passes, and then head to the parks. So
I think we planned to do Paris then Disneyland Paris for a variety of reasons, but one of them
was definitely like because we thought Disneyland would be super exhausting and we didn't want to
be exhausted when we went to Paris. But now I’m questioning perhaps this was more exhausting. So
I’m sure I’ll report back out later. But it's been a really fun vacation so far. We also did a day
trip to Champagne, and we toured two champagne houses. And there are caverns, and it was like
great. And also of course there were tastings and you know I love champagne,
so, that's cool. --Yeah, Jacqueline’s favorite was the rose champagne. Right. --The 2012 vintage rose.
--They made sure to let you know that it was vintage. --Yeah. I’m guessing we won't be able to get that
at Disneyland Paris for the same reasonable price that we got at the tasting. --No. --No. Yeah. So uh,
we took the RER A train out from Paris out here to Val D’Europe. But it was pretty easy. Though
I will say it's like a standard commuter train. So you board the train and there's, you know,
like a platform; and there's an upstairs and a downstairs. And just because it's a commuter
train there's kind of always constantly people going on and off at most of the stops until you
get pretty far out. So like Adam didn't grab seats the whole time. And if you have luggage I think
it's a little more challenging to sort of beat other passengers like up or down the stairs to
grab a spot. But it was what, maybe 40 minutes? It was pretty fast. --Yeah, no. It was it was not
bad at all. And uh considering the alternative was paying you know 50 bucks for a cab to sit
in traffic that would take twice as long… --Forever, yeah. --It was definitely worth it. I would definitely
say that if you're not staying right by the train station, you definitely want to arrange some kind
of transportation to pick you up. --Yeah, for sure. Like our Paris hotel concierge even said “yeah, take the RER…
like traffic's insane, and, you know, the RER's so much cheaper.” It's five euro per person. We
had it included in our weekly pass, so we didn't even really like pay for it--not the individual
ride. But yeah, point being if you have a lot of luggage you may find it difficult to like haul it
fast enough to claim a seat because other people are also trying to claim a seat. So Adam just
hung out with our luggage like on the sort of platform area once you board in, the whole ride.
And I did sit for about half of it, sans luggage. But yeah. Then we're just staying in an off-site
hotel that was like around the corner from the train station, so that was pretty easy. Though
navigating cobblestones with luggage sucks. --Yeah, not great. Fortunately, it was only it was less
than like five minutes from station. --Yeah, it was. This is part of the reason we picked the
hotel was because it was gonna be super easy. We did look at the Radisson Blu, which we
would have had probably taken uber from the train station over out there. And I’m sure that would
have been fine, but it just seemed like we're only here for one night… probably less than 12 hours,
honestly… so didn't really want to deal with it. But yeah, so we're about to head to bed here
at the Hotel l'Elysse in Val d’Europe. And then when we wake up, just get ready, pack up the
few things we took out, and then I think we're gonna either take an uber or taxi over to Hotel
New York and start our Disneyland Paris adventure! --Yeah. I’m really excited to go into the next phase
of Disney. I think that after leaving the chaotic streets of Paris, right, --Yeah. --it's gonna be
good to kind of get some of that Disney magic in our vacation. For sure. --Definitely. So thanks for
coming along on this extended travel day vlog, and we'll see you soon in Disney! --Okay, bye!