I feel like a lot of my time right now is spent fine tuning my culinary and economization skills, looking for nice, cheap restaurants, or drinking tea. Sometimes I think my life in Paris is reminiscent of some kind of wartime rationing program, because I am working so hard to be frugal all the time, especially with food. I keep myself to buying only 30 euros worth of groceries each week, so that I'm typically only spending about 4 euros a day on meals. That way every couple of days I can indulge in a 12 euro lunch or a 25 euro dinner, and continue to save up for some more expensive pleasures, like going to London, taking a cooking class or going to Disneyland. Forty-two euros a day may sound like a lot, but it does not get very far when you start adding up museum admissions, Metro tickets, and concerts here and there. Therefore, I started rationing my breakfast foods, and every morning allow myself to have: one egg, two pieces of bread, one half cup of milk, one pat of butter, and a banana. It's not really a small amount of food, but it gets old after a while, so I've been coming up with a lot of different ways to prepare it. I have neither an oven nor a microwave, so I'm left with only the stove to cook them.
1) A poached egg sandwich with milk and a banana
2) Scrambled eggs with hot buttered toast and a banana smoothie
3) French toast with a caramelized banana topping (mmm, my favorite! It makes me think of the Half Moon).
(As a side note for curious minds, the French call French toast "Pain Perdu" or Lost Bread).
The discovery of a toaster and a skillet in my apartment very recently has made a huge positive impact on my quality of life, as sautéed chicken and hot toast are infinitely better than the cold and/or boiled alternatives. Along with my breakfast rationing, I only buy 24 ounces of meat every week, so for dinner I have 4 ounces of either steak or chicken, with boiled potatoes or rice and some sort of canned vegetable, and then one night a week go vegetarian. It's a little rough, but days like yesterday totally make up for the occasional ascetic dinners of bread and hummus.
And what a fabulous day it was! I finally mady my pilgrimage to the Happiest Place in Europe! The weather was as gloomy as ever, but I decided it was never going to be sunny here and I couldn't wait anymore to visit Disneyland Paris. Having hit what Colin sagely refers to as the "three week travel slump," I was feeling unmoved and a little bored by most of what Paris had to offer, feeling a little homesick, and needing a pick me up. Nothing could have been more perfect: I was so happy when I got to the park gates, I was actually crying, and couldn't wipe the smile off my face all day. The trip was as much a personal vacation as it was a professional research expedition, enjoying as I do not just Disneyland as a destination, but the always impressive way that Disney is able to package an existing product for different cultural audience. I loved seeing all the familiar parts of Disneyland carefully remade in a European image. It was all very impressive. How do you make Main Street, U.S.A. more European, you ask? Why, you focus extensively on the Statue of Liberty of course, and put special emphasis, always, on the fact that it's French. But this was my favorite -- the Frenchification of what in the U.S. is called "King Arthur's Carousel":
I brought with me a granola bar and an orange in order to try to stave off the temptation to buy overpriced snacks while in the park. Of course this didn't work, and I went ahead and bought and ate all sorts of crap all day, which made me very happy. (NB: French churros are gross). It was a chilly Paris day, and I found it really disorienting while visiting a place I inherently associate with warmth and sunshine. It also meant that I was pumping hot chocolate by the gallon, sometimes double fisting it so that I could keep both hands warm at once. But it really wouldn't have been Disneyland at all without the snacks: some popcorn (which in France is 
always sweet and never salted), a chocolate brioche shaped like Mickey's head, some McDonald's french fries (oh McDonalds... how I've missed you so). See, though, that I tried to keep all the snacks with at least a French theme :-)My first trip to Disneyland by myself was, at times, as disorienting as the weather. Though being there alone has its bonuses (single rider lines, for example!), it also has its drawbacks (the one-handed taking-pictures-by-yourself thing is tiresome, and solicits weird looks). It confirmed for me that what makes or breaks a Disney vacation is having the right people with you to have conversations with when you're standing in line, and it made me miss the company of my last trip!
Some interesting differences I took note of while there: Euro Disney puts a much larger emphasis on pirates, which I actually found kind of surprising. In fact, Adventureland here is really more like Pirateland, because there isn't much else except a lot of pirate-themed attractions. The rides are all faster, longer, and scarier than in the U.S. -- Space Mountain scared the hell out of me, I thought I was going to pass out afterwards. The park as a whole is also not nearly as well run: lines are longer, Fastpass is weird (although it is called Fastpass), and nothing seems to run with the usual Disney efficiency. I will note, however, that apparently French friendliness is not an oxymoron, they just have to be under the thumb of strict Disney policy in order to be so. Some things, happily, were exactly the same as I remember, and make me as giddy as if I was nine years old again:
I had an extremely happy day. Is it sad that the most fun thing I've done in Paris is go to Disneyland? I don't think so, actually. I have long known who I was and what I like to do and what makes me happy, and that seems like a good thing. Some people go their whole lives and never figure that out.Other than that, life is normal here in Paris. I don't hang out with my friend Dan very much anymore, except to volunteer with the homeless a couple of times a week, because, as we quickly learned, we have very different priorities as travellers. As in, his strong preference is to go to cheap bars and drink crappy beer, and my strong preference is to do just about anything else. Actually, I realize that we both have the same philosophy when it comes to living in a new place, and that is to do the same things you would ordinarily do in your life back at home. I think this is a great way to experience a place - it's like if you continue to do the same workout that you have always done at the gym, you just increase the weight resistance. The motion is exactly the same, but you get a much different experience. So for Dan, that means going to French hole-in-the-wall bars instead of Jersey hole-in-the-wall bars. I find all of this very amusing. I would say that I have grown out of that phase, except I was never really in that phase to begin with, and could just never get that interested in spending my money on beer. Alors, vive la difference! It's always interesting to try new things (though I get bored of doing the same thing every night) and I always enjoy getting to know new people, if for no other reason than it helps me to solidify my own priorities and interests.
So I spend my money and my time on things that really interest me, like the fascinating and fun French Army Museum. Pretty similar to the amazing Imperial War Museum in London, except with a French twist. My favorite: "In 1917, the Americans entered the war, just as the French were turning the tide on the Western Front." Haha. Like the British, the French displayed old army uniforms from each era of French military history. Except they didn't use normal looking manequins to display them, they used very, very distinctly French manequins. Don't you love the moustache? The beret? The turned up nose? He might as well have a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. The museum included suits of armor worn into battle by French kings like Francois I and Henry IV (my heroes), and of course the pièce de résistance, Napoleon's tomb. Some little things about the French are starting to make me crazy. The smoking, first of all, because they do it everywhere and they are totally inconsiderate about where or around who (adults in Disneyland were lighting up while standing in line, with dozens of little children standing all around). Also the fact that they won't serve you popcorn in a movie until after you get out, because they don't want you to eat it in the theater and make a mess (this is because the French are lazy; I make no apologies for the generalization of this statement, because it is completely true).
That's been my week so far. I hope everyone else is having a good time (has Fur Rondy happened yet?) and, as I learned how to say in French during my magical day trip yesterday: que la Force soit avec vous! (This sounds particularly funny when said with an American southern accent, which is how the French picture Luke Skywalker).
