May 12, My American Birthday and Scavenger Hunt: Chronicles of a Winner

I'm a bit behind on posts, so I'm going to combine two and make one large one. Sorry for all of the reading!

May 12, My American Birthday:

On my birthday, I went to Disneyland Paris to take full advantage of my free admission. The park opened up at 10 and the train ride took a bit longer than I anticipated, so I got there around 11am. My ticket included two parks, so I decided to spend the first half of my day at Walt Disney Studios, the section of the park that is cinema / Hollywood themed. I rode a few rides and walked all through the park, which didn't take too long because it is significantly smaller than the main park. After I was finished in Walt Disney Studios, I headed to the main Disneyland park for lunch.

I went to the Agrabah Cafe, an Aladdin-themed Moroccan buffet. I had middle-eastern food for lunch and it was pretty good. The decor of the restaurant was awesome, and had a truly authentic feel to it. I've never been to Morocco before, so I could be totally off on the whole "authentic feel" thing, but it felt authentic to me! I then spent the rest of the day walking around Disneyland. It was much more similar to Disneyworld in the sense that it's sectioned off into different themed areas. There was Frontierland (Western themed), Adventureland (pirate / treasure themed), Fantasyland (Disney Princess themed), and Discoveryland (futuristic / Buzz Lightyear themed). In order to get to any of these places, you had to walk down the Main Street, USA, which had a very cliche "old America" feel to it with all of its parlors, taverns, etc. In all honesty, I think Disneyworld is much better, but it was totally free for me so I'm not complaining!

When I got back home, I saw that two birthday cards had arrived from family members- perfect timing! (your thank-yous are in the mail, FYI!) I spent about an hour or so writing my paper on the Opera house (yuck) before going out to meet my classmates for dinner. We went to a Chinese place called Happy Nouilles, recommended by our professor. They have homemade noodles and dumplings there, and you can watch the chef pulling the noodles for your meal from outside. I had yummy dumplings and noodle soup that was to die for. We all agreed that we'd be coming back soon. It was definitely a birthday well-spent!

Scavenger Hunt: Chronicles of a Winner:

Sunday, May 13th, our Parisian History professor organized an optional scavenger hunt for us. It was French Revolution / Napoleon themed, so all of the clues revolved around landmarks that were essential to these two things. The date had been getting pushed back for about four weeks until we finally got nice weather this weekend. We were told to be in teams of 2-3 and near a computer to receive our instructions at 2pm. My friend Missy and I are running the half marathon together next weekend, so we decided to team up and put our training to the test. Additionally, she and I speak the most French out of anyone in our class, so we thought teaming up would give us an advantage. We met at a McDonald's in a central location, tapped into their wifi and got our list of clues. There were 13 clues total, most of them being pretty tricky- we had to consult our notes and textbook for at least half of them. Instead of doing them in order and figuring them out as we go, Missy and I decided to stay at McDonald's for 30 minutes, figure them all out at once, then map them out to ensure that we wouldn't waste time re-tracing our steps.

Our first stop was probably the hardest for us. We had to find a "faint blue line" sketched on the ground, outlining where a prison's temple once was. Luckily, the McDonald's was nearby, so we ran to the general area and started looking for any signs of blue on the sidewalks, After about 15 minutes of wandering, we found something magical. It was a map etched on some random wall. The title of it? "Ancient Plan of the Temple Neighborhood". We consulted the map to find where the prison once was, ran there, then looked all over for a faint blue line on the ground. After about 15 minutes of looking, we got frustrated and decided that an ambiguously-colored line would suffice. We took a picture of it and continued. We ran all around the city, looking for sculptures of random French generals, historic plaques 2 stories above the most common-looking buildings, and other icons of late 18th / early 19th century France.

The picnic that awaited us

After four and a half hours of physically running into people on the street, climbing more stairs than I ever want to again, and sweating my butt off, we finally arrived at our destination. We ran there to find that we were the first ones, our professor awaiting us with a picnic of breads, cheeses, wines, and fantastic pastries. After a quick victory party, we crashed on the ground, SO happy to finally be sitting down, catch our breath, and get some scrumptious food in our stomachs. Our professor reviewed our photos and told us that we had one incorrect location- we were devastated because we had spent the last week smack-talking the other teams, telling them that they had nothing on us. She told us not to get too downhearted, because if the other two teams did any of the clues incorrectly, we would still win. We anxiously awaited and ten minutes later, the next team showed up. The professor announced that they, too, messed up a clue. It all depended on the last team.

Me, Missy, and our booty!

About 45 minutes later, the last team arrived. They looked really discouraged and worn-out; one of them said he even puked because he wasn't used to running that much. We watched our professor review their photos and screamed out in excitement when she said that their pictures had some technical errors as well. We got our prize, which was an adorable picnic basket filled with all sorts of French chocolates, caramels, and other goodies. We were so ecstatic that we had won! All of our running, sweating, and getting lost in Paris was totally worth it.

Affectueusement,

Katie