The Marne inspires fisherman and sport boats alike. We also saw some fancy tree houses in private gardens.
A beautiful example of the Mosaic style houses in the area.
The river has many old side arms. In one of them is a nice mooring at la Ferté-sous-Jouarre. Along the river the old fortifications are still visible.
Further on at Meaux we cruised past the local beach with beach huts and life guards! It’s very popular in Europe to create a beach section along rivers for family summer fun.
Meaux is about 40 km from central Paris and mooring here is free (unless electricity and water is used), so when we arrived the pontoons were full. Luckily, a nice English couple let us tie up alongside their barge.
Meaux has a nice centre with its own cathedral and episcopal palace. Of the former castle, once owned by Henry II, Henry IV and later passed on to Catherine de Medici, only a few columns survived.
From Meaux bus No.19 goes straight to Euro-Disney, and as Marcia and Peter have been good kids, we went off to see Mickey.
We started with Disney Studio, a mixture of cartoon sceneries, cartoon films, cartooning technique and equipment explained and theme rides. As it had the shortest waiting queue, Austin and I chose the “Slinky Dog Ride” in the Toy Story section. After 35 minutes waiting time the 1 minute ride felt like 20 seconds and we were off again!
Now, I have to say, that I am not your fairground and theme-park enthusiast and I felt rather mean being there without grandchildren (although ours are yet too small for it). But I did enjoy watching the children around us. It’s definitely the right place for dress ups. We saw about 5400 “Elsas” and another 300 snow whites and fairy princesses, among the 4050 kids and adults with Mickey Mouse ears.
Day 2 was the main Disney World experience and turned out to be more exciting. There is a variety of sections. From Fantasy Land, Adventure Land, Discovery Land to Frontier Land all scenery and rides were authentically and lovingly constructed. Peter, Austin and I started the day off with undoubted the scariest ride of the park, space mountain. It’s a very fast, spinning and jerking, turning upside down roller coaster inside total darkness. Marcia had wisely declined, so a couple of whiplashes and new ear piercings later (as our heads were thrown against the so-called security bars) we stumbled into daylight and made a cross-eyed teeter towards the exit.
The thrill part over and done with, we could enjoy a tamer ride through “Captain Black’s” weird and wonderful world, and later - much later- were able to keep down an ice cream at Main Street.