A Typical Parisian Weekend

Most of the time here in Paris, my weekend consists of a day of focusing on my schoolwork and then lots of fun activities throughout the rest of the weekend. I personally don’t like to have to be working on class things during the week if I can help it just so that I have plenty of time to relax and do other things in the evening (like go out for dinner or check out a museum randomly).

Just this past weekend, it was my friend’s birthday and she really wanted to go to Disneyland Paris, and even though I’d been there before, I decided I definitely wanted to go again. The first time I went it was rainy and the forecast for Friday was nice and sunny. Since we have no classes on Friday, we left Friday morning for the park. We took the RER, so we didn’t have to pay extra for the Disney bus and were able to get cheaper weekday tickets since it was a Friday, all in all it wasn’t that expensive of a trip.

As it was technically a weekday, the park wasn’t too busy. Most of the people there seemed to be families on vacation; we even bumped into a family from the UK who was willing to take some photos for us since sometimes it’s hard to find someone to take pictures when you’re not super confident in asking someone to do so (I think I’ve finally got that phrase down, but somedays I’m not so sure). My friend really wanted to see the fireworks, so we stayed until the park closed and to make sure we got to see the amazing firework show that’s happening to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of Disneyland Paris. We got on a ton of rides, and we even got to ride my favorite (Hyperspace Mountain) twice—once at the beginning of the day and once at the end.

After spending the day outside the main city center, I took the next day to get a bit of work done. I had to come up with a research paper topic before Tuesday, so I spent a little while researching various European Union policies and their impact on citizens. Even though I normally like to go find a study spot somewhere in the city, I decided to just stay in my apartment to get some work done to save a bit of time. I’ve got a nice table set up in my place that I keep all my school materials on.

On Sunday I went to visit the Centre Pompidou; I did have to go there for a class project, but I also got to just wander around for fun too. For my art history course, we were presenting on works of modern art and since we were going to be at the museum for class time, we were going to have to do our presentation in the museum. I was the only member of the group who had the time to go run by the museum, so I went to pick out the paintings we would present on. After I’d picked out the work I wanted to present, I took some pictures of the other pieces for my group members to choose from. Then, I decided to explore the rest of the museum for fun. There are two floors to the Pompidou Museum, so I took the time to wander around both floors and all the different exhibits.

To get back to my apartment from the museum, I ended up taking the metro that goes by this American grocery store I like to stop by occasionally. They have a lot of different things in there including Pop-Tarts, Betty Crocker cake mix, and tons of American soda brands. They sell one of my favorite sodas with the full sugar content (in France a lot of soda is zero sugar), so I stopped by on my way home and grabbed two so I could have a treat during the week.

That’s a typical weekend for me! A good mix of fun things, homework, and just exploring my host city!