For a while me and my family went to Paris more or less every year and by Paris I mean Disneyland. We tried the city of Paris a few times and I'm sure my Mum and Dad kinda enjoyed it. But for 14 year old Chris Space Mountain was always going to win against the Eiffel Tower.
'To get away from all the kids at Disney' in my Dad's words (read 'to save money'), we stayed at a little French village called Bussy St George about 10 minutes away from the parks by the French Underground. When you read 'French Village' you get an image of a leafy cobbled street with a patisserie on the corner and a bereted man playing an organ outside a cheese shop (verging on racism? or just French things?)
Bussy St George is actually more or less a modern ghost town. Everything looks brand new and sandy in colour. Theres monuments and little green areas, occasional cafes and sandwich shops. But there dosn't seem to be anyone there to use them, its fairly eerie to walk around.
Our hotel, a French Premier Inn type place, was in this huge grand building with a 3 storey sculpture of a naked woman on the front with 1 storey boobs. She looked out this big plaza with little stone balls and a fountain. If you looked not so far into the distance you could see at least 100 cranes (machines, not birds. That would be awesome though). It gave the impression that maybe this area wasn't quite fully built; like we were trialling the buildings for the first time. The French were letting us Brits test it for safety perhaps before they moved in.
Our hotel was relatively uneventful other than you shock you got every so often when you were met with a life size figure of a black guy in a suit playing a trumpet. I wanted a photo with him so much but for some reason one was never taken. Holiday ruined.
The other thing I remember about the hotel was the hilarious engrish on the restaurant menu. You could have a delicious 'slab' of beef or 'a bit' of chicken. I also remember eating that 'bit' of chicken then riding Star Tours about 20 minutes after. C3PO was very nearly projectile vomited on.
The highlight of Bussy St George was, by 100 miles, the lake. It looked quite normal and uneventful through the day and when you walked past. But go back in the evening with a bag of croissants and it turned into something awesome. First you'd see something bob in the water and disappear. You'd then see that something make a pattern on the surface of the water as it swam towards you. This was quite creepy the first time we didn't know what that something was. It eventually reached the shore though and revealed itself to be some kind of awesome beaver.
More beaver like creatures would appear until lake was completely beaver-packed. They'd circle you and demand you fed them croissants, hissing in anger when you ran out or gave to rival beavers. We found out when we got home they were coypus, but at the time they were definitely beavers. Am i saying beaver again and again just because I smile as I write it each time? Maybe. Beaver.
Maybe it was the coypus that drove all the people away from Bussy St George. Lucky for us we had enough croissants to feed them until we left. For a full time resident though I'm not sure how long you could keep giving up croissants until the Coypus took full control.
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