This Is Halloween...
...in France!
It’s the start of holiday season and our first Halloween living outside of the US. Brian and I were determined to make the most of it and find ways to make the holiday seem “normal” since we both love it so much.
Halloween isn’t celebrated widely in France but has supposedly picked up some traction in the last decade or so (hooray for consumerism). We were able to find many shops with spooky decor and even some costumes for sale, mostly targeted toward children. Someone in my French class shared that all of the students in her son’s school dressed up in costume on the 31st.
I found that a nearby amusement park, Parc Astérix, was hosting horror nights (“Peur Sur Le Parc”) and signed us up immediately. Unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate - it’s been raining here every day for weeks now, typical for the fall - but we still had a fantastic time!
There were several haunted houses constructed inside the park in addition to actors who blended into the crowd to scare passersby - they targeted me all night! Of course Brian was no help and just let them creep on up from behind…
We also caught a couple of stunning performances - one with lasers, lights, water (in addition to the downpour of rain), and fireworks, and the other a live dance act with zombie “survivors” of The Sirius.
I’m happy to report that karma did finally catch up with Brian at the end of the night. After perhaps one too many rum and sangria syringe shots, he decided to leap across a large puddle in the parking lot and absolutely wiped out in the mud. Honestly I’m still laughing about it nearly as hard a week later! (He’s fine.)
Overall, 10/10 for Parc Astérix. I’m really looking forward to going in the late spring or summer when all of the water rides re-open. We’re also trying to learn more of the Astérix lore before revisiting so we can better enjoy the theming - Brian even bought me one of their comic books so I can practice reading French.
And now for something completely different…
Of course we also had to see what was going on at the Happiest Place on Earth for spooky season. We went on Halloween night after I got out of work and had lots of fun. We dressed as Peter Pan and Smee (who we learned is called “Monsieur Mouche” in French) and enjoyed short lines for most of the attractions - again due to bad weather, but it didn’t slow us down!
We ate Halloween burgers with grilled carrots and a spicy aioli (YUM) and people watched. Everyone was so creative with their costuming. Here are a few other photos of us from Disney Halloween:
Aside from Parc Astérix and Disney, we’ve just been doing the typical Halloween-y things like watching lots of scary movies and TV series. Daylight savings was last weekend here in France, so it’s been getting dark quite early. Depressing, but also perfect for bingeing spooky shows.
The girls are doing great. Wren always gets very lethargic when it rains, but they’re both living their best lives lounging around the house. That’s Willows favorite pastime anyway.
I plan to keep Halloween going at least through the weekend - I haven’t watched nearly enough Treehouse of Horror yet nor have I finished my annual rewatch of Buffy’s musical episode “Once More, With Feeling” followed by the iconic “Tabula Rasa”.
A week from today finally kicks off our Friendsgiving festivities! We’ve been planning an epic week of fall fun for months and can’t wait to have a very full house with our closest friends. We’ll share more on that later in November.
In the meantime…
How did you celebrate Halloween? Any good movies/shows to recommend? Let us know in the comments!
I'll forever wish you got a video of Brian wiping out.
Love hearing about your experiences living in France. Please keep posting.