Paris

 Today's plan:

• take the train from DLP to Paris
• Get on the "Hop On Hop Off" bus tour of the city, hopping off whenever we felt like it, probably more than once
• hang out by the Eiffel tower and eat dinner
• Take the last (10pm) boat tour on the Seine to see the tower "sparkle" at night
• get a cab back to the train station (HOHO bus would be finished running by then)
• train back to DLP

I had pre-purchased the HOHO bus and boat tour tickets as a bundled package. These are good for 24 hours, starting whenever you get on the first bus. I wasn't too stressed about getting to the city too early, since the bus tours didn't start until 9am and wouldn't even make it to the stop we were going to start at until 9:30.

What actually happened:

We all "slept in" a bit, and after some breakfast, Curt and S felt slightly more enthusiastic about going today than they had last night. I was thrilled that we would still be adventuring as a family instead of splitting up, but I was honestly okay if it had worked out the other way. This vacation was all about everyone enjoying themselves!

The same train station right outside of DLP also connected to the RER line - a public transportation train that would take us right to the heart of Paris. The stop closest to one of the HOHO bus stops was Auber, right outside of the Opera Garnier, and would take us about an hour.

We walked through Disney Village and out to the train station. We found the ticket kiosks and got a book of 10 tickets, which seemed to be cheaper than 8 one-way tickets. We quickly figured out the system for getting through the gates, and found the train we wanted. These were double-decker trains, and we chose a bottom level seat for the ride out.

We arrived in Auber and easily found our way up the eleventy-thousand sets of stairs to the surface street. We took our bearings, so we'd remember how to get back, and then located the HOHO bus stop. The bus arrived just a few minutes later, and we found room on the top deck (hooray!) and got our earbuds (much more comfortable than we expected) plugged into the audio tour and off we went! 

Our tour around the city was informative and lovely. We were impressed by how BIG the Arc de Triumph is. And seeing Notre Dame, even in it's burned-out-in-repair state was still impressive and glorious.

At one point we passed a museum that almost had interest for us to go visit...and then we were informed (in my case reminded) that the first Sunday of every month is free entrance to all the city's museums. And then we realized it was the first Sunday of the month...and then we turned the corner and saw the line to get in...and we'd noped the heck outta that.

All those people are just waiting to get in

We hopped off the bus at the Eiffel Tower stop. We walked aimlessly, looking around and avoiding the pickpockets, gypsies, an other unsavory folks. We were trying mostly to find a bathroom and somewhere to eat, and eventually found both! I got to finally eat escargot in France! (To be clear, this is a treat my family used to have at least once a year, usually more often. It used to be on several restaurant's menus in Toronto, as an appetizer, and I would always order it when I could. I'm not unfamiliar with it, but it is really hard to find in Pennsylvania!) 

After a lovely lunch, we wandered back towards the bus stop, and of course rode the carousel (my main goal) and stopped to lie on the grass and enjoy the view (N's main goal). 

As a whole, we were utterly exhausted, and elected to skip the 1-hour boat tour...which would have just been a repeat of all the sights we'd already seen, just from the water instead of the road. There was no way anyone was comfortable staying out until after dark, now that we'd experienced what 11pm was like, and knew it wasn't even going to be full dark until closer to midnight (and then we'd have over an hour of travel back to the hotel).

So, when we agreed we'd had our fill of Paris - at least enough to say we'd been - we got back on the HOHO bus and returned to our starting point. We easily reversed the process to get back to the hotel, and ironically decided to have the most American of dinners - McDonald's at Disney Village.  I had kept hearing rumors that the European version of McDonald's was so much better than ours, and I can say that in my opinion those rumors are completely false. 😝

After dinner, it was still early enough to catch a few more rides at Disneyland - it's convenient when it's open til 11pm! We rode Phantom Manor (again), walked through the castle tour, and shopped for souvenirs. I finally found my themed pin!! (I have a pin with the year on it from every trip we've done since 2010). We had to go to the resort gift shop, not the parks, but finally found it. N got a hoody, S got a pin for her new favorite ride - Big Thunder Mountain, and Curt couldn't find a darn thing he liked.

To round out the evening, the girls retired to the room to watch TV, and Curt and I enjoyed a few cocktails in the hotel lounge...one of our favorite vacation activities. 

Overall, we agreed that of all the places we had seen on this trip, Paris did not live up to it's reputation of "the most beautiful city in the world". Maybe we saw the wrong places? We loved more cities in Scotland and England, and the countryside in Ireland. But we are all so glad we went, and that's the whole point!

All our gazillion pictures (Curt took several of everything, and I couldn't choose what to keep, so they're all here!): https://link.shutterfly.com/ayvxbN1Obsb

Disneyland Paris Day 2

 How do I write a post about a day at a theme park? We spent the whole day at a theme park! I am not sure how this compares to the past 2 weeks of seeing history and amazing architecture and culture and getting all that travel experience. The one thing I knew would happen, and I was right, was that we were so happy to be "in the Disney bubble" for the day. We had no concerns about anything, felt like we knew where we were and what was going on. It didn't even feel like we weren't in the USA most of the time...I constantly had to remind myself we were in France!

We had breakfast at the hotel - a bit later than we meant to, but nothing serious. We went straight from there to the Walt Disney Studios Park. We realized that rides open and closed in staggered hours - meaning that not everything opened at park opening time, and things closed before park closing time. So, what we ended up doing early and late in the day had a lot to do with what was open!

We started with Stitch Live! - all loved it, a very adorable interactive show, much like Turtle Talk with Crush. (Yes, I'm going to compare things to WDW, which I've been to 10 times so that's our "baseline"!)

We saw information that the new Marvel campus was going to possibly have a "soft opening" while we were there, so we checked that - but all the construction walls were still up, so we were disappointed there.

Curt always called N his "Boo", from Monster's Inc.

Next was Cars Road Trip,  which was a different theme of the old Backlot Tour at Disney's Hollywood Studios. 

We stayed in World of Pixar (Toy Story land), and rode the Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin, which is basically a Musical Express ride.

Then we waited in far too long a line to ride "Cars Quatre Roues Rallye", which is a short "Alien Saucer Swirl" style ride that does NOT warrant an hour wait. By the end of this, Curt and I were developing headaches, though we weren't sure why. (We were hydrating and eating...maybe it was just the increase in temps). 

We had lunch reservations in the other park, so we made our way over there and it took us less time than we thought. So we did our next "must see" attraction, and visited the dragon under the castle - by far the COOLEST thing to see there!!

Then it was time for our lunch reservations at Auberge de Cendrillon. We walked in and realized that the Princesses were back! (Somehow I had no idea that this had happened between when I booked it and when we got there). We all got pictures with Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora and Minnie Mouse.

Sadly, my headache turned into a migraine as we waited for our food to be served, and when the main course arrived, I was suffering pretty badly and the food was threatening to make me very ill and possibly embarrass myself. I tried cool water on my face in the bathroom, but that didn't work. Finally I had to give up and just get somewhere dark where I could lie down. I asked my wonderful husband to finish the meal without me, and he explained to the waiter what happened. They managed to get my meal and dessert all packaged up for me and brought it back to the hotel room. After they finished eating, N went back to the Studios park to ride some things on her own, while Curt and S came to check on me, bring me my food, and wait for me to recover.

Curt's fancy dessert!

N rode the rest of the rides in the Pixar land - the RC Racer and Ratatouille (which she said kept breaking down but was otherwise identical to the WDW version we'd rode in March and hadn't really enjoyed all that much). She then got to ride her favorite, Tower of Terror.  By the time she did all of that and was heading back to the hotel, I was recovered and ready to get back out again.

I really wanted a picture next to this, but was in so much pain I just snapped the shot I could get as I went by on my way back to the hotel.

We went back to the parks and kept it a bit low-key for a while, riding the Disney Railroad all the way around the park. 

We then again made our way back through Adventureland and rode Pirates a second time (we love it that much!) right before having dinner at Captain Jack's restaurant, which has the ride right through it! We decided to play around with the dining plan a bit here, and shared a variety of dishes so we all got a taste of something interesting. We really loved the ambiance in here, and would totally go back when we were perhaps more hungry...doing this meal less than 4 hours after our big lunch was not good planning, it turned out. 

The rest of the night was spent exploring things before they closed: we did Alice in Wonderland's labyrinth:

then rode the Casey Jr train and "Le Pays des Contes de Fees", a delightful boat ride with adorable models of famous Disney movies and fairytales. These all have no equivalent at WDW and were just delightful!

From there, we wandered back to Discoveryland (where Hyperspace Mountain is) to check out Star Tours, which was basically another identical ride to the one in Florida.

We may have done a couple more things, but we don't remember now and we decided that it wasn't worth it to stay for the fireworks a second time. We made it back to the hotel and actually watched the fireworks from our balcony.

The plan was to go to the city of Paris the next day, but Curt and S were very hesitant about leaving the Disney bubble and going to see even more of what we'd done for 2 weeks already. I admit, I was really leaning their way, but also strongly felt that we couldn't be this close and NOT go. N was definitely wanting to go see the Eiffel Tower. We went to bed agreeing to "see how we feel after a night of sleep".

All the pictures, so many pictures! https://link.shutterfly.com/JanCN1CA9rb

Phase 3 On Our Own in Paris

 July 1 - Canada Day! A new month, and for us, another adventure to a new country! "Phase 3" of our trip, and we were about to find out if my months of researching tips and refreshing my French skills would be worth it. No more following someone else's instructions on where to be and when!

We had booked our Eurostar tickets months ago. There was (is?) exactly 1 train from London to Disneyland Paris that day. I knew that the train company would not even let us begin lining up more than 90 minutes before departure, so there was no point in arriving much earlier than that. However, we also were hoping to get just a bit more "touristy" stuff done, and see the actual King's Cross Station of Harry Potter fame. So, I made the family get up and pack in time to meet our pre-booked taxi at 7:30am.

As we stood outside waiting, just a minute before 7:30, the app notified us that there were no drivers available to pick us up. 🙄 This was the second time this had happened, so my advice to people now is to not bother pre-booking a ride. It's useless. I "canceled" the request, went to the main page, and requested an immediate pickup. We had a reply within 1 minute, and the car arrived about 5 minutes later, and off we went.

Once again the naming of streets and destinations in London almost had us taken to the wrong place (King's Cross station is on Euston Road, but there is also a Euston station which is nowhere near Euston Road...because sure, that makes total sense...and the app's display of names apparently is backwards to what my brain intuitively thinks it should be. I actually have no idea what went wrong. I could've bet a million dollars I picked "King's Cross Station" as the destination. The driver's app said otherwise.).  Luckily we had a chatty driver who understood where we REALLY wanted to go, and got us there with no issues. We just had to pay him the difference in fare between what the app charged and what we really needed to pay. I waited for him to punch in the amount on his card reader and watched him hit the "no" response to the question of whether I wanted to tip. I was a bit sad by that because we had no cash and I really DID want to tip him! I hope he got a bunch of generous passengers the rest of the day to make up for it. 

We arrived with enough time to visit the photo op and store in King's Cross:

From here, we walked across the street to St. Pancras (which Curt and I will always and forever pronounce as "pancreas") Station, and figured out the lay of the land there. We got our first "Pret" breakfast, and ate while we waited to be allowed to line up. Our train departure time was a few minutes later than scheduled, but we didn't wait terribly long. The line to get through security and customs/immigration was long and stressfully slow  (I think this was the only time I was completely stressed on this trip, because there was no "Plan B" if we missed this train). We first had to show our Covid vaccination cards, and then go through security bag scanners like at the airport. On the other side of that, we had our passports stamped for exiting the UK, and then another line to get stamped to enter France. It seemed like it took forever but in the end we made it on the train with time to spare.

We had another meal on the train, as we traveled at just under 200 mph (300 kph). Every time we went underground or through a tunnel, our ears popped like taking off in a plane. It was pretty awesome, if rather uncomfortable at those times!

We got off the train at the Disneyland stop, and followed the crowds out to the street exit. There were shuttle buses, but not free - and our hotel was less than a mile walk. So we took our suitcases through the park security and found our way through Disney Village to our hotel, Newport Bay Club.

Walkway to our hotel in the distance.

Hotel lobby and gift shop

We got to the room, dropped the bags off, and changed into "park clothes" (it was a good 15 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than London here!).

View from our balcony

And we headed off to Disneyland!

Disneyland Paris, Day 1

We had no plans for tonight, other than to try to dine at Annette's Diner (which does not take advanced reservations) and try to stay up late enough to see the fireworks at the castle (scheduled at 11pm). 

We took our time approaching the park. The entrance is actually a hotel (that is currently closed for renovations) surrounded by winding pathways, lovely gardens, fountains and of course the iconic Mickey Mouse garden. 

As soon as we entered, we took our special castle selfie of the day.

And then right around the corner, we caught a parade! 

We stood and watched that, and then proceeded directly to the family's #1 priority ride: Hyperspace Mountain!  This was their version of Space Mountain, but had a Star Wars overlay temporarily. It was a great ride, we all loved it, and it was the first coaster Curt's been on in at least 4 years. He survived! 

We got off this and decided to do Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast which was almost identical to SpaceRanger Spin in WDW. 

After this we were hungry and made our way out of the park, along with what felt like every other person in the place. I was very concerned that we were going to be fighting crowds for a table, but it turns out that most of them were leaving the park entirely. We made it to Annette's Diner, and had a lovely meal.

We went right back to the park after dinner, and explored Frontierland, through to Adventureland, making our way over to Pirates of the Caribbean. 

Pirates was amazing, and so much better than the one at WDW! We all loved it! We also explored the caves, the fort, made our way over to Fantasyland (mostly for the bathrooms) and then decided to live some nostalgia and ride Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - the Florida version of this closed 10 years ago and S has no memories of it. After this, we did a family ride on the carousel, because yes - me and carousels!!

Then the girls rode the Tea Cups.

Then we made our way to Big Thunder Mountain as our last ride of the night. (S fell in love and declares this now her favorite ride.) We made it from there up to the front of the castle to get a spot to watch the fireworks and drone show. 

Yes, this is 11 o'clock at night!

After the fireworks the parks were closed, so with nothing else to do, we headed back to the room to end our long, and totally amazing day.

More pictures: https://link.shutterfly.com/zkxv2ayA9rb