All work and no play makes Claire a dull girl, so last week was time for some fun. Everytime I get back from a holiday I get major travel cravings, (thankfully as does my friend Kathryn) so as soon as we got back from Slovenia in September K came up with the idea of visiting Paris and Disneyland. I was never going to say no 🙂 We planned a five day four night trip and found a really cheap deal to stay onsite in the Santa Fe hotel. Its one of the more basic Disney hotels, but it honestly doesn’t bother me, we were only in the hotel to sleep anyway! Its about a 15 minute walk from the park, but its alongside a river with massive fish in so we didn’t ever mind the walk-much better than standing in the queue for the shuttle bus!
The one thing we didn’t consider when planning our trip was the dates….. and we had booked to travel when Brexit had planned to happen. Opps. So for a week I had been following the news trying to figure out how and if it would affect our plans. K and my decided the best motto for the holiday would be ‘smile and go with it, we’ll laugh about it later’ which worked out great.
The first day K and I got the lunchtime Eurostar over to Gare du Nord (had the stomach dropping call of ‘is there a nurse on board’, as both of us are Nurses, but I’m always nervous as it may be something that’s way out of my capacity to deal with. Thankfully minor, we carried on to Paris and went sightseeing around Paris, visiting the Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, walked along the Seine, and visited a supermarket, as were weird that we like visiting supermarkets abroad and trying their different snacks. After a late dinner we headed out to Disney to embrace the Disney bubble for the rest of our trip.
I looooooove Disney, it brings out the kid in me, messing around with characters for photos and going on rides. Day one we visited Magic Kingdom and did as many rides as possible as it was fairly quiet, most queues weren’t above 30 minutes and any that were longer we fast passed. K had said that she got nervous before riding big rides and usually spent most of the queue time talking herself out of it, so I didn’t tell her what most of the rides would be like until we were there. Most rides in Disney are story rides with a couple that are faster and go upside down etc, so after a warm up of the Snow White ride, Its a small world and Pinocchio (which we realised we didn’t really know the story of and the ride doesn’t make it that clear so we made up our own storyline; try it its fun!) I took her to Indiana Jones. A lot of fast turns and loop the loop later K response was…. ‘my least favorite bit is going up!’
On a whim we decided to queue to see Jafar, as hes one of the characters I haven’t met yet. If you get the chance to meet any of the villains, go for it, they stick to character perfectly and its so funny to see how they respond. Jafar was lovely to me and gave me a kiss on the hand which ignited a competition between K and I to see who could get the most characters to kiss us, hehe.
We were very organised trying to figure out how best to avoid crowds going in and out of the park, so decided the best place for us to watch the parade was at the end of main street, and as soon as its done head out to find food and head back into the park ready for fireworks. It worked perfectly and we managed to avoid getting squished, lost or separated.
After food at the Hollywood themed restaurant (forgotten the name, we had fried lasagna, weird but good), then started our shopping marathon in Disney Village. Early on in the shopping spree I noticed the cutest beauty and the beast themed wine glasses and so decided to save as much of my shopping budget to blow on two of those instead of lots of little things. I’m becoming a bit of a minimalist and didn’t want to buy lots random things I didn’t need, but also decided I wanted something practical and pretty for new house (which wasn’t a mug… trust me I have a few hundred of those), so went shopping with that in mind.
After shopping time we headed back to the park with half an hour to spare ready for illuminations. We found a decent enough place to stand (fine for me I’m slightly taller, slightly more tricky for K who’s 5 foot 1) but that’s not going to stop us singing along. Neither did the fact that some of the songs are in French!
Perfect day ended by a hot chocolate and celebration that neither of our shoes had given us blisters, snuggle and sleep ready for round two.
xxx
Adventure30 
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