I had no particular plans for how I wanted to spend Christmas in Europe, so when Sammy said she was absolutely determined to visit Paris and Euro Disney I joined the group. Wherever we were I would be with my friends.
Sooooo Cold! – Paris is always a bit colder than Orléans and this winter was unusually cold. And this is a wet cold…not fun. I remember always wearing two pairs of socks and still having freezing toes. I did find an awesome pair of flipper gloves!
Goldilocks- So we were in a hostel, but had booked up a room so that it would be “private.” Still we had to leave the key at the desk (a pretty standard practice in Europe). The hotel staff made a big deal about keeping your receipts so that you they could check when you return to the hotel. Well our first day we checked and then returned at 10 pm to be told that the key was already taken. Impossible, since everyone booked in the room for the night was there in the lobby. The person at the desk seemed unbothered and sent us to go find out. Basically we found a goldilocks sleeping in our hotel room. She had been in the room the night before and the clerk hadn’t really checked her receipt. I won’t go into all the other details, but we felt like the hostel staff handled the situation very badly and very rudely. Considering that and the “refugee” breakfast and I don’t think anyone from our group will be recommending this hostel.
Disney Land- At first I wasn’t too sure about Disneyland for Christmas. I am more into traditions (maybe travelling to Alsace for Christmas) but being with my friends in “the magic kingdom” was such an awesome memory. We rode “It’s a Small World” at least 3 times (they played a Christmas Medley and the characters were dressed up). It was hard to cram everything in. We missed out on Adventure and Frontier land. As we were quickly walking to the Indiana Jones ride we ran into “Captain Jack Sparrow”. Someone (Caitlin, I think) said “hi” to him as we walked passed. He said “hi” back. We kept walking then all stopped and looked at each other, then turned around and chased him down to get a picture. Awesomeness! As we were leaving it began to rain, but it was (I know this sounds cheesy) a magic rain. Looking at the streetlamps you could see a lot of rain was coming down, but the droplets were so small that you couldn’t feel the rain getting you wet. Then it got even more magical as it turned to snow (see the castle picture). So amazing!
Transportation- I think there was some sort of transportation curse attached to our trip. Our train trip from Orléans to Paris was delayed due to snow. The day we went to Disneyland there was a Metro RER strike and we had to leave early to catch a bus to take us closer to the city. This bus was jammed. It was the second to last one and everyone rushed the bus and crammed on. I would’ve taken a picture but I couldn’t have moved my arms enough. While waiting for the bus we had sung Christmas songs to try and forget the cold and we joked about singing on the bus and getting everyone sing together and have holiday cheer. Didn’t happen, but it would’ve been unbelievably cool.
The biggest transportation drama came on our last day. We got to the train station in the evening tired and soooo ready to be in our own beds and be warm again. We already had our tickets and were startled by how dead everything seems until we realized that NO trains are going. An accident closed the station. We frantically talked to a train agent because it was later in the evening and the last thing we wanted to do was to spend another night in Paris when the comforts of home were only an hour away. Then we frantically ran to the train station across the river and try to figure out what we were supposed to do. There were some moments of confusion and stress because there was the main train line and the RER and we weren’t sure which to take and then we got locked out of the RER station until an awesome nice man let us in with his fastpass badge. Basically, they had passengers like us take the RER out to a city where a special train was running to Orléans. The conductor at the station was hilarious. His friendly banter with the passengers helped us relax after a very stressful experience. We did make it home to sleep safely in our warm, comfy beds.
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