Monday 4 January

We were sad to leave London this morning 😢 we have had a lovely time here, and could spend so much more time exploring! (And Alex, Abi said to tell Lauren she is definitely interested in coming back here after uni!). This is my morning view of Green Park I have to leave behind…

  
We grabbed two taxis at 9.30am to take us to St Pancras International station. In our efforts to find where to go and when, we found we had made it through security and two border controls for the UK and France in about 15 minutes! Which was fine, but we had intended to return our Oyster cards for a deposit refund (£5 pounds each for five of us), but we had missed our opportunity. The older three are happy because they wanted to keep their cards as a souvenir, but I am planning to ask the next person I know going to London to cash them in for us! 😉 (that’s $50 AUD right there!)

   
 We boarded the Eurostar for Lille, France. I had heard great things about travelling on this train, but we spent the first half an hour trying to “pop” our ears. The trip was smooth after that and over in two hours – we were actually in a different country in two hours! Most of the time was spent travelling at 288km/h. We then had to change trains to go to Marne la Valle Chessy (Disneyland!) which was the only stressful part of the journey. There are only four platforms at Lille, but they don’t announce which platform trains will be departing from until five minutes before! 😬 And our coach, number 8, was at the front of the train, so we had to break into a run to get onto the platform and down that end to board the coach in time! 

  
Belle, who is hard to get moving most days because she is tired and trying to keep up with the pace of this trip, suddenly had a new lease on life and was packed and dressed ready to get off the train half an hour before we reached our final destination. Everyone else was playing Abi’s new Trivial Pursuit (Harry Potter version) game or reading, but Belle was count down the minutes to arrival.

  
Arriving at Disneyland Hotel was as magical as one would expect. Everyone was very excited to be here. We explored the hotel briefly but soon dumped everything in our room to grab the last couple of hours of the day at the park. We picked Walt Disney Studios because the lady at reception told us three of the most popular rides requiring fast passes are there. She wasn’t wrong – even using our complimentary hotel fast pass, the line for Crush Coasters was 55 minutes long and the Ratatouille ride about the same! So we explored the park (it didn’t take long to check out the whole park) and went on a couple of rides with less in lines – Aladdin’s flying carpets, an Armaggedon special effects show, and Cars ride (not like California – spinning cars like teacups). 

   
   
The park closes at 6pm (Disneyland next door closes at 7pm), so we left at closing time and explored Disney Village, and chose a less expensive (of many expensive!) restaurants for dinner – Planet Hollywood. The hotel indoor pool and spa doesn’t close until 10pm, so we went back for a late night swim. I had taken up the option of a day trip to Paris thinking there would not be enough to do here for three days, but everyone has voted me down and wants to either enjoy the park or rest at the hotel. Rest?? Again?!?! We already had a rest day on 22 December!!!!!!