Disneyland Paris

One of the reasons we elected to stay outside of the city instead of finding quarters more accessible to the museums and historical sites (and, let's face it, plain old tourist traps) was to have easy access to Disneyland Paris. Well, the main reason was so that we could stay at the awesome Marriott but Disney was definitely a consideration. Just think, I'd been to Florida dozens of times and never made it to Disney! I lived in California for three years and never visited the Happiest Place on Earth! For shame, Elaine, for shame. After we got married, Tony and I took a brief couple of days in Orlando before coming to Italy. We discussed Universal vs. Disney and I ultimately picked Universal Studios. Because Harry Potter, duh. 

Anyway, I had pretty high expectations of Euro Disney, but I was a little disappointed. It was somehow a little smaller than I expected, but that didn't stop us from having fun. There are two parks (Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park), and we lucked out with a sweet military discount that allowed us to get a two-day pass to both parks for basically what we'd otherwise pay for a one-day, one-park pass. (FYI, each military member can access this deal and sponsor on up to four other persons. We used Tony's ID in case I go back, or we want to take advantage of the military discount stateside before the end of this calendar year. A distinct possibility over the Christmas holidays.) We drove to the park on a Monday, and I was wide-eyed and bushy-tailed on our way in. We got a great parking spot (and promptly forgot where we parked), and I think I snapped about a hundred pictures of all the various "Welcome to Disneyland" signs. I admit I was surprised how crowded it was, though in retrospect I suppose I shouldn't have been. School was out for the summer, and I imagine many people taking a three-day weekend might just as easily elect to take a Monday off as a Friday. The crowds were not the worst I've seen though, and lines were bearable. We did choose to enter the single-rider line on more than one occasion though, which didn't bother us in the slightest. Five-minute wait instead of 45? And all I have to do is NOT sit next to my spouse for the two-minute ride? Okay, it's a deal. 

One complaint about both parks is that the layouts were a bit confusing and the signage was pretty darn minimal. It was hard to find the bathrooms, and there weren't a whole lot of food options. Many of the vendor carts were closed for the day. I was excited about the Ratatouille ride, but it was closed for maintenance when we went. We did eat at the Ratatouille restaurant though - Bistrot Chez Remy - and it was one area where Disney's legendary attention-to-detail paid off. We walked in and crossed a line an suddenly everything was rat-scaled. The tiny floor tiles grew enormous, we sat on chairs shaped like champagne bottle toppers, the tables had those paper tropical drink umbrellas over them (papier mache and human-sized, of course), and the ceiling was covered in enormous vines. Our tables were matchbook covers and the space dividers were giant plates, and we each got ratatouille and it was delicious. Tony had never seen the movie and it had been a while for me, so we later went and watched it. The restaurant was just like the restaurant in the movie!!! And if you're curious, Tony enjoyed the movie, too. 

Inside the Bistrot Chez Remy at Disneyland Paris, photo from their website

We did hit both parks in one day, and pretty much decided that was sufficient time to see everything and do what we wanted to do. However, we found ourselves at loose ends later in the week and went back to have dinner at Planet Hollywood and enter the park a couple hours before closing time. The service was abysmal and the food was mediocre, and that's all I'll say about Planet Hollywood. But I'm so happy we went back! We rode the Hollywood Hotel Tower of Terror (or whatever it's called) ride again, and my hair stood straight up again, and it was fun again. We also got to ride the Finding Nemo ride and the Ratatouille ride, both of which we'd missed the first time, so it was worth it to go back just for those. The Nemo ride was cute, but I think of everything we did at Disney, the Ratatouille ride was my overall favorite. It's a 3D ride and not a roller coaster, and is based on the scene from the movie where Remy first enters the restaurant kitchen and has to dart between the wheels of rolling carts, narrowly escape flaming gas jets and clumsy feet, etc. This ride was so realistic I actually felt like a rat running through a kitchen. And bonus: when we got out of the ride, there was a magic window into the back side of the real Disney restaurant! Just such a lovely touch. 

One park closed at 9pm, and in fact when we got off the last ride (Hotel Tower of Hollywood Torture, or whatever it's called) all the staff members were lined up ushering us straight out. Since the closing festivities were advertised as "shortly after park closing," we decided to stay for that, since I'd never done it before and my husband assures me one cannot have the full and complete Disney experience without partaking in them. On the one hand, I'm glad we stayed, because it was fantastic. On the other hand, "shortly after park closing" is Disney code for "two hours later." Ugh. It kept us out much later than we planned, but I think overall it was worth it. We parked out along the edge of a street and staked out a claim on a fence rail, so we could lean and sit, which was a stroke of accidental genius considering how long we waited and leaned and sat. FINALLY, the show started, and it was a sweet mix of French and English. Peter Pan lost his shadow and chased him through all sorts of Disney movie scenes magically projected onto Sleeping Beauty's castle, and the water show was 10x better than Bellagio's in Vegas! A little cheesy, but it put a big grin on my face and I was happy to experience the magic of Disney with my husband. Next up, Epcot! No, seriously, I really want to go when I'm in Florida this December. Who's with me?

Road Trip to France

In just a few short weeks, we will hit the halfway point of Tony's tour in Italy. Deny, deny, deny. It's hard to believe time is flying by so quickly, and we will be on the downhill stretch come October. I keep saying that the list of places to visit and things to do keeps getting longer and longer, and the time in which to do those things just gets shorter and shorter. Not only do I not want to leave Italy, but I don't even want to THINK about leaving Italy. However, I want to maximize our time here and so that means I do a fair amount of both dreaming and planning. Earlier this spring, around our one-year mark and just before a long-ish deployment, I asked Tony to think really hard about what his top trips would be. He definitely does not get to experience Italy the way I do, and while he graciously says, "At least one of us gets to enjoy it," I wanted to make sure we are able to check some things off of his list. His requests? Rome, Paris, and a tour of Ireland. 

Originally I thought we'd be able to visit Rome together when my mom comes to visit, but he will still be gone during that time frame. Oh well, it just means my fun adventure with my mom will also be a scouting trip for Tony! I'm not sure when we'll be able to visit Ireland, but we were able to head to France together earlier this summer. It was a timing fluke, since we weren't supposed to see each other again until the fall, but it actually worked out perfectly for us to spend some quality time together after I got back from my six-week trip to the States. Well, things didn't work out exactly according to plan since I have abysmal travel luck, but it was still a good opportunity for us to vacate the premises and have a nice little vacay. I was supposed to arrive at 0900 on Thursday morning, take the car to get fixed at 1000 morning (since I was hand-carrying the correct parts with me from Florida), and depart for France around 0700 morning. I got delayed in New Jersey for a little over 24 hours, so I didn't arrive in Venice until morning and didn't get back to Vicenza until after lunch. I picked up the rental car around 1500 and headed home to a) eat b) nap and c) unpack/pack. 

We hit the road in our trusty little rental car around 0730 morning for what we expected to be a ten-hour drive. Ha! HA HA HA HA! Our trusty little rental car ended up being not so trusty, pulling the exact same damn trick that our Honda has been pulling for the last 8 months: it randomly shut off while driving. Tony had the first leg of driving, and I didn't even notice anything was wrong until he started pulling over onto the shoulder. Of the highway. Where we'd been traveling at about 130 kilometers per hour. It was a really strange sense of deja vu, truth be told. We sat on the shoulder for a minute in stunned disbelief, and I started shuffling for the rental agreement to get some phone numbers from it while Tony attempted to re-start the car. It worked, so we cautiously decided to keep going. About five minutes later, the car did the same thing, so we had confirmation that something was egregiously wrong. I called the rental office and said we had a problem, and he directed us to roadside assistance and assured us they would be able to speak English. Meanwhile, Tony turned to Ye Olde Google and determined there was another rental office about 6km away, so we decided to see if the car would get us that far and hopefully save some time swapping out cars instead of waiting for a tow truck. We were somewhere to the west of Verona, and we could see Lake Garda, but I have no idea what small town we wound up in. Fortunately, the agency was open and there were no other customers, so we were immediately able to explain the problem and start working on a solution. The very kind lady said she only had one car available - a Smart Car - but if we wanted to go back to Verona they'd probably be able to give us something a little larger. We elected to take the Smart Car, and I am immensely grateful that we didn't pack our golf clubs or an ice chest, because our stuff barely fit as it was! We had to Tetris it in the car and even the difference in seat settings to account for Tony's height versus mine had a huge impact on available storage space. We had two boxes of audio cds from the library that we ended up cramming under one of the seats because there was nowhere else to put them. And of course the new car didn't have a cd player, so there went that plan out the window! Oh well, c'est la vie. All in all, we only lost a little more than an hour. Onward!

When we left Italy, we were in the midst of a heat wave that seemed to last all summer. It didn't dip much below 97 degrees until mid-August. We really didn't get much of a break on our road trip until we reached the mountains, but it was noticeable and we were appreciative. We had to wait in line to go through a tunnel (with a ridiculous 40 Euro toll!) at the border, and we shut the engine off and continued listening to an audiobook via Bluetooth. God bless modern technology, y'all. We rolled the windows down and did a bit of people-watching while we waited. There were gondolas running up and down the mountain, we had a nice view of a waterfall, and we saw many people shredding downhill on mountain bikes. Turns out that area is part of a big national (or international) park. It was actually quite pleasant, and we only had to wait about 40 minutes or so. I guess they close the tunnel for an hour or so for traffic in each direction around mid-day for construction, and we hit it right in the middle of the closure. Already, we lost more than two hours on our road trip, but fortunately we didn't have any first-day plans in France. We didn't know before we entered how long it is, but it turns out the Mont Blanc Tunnel is over 11km long! There are signs and lights everywhere warning everyone to keep proper spacing  and not to drive too fast. No big deal in the summer time, but I'm sure in the winter icing can be a problem.

Our sweet little vacation cottage

Once we crossed the mountains, the weather was just about perfect for the entirety of our trip. It was easily twenty degrees cooler in France than Italy. Just think of all the money we saved on our summer utility bill! :P We elected to use some Marriott points, and stayed outside of Paris near Disney. I think it was about 25 miles to Paris and only a five-minute drive to Disney, and we were very happy with the location. I kind of wish we had at least one night in the city to save on the commute time, but the public transit was so easy it didn't end up being a really big deal. The Marriott was mostly a timeshare type village, which was pretty awesome. We basically had a whole cottage all to ourselves, and it overlooked a sweet little garden with lots of lavender and roses and other flowers. Many of them were blooming, but I bet it was even more amazing in the spring. In the distance we could see a little pond and a golf course, and we had easy access to the main building with its bistro, market, pool, and ping pong tables. There was a gym, but we didn't use it once the whole vacation. (We did use the pool, hot tubs, and sauna though.) We were so late getting in that we just opted to eat in the on-site bistro for dinner. After a fourteen-hour road trip we were ready to eat and crash. 

View from our balcony

Our first full day we took it easy and explored the hotel and enjoyed the pool. We also went to the market to pick up some food. This time we actually remembered to pack some spices, olive oil, and other basics for cooking, but were pleasantly surprised by the well-stocked welcome kit in our townhouse. We were able to pick up vegetables and breakfast supplies at the market for decent prices, though after the first day we bought those kinds of things at the grocery store in town. We bought several bottles of wine on site, too, and the markups were pretty reasonable. Even though we had some good wines on our trip, I have to say I prefer Italian wines over French ones. I am biased, of course.

That's all for today. Next up: my first-ever Disney theme park experience!

Alpine Adventure

Last weekend I did TWO things I never in a million years thought I would do: ride a luge and "hike" across Tibetan suspension bridges. In the Alps. Wait, whaaat? For those of you who follow along with me on Facebook, you probably already saw the eleventy-million pictures I posted, so this may not be a surprise to you. I didn't talk about it ahead of time because I was afraid something would happen at the last minute to prevent us from going (sickness, weather, Army change of plans, etc) or that we'd get there and it would be completely lame and I'd be ashamed to brag about it.

But no, it happened, and I am going to brag away. We are completely badass.

We went with some friends, Fay and Shane, who were kind enough to drive. We stayed at the Anova Hotel & Spa in Montgenevre, France, which is juuuust over the border from Italy. Less than a mile, I'm pretty sure. We stopped on the way for a very classy parking lot picnic, wherein we ate a lot of fruit and cheese and crackers, and I particularly enjoyed looking at all the vineyards and castles we passed, and traveling through some Alpine tunnels. The drive wasn't bad, though it was about 4-5 hours and cost 40 Euro in tolls. Anyway, Anova was a very nice hotel, especially for the price we paid. However, we are quickly learning that hotels here tag on all sorts of extra fees for things that would normally be included in the cost of a hotel stay in the States. So, sadly, we did not take advantage of the Spa, but I'm not too broken up about that. Each room had a deck balcony with a fantastic view, and we spent a lot of time hanging out with Fay and Shane on their deck. Tony smoked his first pipe, and I got to lean back and just enjoy the view. OF THE MOUNTAINS, YOU DIRTY-MINDED PEOPLE. We left our home around 10:30 in the morning, so arrived in the afternoon. Once we got settled in the hotel, we walked around Montgenevre, which is quite a small town. It reminded me a lot of Vail, Colorado, mostly because it is a very distinctly ski town. I bet that place is booming in the winter! I read somewhere that it has 100km of ski trails, and through the lift network you can access even more trails than that in other nearby towns. We ate dinner outdoors in the little square after listening to a jazz group play live music.

Tony noticed a tiny picture on the back of one of the hotel pamphlets included in our welcome packet, and we started asking around. It turns out you can take a gondola ride up the mountain and ride a luge back down. I don't know much about winter sports or terminology, but this was not what I think of when I think of a luge. Anyway, we talked about it as a group and agreed that if it was 25 Euro or less, we would do it. Sunday morning we had breakfast at the hotel and checked out, and Tony hit up the Tourist Information Center to find out about this mysterious luge. Turns out it was only 8.30 Euro! So we parked the car and walked to the ticket office. We stood in line behind two families buying their tickets and it took FOREVER. (Say that in your head like they say it in The Sandlot.) I don't know why it was so complicated for them, because it took us less than a minute for the entire transaction. Maybe because they had to measure their children, I don't know. Kids 1.2 meters and taller could ride alone, and kids smaller than that had to ride in a kid safety seat in their parent's lap. I figured if babies could do it, I could do it. With my purse. HA! I put my purse between my legs and wrapped the handles around one of my arms, and I am very glad I did, otherwise it would have gone flying down the mountain on a steep turn. The luge was about 1400 meters long and supposedly descended over 300m vertically, and you could control your speed somewhat with a lever in front of you. I only slowed down once, I am pleased to say. :) Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and a nice little discovery! Here's Tony after flying through the last tunnel toward the finish line:

And here is photographic evidence that I, too, took the Monty Express:

After that, we hopped in the car and Shane drove us the 2km down the road to the Tibetan bridges. They had their dog with them, a sweet Poodle-Maltese mix named Lolly, and there was some debate about what to do with her while we completed the experience. In the end, the bridge folks agreed that she could go if she stayed in Fay's backpack, and Fay was a trooper! Lolly is now the first dog to traverse those bridges, which happen to be the longest Tibetan suspension bridges in the world!

We got all togged out in our gear, which was basically a harness with two carabiners, and got a quick 5-minute lesson on how to use the carabiners and move them along the cables properly. After that, we set off on a short hike, about ten minutes, to the start. We got an amazing overview of some of the bridges, passed by a little chapel, and descended basically a mountain goat trail. Very scenic, and Lolly completed that portion of the hike all by herself before going into the backpack. Turns out you can also hike UNDER the bridges, along a stream, which we noticed when we saw a lady down there taking pictures...of  her idiot husband and children, who started at the end and went backwards along the route with inadequate safety gear, and then lied to the guide about "not seeing signs" when they started. All to avoid the entry fee. I say again, IDIOTS. So we had to wait forever for those ding dongs to cross to our end before starting, which was annoying but actually turned out to be a blessing as we had huge stretches of bridge all to ourselves. (We later found out one of the guides at the starting location escorted the family to the entry and made them pay. Good!) I went first, and after the first step or two, I felt very confident. Tony started next, and the bridge got a little more wobbly once we were both on it, but it wasn't too bad. The rungs were like ladder rungs, so plenty sufficient for a foot to stand on it. We crossed the stream and then made a 90-degree turn onto more bridges which paralleled it to a waterfall. I lost track of how many bridges there were, but I did take time to stop and enjoy the view and take pictures. I'll admit, the first time I took both hands off the railing was a bit nerve-wracking, but I survived. I tried not to do that too often ("one hand for myself, one for the ship" played in my head over and over, along with "maintain three points of contact." Thanks, USCGC EAGLE!) but I was able to get some really fun photos along the way. I was able to handle most of the transitions with ease, but the transition from the first bridge to the second was a little odd. We had to climb via ferrata spikes and cross a short 15-foot bridge, which somehow tripped my brain a little bit. After that though, I was golden.

I hung out at the waterfall and waited for the rest of the group to catch up. At that point, I gave Tony my camera and went back out halfway across one of the bridges so he could get a few pictures of me as well. We completed the last section, which included a hike and the tallest bridge, as a group. This time I brought up the rear, and was able to get my favorite foot picture ever! I always think of my Connecticut sponsor family when I take foot pictures to prove that I was in a certain place. (Hi, Herods!) The entry fee to the bridges is 10 Euro, and it's 5 Euro extra to rent the gear. I thought they could EASILY charge three times that and people would still have a fantastic experience worth that price, and I would happily go back if any future visitors are interested in going. Unfortunately, because of the weather (you know, it's in the ALPS and all) the bridges are only open from May to September, so we hit it up at the perfect time of year. It was an adventure well worth the trek.

I don't know why this loaded 90 degrees off. And I can't figure out how to fix it. So, feel free to use your imagination!