The Shaved Soapbox

Our first day in the UK was spent doing as little as possible.  We took a walk to the shops to get some required supplies, after getting things confiscated on OR Tambo because of the ridiculous fluid limits on personal luggage, you are allowed to take as much fluid as you want, as long as there's no more that 100ml in a container.  What is that going to help?  They actually force you to put all the bottles in a clear re-sealable plastic bag, providing you with a nice big container, should your plans be to mix all those fluids for whatever sinister reasons you have.  IDIOTS!

We did go for dinner at one of the local pubs, where the food was not so good, but the beer was.  Then at 9, one of  the waiters walk up and say we have to leave now.  WHAT? We had just ordered a new round, and barely taken a sip.  And we behaved!

So the bartender says that they are only licensed to have kids in the establishment until 9, and he'd gladly refund our money because he forgot to tell us earlier.  Cheapest round I've ever bought, downed the pint, took my money and left.

We're now visiting some friends, and I got my first drive on a Nintendo Wii yesterday.  Now this is definitely a console I will buy, and a great pity we do not get them in SA.  For those of you who don't know what a Wii is, look at http://www.nintendo.com/channel/wii.

Brilliant concept, and even one you can let the kids play all day, since you get some serious exercise while playing.  The controls have motion sensors in them, so with the sport games we played, you actually swing the control alike a raquet/club/bat/bowling ball to play.  Great fun, I'll be looking for one before we come home.

Today was spent going from Paris to London.  We took off early from the hotel and caught the train into Paris, from there changing onto the Eurostar.

A 3 hour train ride later we were in London.  I kind of expected that travelling at 250+ km/h would be more impressive.  It was fast, but didn't feel that way with the smoothness of the train.  I'll definitely have to do the same speed in a car to get the full effect.  I also expected us to be in the chunnel for about an hour, but we were out in about 30 minutes flat, the only signal that we were now in the UK was the english road signs.

Once in London, we had to do some more train riding to get to Leigh-Ann's sister's place, where we could catch up with her parents before they went back to SA.

And once again, at 9:30 at night, the sun is still shining, and my body clock is now seriously screwed up, not sure when to sleep and when to be awake.

 Later…

Today we spent the day at Euro Disney.

To be honest, had I known what I know now, I would rather have gone to Paris again.  Not because I didn't like Disney, purely because it was too busy.

Everything, from getting into the place to taking a piss required standing in a que!  Some of the rides had estimated waiting times of 90 minutes or more.  Needless to say, I gave all the big-name rides a skip.  I cannot handle standing in so many queues.

Next time, I'll make sure we come out of season, and spend at least 3 days in the park.  The place is too big to try and see everything in one day.

Out of the things we did do, the Studio Tour was brilliant, with a set that simulated earthquakes, had some fire, and doused the lot with 265,000 litres of water in about 2.5 seconds.  An impressive sight indeed.

The pirates of the carribean boat trip was quite good.  And we attempted a trip through the haunted house, but that is clearly not for young kids, with Josh crying most of the way through.

 My legs are pretty sore from the previous two days standing and walking, and with today's added, it's getting worse.

And at 21:15, we wtill have as much daylight as at 5 in the afternoon in SA.

Anyway, tomorrow we take the Eurostar to London, I'll keep you updated.

 Lessons learnt:

Try to travel out of season, and find out what's in and out of season in your destination.  It seems to be school holidays here, with most of the people in Disney speaking some European language.

Book all the tickets you can upfront, it will make lafe a bit easier, and less shock on the wallet.

Arrival 

We arrived in Paris just before 7 on Saturday morning.  The sky was overcast, but luckily not raining.  It felt like we landed in Joburg and then taxied to the Charles de Gaule terminal.  Once in the terminal building, things looked a bit confusing.  It is a ompletely round building with a lot of tubes interconnecting floors in the middle of the circle.  Luckily it is all well signed, in English, French and German.  Until you get the the exit of "Terminal 1", which is a train station, but only signed in French.  It took us a minute or two to figure out that this train was only the transport between terminals.

Once at the right terminal, we quickly found the train out to Paris, where we had to change over to another line.  The guy who sold me the tickets only circled the where we are, and the final destination station on the map, which is also all French.  But luckily we could figure out fairly quickly how the underground system works, and where to change lines.

We arrived at the hotel at 10, only to be told that our room would only be ready at 3 in the afternoon.  So our only option was to leave our baggage at the hotel, and start the sight seeing.  All three of us a bit grumpy after the little sleep in the plain.  At 2 in the morning I was wide awake, my body refusing to sleep in thise cramped conditions.

We had lunch at Planet Hollywood in the Disney village, and then took the train back to Paris.

Following all the signs in French again, I decided to rather go up to street level and walk around a bit instead of changing trains onto the Metro system.

As we came out of the Chatele station, the first landmark we saw was the L'église Saint-Eustache church.  What an impressive building, I'll upload some photos when I get home.  From there we took another train to the Champs-Élysées, yes I can now pronounce it properly, and walked down the famous cobbled street to the Arc de Triomphe.  This is clearly the hangout of the rich on weekends, with all the top shops having a presence and we saw lots of Porches and Ferraris driving along the road.

At this point we were all too tired to continue walking and we hopped back on the train to return to the hotel, with all three of us falling asleep on the train.  Luckily you get jolted awake by the door alarms every time before the train pulls off again, so we didn't miss any stations.

We checked into the hotel, and wanted to take a nap before dinner, but the nap turned into a thirteen hour sleep fest.  I woke up once at 23:00, it was still light outside, and again at 4:20, can't help that my body is conditioned to the time.  And again at 7:30.

Day 2

When seeing how busy the hotels and Disneyland is on weekends, we decided to go into Paris again, and do Disneyland on Monday.  So after a quick breakfast it was us and the train again.

First stop was Notre Dame, an even bigger cathedral with very impressive architecture.  The Mass service was on when we arrived, but that did not stop us or any of the hordes of tourists to walk around in the cathedral.  You only got moved out of the way when the clergy took their walk out of the service.  With the long lines we did not go for the tour of the towers, opting to go wait in line at the Eiffell tower instead. 

The tower is a lot bigger that I initially thought.  There were long lines from each of the ticket stations at the four pillars, so we chose what looked like the shortest, and started the long wait, taking turns to go to the loo and going to buy food, had a standing lunch in the line, and a mere hour and a half later were in the lift on our way to the top.

With an impressive view from the top of the tower, we spent quite a bit of time there looking for all the famous landmarks.   We wanted to stop for a drink on the way down, but could not get ourselves to stand in another line for this.

From the Eiffel tower we went to the Louvre, no I had no intention of walking around there with a five year old, but I did want to see the buildings from the outside.

Once again, we were tired of walking and decided to go back to the Disney Village for dinner.

Lessons learnt so far:

The food in Europe is expensive and not that nice, so far.

If you greet the French in french, you can switch to English & sign language from there to get what you need, and they'll be very friendly about it.

Never buy direct tickets to a place, with a day pass you can get anywhere, and it it cheaper.

Don't convert back into rand, it breaks your heart, and your wallet.

 

So now I'm sitting here, battling with a French layout keyboard, and not having seen any dark since I left the plane, and today we attempt Disney, while most of you work…I still come out tops 🙂