Another long day driving, but we made it to Paris 🙂 To break up the journey we stopped off at a Chemonceaux chateau in the Loire Valley for a look around. S was quite taken with the story of the 5 ‘strong women’ of the castle, particularly Catherine Medici. She spent a good part of the rest of the trip to Paris telling us the story…
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The floral arrangements throughout Chemonceaux are so beautiful
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S checking out Catherine Medici’s bedroom
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The next day we hit EuroDisney, what a day! I can’t really describe how much the kids loved it, just pure joy at seeing some of their favourite characters come to life. They met Minnie Mouse and we spent most of the time in Fantasyland exploring, ‘it’s a small world’ was the favourite (we went twice).
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At the Alice in Wonderland experience
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The early evening parade was pretty special.
We stayed to watch the fireworks at the close of the park, and ended up spending over 12 hours there, leaving at midnight!
The fireworks finale
The next day we briefly popped into Walt Disney Studios where the kids went on a ‘Cars’ ride and went to a Disney Jnr stageshow where S got to meet and dance with Princess Sophia (MUCH excitement) and then drove into Paris Central where we are spending our last 2 nights.
We’re in the 7th arrondissement near the Eiffel Tower, so we wandered over there then had an awesome dinner at a neat little brasserie. S tried an escargot but was not a fan it is fair to say, J flat out refused!!
We spent our last day wandering around Paris, window shopping mostly although there are a few pairs of shoes in the suitcase from the Galleries Lafayette sale 😉 We also braved H&M on the Champs Elysee which was a nightmare, and culminated with J doing a giant poo and having the indignity of having his bottom changed on the side of the Champs Elysee. Good 21st story.
We almost didn’t make it to the airport – for whatever reason we could not get the stupid GPS in the car to set to Charles de Gaulle airport, so we were guessing our way and of course there was a torrential downpour in the middle of it. It all culminated in us driving through the Arc de Triomphe 12 lane roundabout. Not actually as stressful as you might think – I remember looking at it back in 1998 thinking how on earth would anyone ever drive through that – we’ve come a long way since then!
The flight home went well, the kids are proving to be great little travellers. Even the 5 hour stopover at Hong Kong wasn’t too bad. All in all we had the time of our lives and can’t wait to do it again. To anyone scared of long haul travel with kids – don’t be, it is amazing how resilient they are and even though they’re only young I know our kids have got so much out of this trip 🙂 Here’s to many more in the not too distant future!
