From Paris to Spain – and the stuff in between

Wow! I have not written a blog post since December 9th! I was so determined to do a blog post every Monday and Friday, and it all went well. Then just like that, I am missing several in a row. That’s life. It happens, and we were doing so much and living in the moment that it just wasn’t possible to keep up.

So buckle up, this is gonna be a long one! We’ve got some catching up to do!

Let’s pick up where we left off last time. The kids had gotten a huge gift from Nikolaus, a trip to Disney Paris, so off we went on a pretty long6 hour trip north! The kids were all excited. Two of them couldn’t even remember being there because they were too young the last time. Our oldest, although she could remember a lot from the last time we went, hadn’t ever been to Disney at Christmas time. They were all excited!

After we made it to Paris, we checked into our hotel. That alone could fill a blog post, but I will try to keep it short. They couldn’t find our reservation. Once they could it was only for 1 night instead of 4! Well, that gave us all an anxiety attack. But no worries, it is Disney after all, the happiest place on earth. The guy at the reception, with really quite a lot of imagination, made it fun for the kids to wait. He said “sorry the bears are still hibernating in your room in the woods so we will have to chase them out first!” Eventually, they found our reservation, all was good and we got to check into the Davy Crockett Ranch. The Christmas decorations were amazing! Music, glitter, and decorations were everywhere. Really crazy. That first afternoon we didn’t go into the parks but chose to go to Rainforest Cafe – a huge hit with the kids – and check out Paris after. I don’t think I have to say much about Paris during Christmas time. If you’ve been, you’ll know what I am talking about. If you haven’t – go. I have been to Paris several times now, and nothing beats it during the Christmas season. The sheer amount of decorations they have on and around the Champs-Élysées is itself a sight to behold. Every hour on the hour all the lights and decorations – and they have EVERY SINGLE TREE decorated – start blinking and twinkling and it’s just amazing. They do this in sync with the Eiffel Tower and it really is quite stunning. The Tower itself of course is just as amazing. I don’t especially care for it during the day but at night it’s really something else. The twinkling light show at each full hour that lasts several minutes is very much worth seeing. So put that one on your bucket list!

The next 3 days were filled with the two Disney parks “Parc Disneyland” and “Walt Disney Studios”. Everyone who has ever been to Disney anywhere in the world knows what kind of attention they pay to detail. Think of that and multiply it by 100 around Christmas. Add a dash of glitter, Christmas music, and Santa magic, stir and sprinkle with love and you will start to understand what it feels like. They outdo themselves every single time. Countless decorations, music, lights,… you name it, they’ve got it. Christmas fans will love this. We are not only fans of Christmas but also love Disney, so it really couldn’t have been any better. The parks in Paris are not really all that big (compared to Orlando), but the kids have never been to the Florida ones so it was a good place to start. I think at this point I have to mention that we were able to do a LOT in those three days, not only because the parks aren’t that big, but also because I did a lot of planning and preparing before this trip. During all my planning I found out that Disney Paris offers what they call “Priority cards” for people with a disability. I figured this would help our PTSD and autism patients a lot, and it really did. Disneyland last time, because of PTSD and autism, was really, really hard to do, so this time I was determined to do it differently. Getting the priority card was easy enough with the paperwork we had and we were able to just pick it up at the reception.

What it does is it gets you into designated areas during the parades and fireworks with a lot fewer people in them and – and this probably helps most of all – it gets you away from the lines. Crowds are a huge problem for both Chris and Jane. It lets you enter the rides, shows, meet and greats, all from the exit or at least before everyone. For the shows, they had special waiting places for us and we got to pick seats before the rest of the people were let in. For the rides, we were able to just go in where the exit is, some newer rides even had a special priority entrance, and that way we didn’t have to wait with a lot of people and for only a very short ride. I think the longest we waited for a ride was 5 minutes, and the longest meet and greet, the Princess Palace, was around 30 minutes. The estimated wait time for that was well over 120 minutes for everyone else. This might seem like it would only be great to get a lot of stuff and rides done, and I’m not gonna lie, it really helped to just walk into rides and do them, but in reality it did so much more. It made it possible for my husband and daughter to actually ENJOY our trip. They weren’t triggered by the masses of people, loud noises, and sounds. Along with the priority card comes a little “blue book” that lists everything that happens on and in each ride so they were both prepared for everything and we could pick which rides to skip completely. I am insanely grateful to Disney for thinking of disabled people like that and helping them have a great time too. Awesome job Disney!

The rides themselves were obviously a lot of fun. Some of the kids’ favorites were Ratatouille, Peter Pans Flight, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Spiderman Web Adventure to name a few. Another highlight was meeting Mickey, Spiderman, and also the character breakfast. The character breakfast let them meet a lot of the traditional characters like Pinocchio, Tigger, Eyeore, and a others who all signed their little autograph book. Success!

At this point, I would like to have a shout-out to the character actors who have to talk. Either someone does an amazing job casting these people, or they are simply born for Disney. We meet with Merida from Brave and Spiderman and both were amazing, engaging the kids in conversation and really pulling off the entire character experience. Merida even pulled off a cool Scottish accent and Spiderman did an insane job replicating of the latest Peter Parker. I honestly would not have been surprised if Tom Holland had come out of that costume any given second. That’s how close the voices were. I am sure the kids were convinced Tom Holland was behind the mask. Absolutely stunning.

Using the priority card and having 3 whole days to use we were even able to catch some of the shows, Christmas-themed and regular and they all were great as well.

Of course, we had a couple of hiccups on our trip as well so I’ll share them with you so you can see not everything is all rainbows and roses all the time. First of all, Angelina woke up crying on day 2. “I can’t go on any rides,” she said “Disney is ruined”. Turns out she “forgot” to mention that she had sprained her ankle the day before. After a whole day walking around Magic Kingdom, it was swollen to the size of a grapefruit. Her shoe didn’t even fit anymore! Walking wasn’t going to happen. Thanks to Disney we were able to easily rent a wheelchair for her though! We got her a Stitch blanket to bundle her up nice and warm and the trip was saved!

Why the Stitch blanket you ask? Lets take a second and talk about the COLD. The sheer, bone-chilling cold! Now I have been to Disney during Christmas. That was in Florida. And now I have been to Paris during Christmas, but that was after slowly getting used to the cold during fall and early winter in Germany. I have NOT been thrown into the Paris cold after still having summer a couple of days before! This was insane. At one point I was wearing seven layers of clothing. Winter clothing at that. And it DID NOT help anymore. Yes, I ordered hot tea, and yes we tried to heat up inside every now and then. Yes, I had what felt like 800 pairs of socks on and stuffed into my winter boots, but NOTHING helped. It was insane. The worst one was the first night, waiting for the fireworks. It wasn’t just us, other people were cold too. All the indoor places were just PACKED with people. Moms were sitting on the floors with the little kids, trying to get warm. It was crazy. But hey, we made it and the fireworks were in fact spectacular again. Because it was 30 years of Disney Paris, they even had a special drone show over the castle before the fireworks. Very much worth seeing!

We had some great days at Disney, but I am telling you after the cold we were very much ready for Spain! After driving 6 hours back from Disney to our mountain home in Southern France, we had the car fixed really quick, and drove another 4 hours to Badalona, a suburb of Barcelona. We got out of the car and sigh ahhhh warmth. It was warm again! What a joy after being frozen to the core. Sadly we got sick from the insane cold of Paris, but thankfully it only seemed to be like a 24h bug so we were ok again in no time. I gotta tell you I’ll be fine without getting sick again. It was not a very enjoyable time, let alone in a new place, but I made it and felt great after a while.

Once everyone felt better again we took a walk down to the beach (literally across the street) and enjoyed the sun and the beach which oddly enough was a mix between a sand and pebble beach. It was a very weird feeling. It was not pebbles like in Croatia, but not yet sand like in Italy. Kind of an in-between thing. After that, we went to Barcelona (only a 20-30 minute drive from our home in Badalona and found a cute little Christmas market, and yes we were in T-shirts, that sold the cutest handmade Christmas fairies, and traditional churros. It also introduced us to the tradition of “Caga, tió” which we are obviously doing now! We also saw some wild parrots mingling with the sparrows and pigeons. Crazy.

Next, we did what you kind of have to do when you are in Barcelona. We went to see “La Sagrada Familia”. A church being built since 1882. Not 1982, but 1882. That was over 100 years before I was born. Now I have to admit. Old buildings, ruins, castles, and churches are usually Chris’s thing. I am more of a nature and outdoor person. I love the beach, nature parks, mountains, lakes, waterfalls, canyons, and so on. Chris is the one that loves history and old stuff. But this church is something else. From the outside it was, well, I don’t wanna way like any church, cause it is so big and impressive, but it was like some of the nicer churches I’ve seen. But nothing could have prepared me for the inside. I am Catholic, so I have been to my fair share of churches. They all are different but most have one thing in common on the inside: They are dark and cold. To me, they never put in enough windows and lights, except for maybe around Christmas when there are candles everywhere. But this church was different. Huge windows were built perfectly in sync with the path of the sun. Each window is decorated with a different color topic. A red one, another one green, yet another one in shades of blue. It will forever be dubbed “The rainbow church” in my mind. Pictures will not even be able to do this justice, but it’s all I have to give you a little glimpse of the way this church was. So I am going to dump a bunch of pictures here for you and let them speak for themselves. Pro tip: Again Chris was able to show his military disability card and got in for free – along with a care giver, in this case, me. We have to learn to remember to use his card, as it helps skip the long lines and let’s be honest, also helps keep some money in our wallet.

After our time in Barcelona, we took the overnight ferry to Menorca. It was a nighttime trip and we managed, but I could have done without the truckers who decided to play the slots at 3am. You basically go on the ferry at 10pm and arrive around 7am in Menorca. We booked luxury seats to catch some sleep. And they would have been just fine had they actually all reclined like they were supposed to. I stuffed the kids’ phones with audio books to listen to during the night to fall asleep, we were packed with warm clothes and headphones and seasickness prevention and we made it just fine. I should probably mention that the dogs were in kennels, but you have full access to them at all times. They have water for them as well as food bowls and even a tiny pee station where you can take them out to do their business.

Once we got off in Menorca, there it was – SUMMER! The air, the palm trees, the ocean waves! Yes, it was warm in Croatia, Italy, and Barcelona, but more on a mid to late-spring scale. This was summer. Think T-shirt, flip flops, and shorts weather. Amazing. On our first walk out we saw a wild turtle casually strolling along the sidewalk, we found an orange plantation with ripe oranges hanging on lush green trees, everything is still booming like it’d be August and the people are just chilling out in shirts and shorts, and with a Santa hat!

It is warm enough to grill outside – which we did today -, and it is even warm enough to heat up on a lounge chair in the sun in swimsuits and then dip into the pool. Which has pretty cold water since they don’t heat their pools here and the temperature does drop at night. Nothing bad, a soft shell summer jacket will do, but the pool water is unforgiving after the late-night temperature dips. However bad it was on that first day jumping in though, I am making it a habit to go in every single morning and I am up to 10 laps back and forth in the cold water. And afterward, I am super refreshed and it is a great start to the day.

We are enjoying every hour in the sun on this island, and it doesn’t hurt that our current host seems to have a huge heart for kids. We have had some great hosts in our Airbnb’s while traveling, but this host is something else. He stuffed the fridge with chocolates and put a huge bucket of candy in the kids’ room. He has the house stuffed with toys of all kinds and even came by to add yet another new toy in the yard. The yard has a ping pong table, a slide, darts, ball games, and a thousand other things. There are bikes and helmets, balls and pool toys. It really is a joy staying here! I know there are articles out there about Airbnb getting worse or some people doing some crazy stuff, but hosts like this guy make it all worth it. Even for us adults, he is being great, offering amazing recommendations for what to do around the island, and telling us where to see the best sunsets. Absolutely amazing!

The beaches of the island are also great. So far we’ve seen great sunsets, enjoyed the stone cliffs of the shoreline, found little inlets with sand beaches, and simply enjoyed the peace and quiet. Menorca is said to be the relaxed one of the balaeric island. The one to breathe and calm down as opposed to its sister island Mallorca. So far I can say that’s true. No tourists, just peace and quiet. We love it. We were literally the ONLY guests at the Indian restaurant we ate at last night and had great chats with the owners who told us the island starts getting busy with tourists in April and quiets down in November. So perfect time to spend your Christmas.

Bonus: You get to wish people “FELIZ NAVIDAD!”. They won’t think anything of it. And the fact that you hear a tune in your head while saying it, can forever remain your secret.