We were awake early and at breakfast for 7:00 am on our disembarkation day. Soon after breakfast Emma, Liam, Sammy and Rose left with Judith to get their bus. We finished packing leisurely. Alison’s parents were next to leave in a Tesla that came to collect them. Alison, Louise, Paul and I were the last to go at 9:30 with Florian driving us to the train station. Mel accompanied us too as she was going to another boat and Louise continued on to the airport for her flight home. We found a covered area outside the station which was light and air-conditioned to wait in. After our journey, it was time for a loo stop but found there was an 80c charge which seemed rather excessive. Instead, Alison and Paul went to explore the town and in addition to the free loo, they found the central area was closed off for a massive street market.
For lunch, Chris and Paul went to fetch food from Carrefour and McDonald’s (for Paul). We order at the new automated machines which makes life easier, however, I was proud to be able to ask for the code to enter the toilet in French – the reply was in English but I tried. We waited until the platform was announced only 20 minutes before departure. We are always anxious that we could miss the trains in Europe. The train was mostly empty as we pulled away from the station. However, many more people joined at the first stop. We were able to connect to the free Internet and watch our journey on a moving map on the laptop. It seemed incredible as the train speed passed 300km/hour. After about an hour we arrived at our destination of the Disney resort.
We had a few jobs to complete here before going on to our accommodation. The first was to buy our Disney passes. In order to get to the ticket office, we needed to go through security with our large cases. Paul’s bag got pulled aside for a physical search. After finding the ticket office was not the correct place we made our way to Guest Relations. We needed to get the special needs tickets which allowed Paul to have a discount and Alison got a free ticket. Before leaving the resort area we took a few photos then made our way to the RER station. Here we needed to get the Navigo cheap weekly pass. There was an information desk where we were sent to an office marked “Navigo”. After queuing we got to the front of the line to be told that they did not sell the Navigo there – how odd! Instead, we need to go to the regular ticket desk. Only in France would you get Disney tickets at guest relations instead of the ticket desk and buy the Navigo pass at the ticket desk and not the Navigo office.
We had a little challenge getting through the gates for the first time with our cases. Two stops along the line we got out and had even more trouble getting through the gates since everyone (lots of locals) tried going through the special gate at the same time. Once we got ourselves oriented, we walked a couple of blocks to our Airbnb accommodation where we met our host Robin, originally from Thailand. We were shown to our room, the bathrooms and kitchen. After our long journey, we had a refreshing cup of coffee before going out to get dinner at a nearby pizza restaurant. The owner seemed to be a real entrepreneur trying to upsell us but we resisted the dessert. We packed up our leftover pizza for lunch tomorrow and returned to the hotel to pack for the next day and get an early night at 10:30.
Chris's Wanderings 