One verrrrrrrrry long day!

Yesterday, we finally left on our trip to Paris and London. We flew from Indianapolis to Newark and from Newark on to Paris. Both flights went fine. Unfortunately I didn't sleep terribly well on the second flight so when we landed in Paris at 9:40 a.m. local time, I had already been up for nearly 24 straight hours. As I write this now at 8:04 p.m. local time, I've lost count of how many hours I'm on, but we're headed to sleep soon.

We arrived at Charles de Gualle airport a little early, went through customs (my passport now finally has a stamp!), got our bags, and found the Disney transfer bus with relatively little difficulty. We knew before we came that the European hotels would not be at the standard of American hotels. However, when we pulled into the lot of the first Disney hotel on the bus route - Hotel Santa Fe - I started to have a sinking feeling that this was going to be terrible. However, we went on down the road to the Sequoia Lodge - our resort for the week - and it looked much better. Gregory, the cast member who checked us in, even gave us

VIP breakfast passes which means we don't have to stand in line for the free breakfast while we're here - a HUGE bonus.

We went to Val d'Europe - a shopping complex one train stop up - and had dinner at a restaurant called Hippopotamus. It was just a burger, green beens and a baked potato, but given how long we'd been going without a good meal, it was quite good. We came back to Disney and went into the park. We rode Snow White, Small World, Pirates, and Phantom Manor - all with relatively no wait. We explored a little in the village and then headed back to the bus stop to come back to the hotel.

We're back in the room now and preparing to finally bring this really long day to a close and already debating possible changes to the overall trip plan. I promise tomorrow's post will include pictures and be far more interesting. Quite honestly - I'm just too tired to be funny or interesting right now.