Hei Hei Where's the Munkki?

  Thoughts on France and Poland I wanted to share a few thoughts from our trip that didn’t fit neatly into any of the other posts.   I hope that’s okay.   If it’s not I suppose you can just stop reading the blog.   Which wouldn’t trigger my severe abandonment issues at all…  I'll intersperse the thoughts with some of the pictures of our travels that I haven't had a chance to share yet. We found Paris to be delightful.   I had always heard about – and was nervous for – rude Parisians.   But every Parisian that we met was extraordinarily kind.   From the RTR employee who helped us buy the right tickets to the waiter who gave our kids free ice cream at the end of the meal, to the Disney employees and cab drivers.   Maybe we got lucky.   But I think Parisians are a lot nicer than people think.   We did however notice a couple of important things. First, lines and procedures seem to be important to them.   Which is kind of ironi...

  Rzeszow Our next stop was Rzeszow (pronounced ZHE-shov) in southern Poland.   It’s a medieval town, and much like Krakow has a wonderful mix of old and new.   We settled into another beautiful lodging and then prepared for our next day. The highlight was an underground tour of Rzeszow featuring the preserved cellars of merchant families from the medieval town.    Like many of our experiences in Europe, the tour was very kid friendly with activities including designing a coat of arms, and fixing a bell tower, and riding a pretend motorcycle.    They also told many of the legends of the city, including an origin story involving the Prince and a travelling flutist rescuing the Princess and townspeople from a giant toad who had turned them all into little toads.   They didn’t kill it or anything.   The flutist just played a song and it fell asleep.   I wish putting my kids to sleep was that easy.   There’s a statue of a toad in t...

  Krakow Once we found out we hadn’t missed our plane, and after triple checking that we had all of our bags for the eleventh time, the rest of our travel day went pretty smoothly.   But we were all a bit shaken.   We had a short layover in Vienna, which was a city that I’ve always wanted to explore.   It was only an hour, which felt like it should be long enough.   But Vienna is one of the airports (of which there are apparently many) where most of the planes don’t de-plane at a jetway.   Instead you go down the stairs to the tarmac.   Then you have to catch a bus to a terminal, and then get to your departure gate.   Where often you go back down to the tarmac and then catch a bus to your plane.   We also had to find time to eat in the middle of all of that.   So it ended up feeling quite rushed. The flight from Vienna to Krakow is only about an hour.   Which is good because the accomodations on Austrian Air are pretty Spartan. ...

  Paris Part III The start of our day was the opposite of our first.   Everything went smoothly.   We knew what we were doing.   We packed quickly, and were leaving early enough that there was no time for breakfast.   C’est triste.   We checked in for our next flight.   We checked out of the hotel on time, and our driver arrived on time.   We got to the airport two hours before our flight left.   Everything was easy. As we were unloading our bags from the cab, we noticed we were missing one.   And not just any bag.   It was Oscar’s bag.   With his souvenirs, and beloved stuffies, and iPad.   The driver couldn’t take us back to the hotel.   And we felt totally overwhelmed and defeated.     We called the hotel, who luckily still had the bag.   But if we went back to get us it would cost us two cab rides, and we would likely miss our flight.   So the hotel gave the bag to a cab driver who was al...

  Disneyland Paris The next day was dedicated to Disneyland Paris.   Which – in our classic style – we did in one day, getting there before it opened and staying right until closing.   There are two parks, and we had a park hopper pass that let us go between each.   It was a very fun time.   Still not as magical as Disneyland, but part of that is probably because our kids are older and have been a couple of times, and aren’t as in awe of everything.   But it was a lot of fun, and one of the first times that Oscar is tall enough to ride everything and we were able to do most of the day as a group of four.   And it has easily the most amazing castle of any of the parks that we’ve been to. The parks have some rides that they don’t have in the states.   We tried to prioritize those.    The Parisians seem to care about rides a bit less.   I think the longest we ever waited in line was about thirty minutes.   Character meet and g...