A late, but great start ………

Both our days started out with having to work. Tom started his day extra early to be home in time and I started work at 10am. Unfortunately one of our teachers had fallen ill and I was the lucky one to fill in for her, so my day ended at 1.45pm instead of 12.55. Once I was done I drove to Tom’s and we had a quick lunch, then packed the last of our items and at around 4.30pm we were on the way to the airport. On Friday there usually is heavy traffic on the roads around the airport, so we left extra early, but we never hit any traffic jam and made good time. Once we had arrived at the airport, we parked the car in the long term car park, then unloaded the suitcases and walked back to the airport.

We walked to the check in desks and sent our luggage on its way and ended up with a lot of time to kill. So we decided to head upstairs to the restaurant and have a drink while waiting. The restaurant was empty and we had to have a good look around to find out if it was actually open or not. It was open and we sat at a table at a window and watched people getting on the only other plane flying out at that time. Tom had ordered an non-alcoholic beer and I had ordered my trusted Diet Coke and we sat and chatted. Around 30 minutes before our supposed take off time we headed downstairs and went through security, then walked over to our gate and waited for boarding.

A few minutes later we were allowed to walk over to our plane and get on. We took off on time and were soon handed a snack. I didn’t even look too closely at the little Crackers first, but then I discovered that they indeed were little airplanes. The perfect fun food to start your vacation with. The one hour flight went by quick and we landed in Frankfurt and were taken to the terminal in a bus. We had a look at the screens to find out if our gate had changed, then looked for it and it was close by, so we walked around the airport a bit, looking at some of the Duty free stores. Tom actually found some cigarillos he wanted to try and after we had finished our purchases we walked to our gate, where they had just started boarding. We got in line and were on in no time.

After finding our seats we packed everything into the overhead bins and waited for the plane to depart. We were on our way within a few minutes and about 10 minutes later we were handed our snack, which this time was something new, a Pasta salad with lots of veggies and small little zwiebacks. There was also a foldable fork which I found especially entertaining. The salad was pretty good and we were offered some drinks as well. I think we both had Coke. We landed in Paris about 5 minutes ahead of time and while I waited for our luggage, Tom went to pick up the rental car, which we had booked online. It took about 25 minutes until our luggage arrived and as soon as I had put the suitcases on the trolley I was on my way out of the terminal. Tom was already waiting and told me that he had signed up for extra insurance and that the sales person had told him that the car had a lot of damage and was scratched all over. Didn’t sound too promising, but it was past 10pm and we were both tired and wanted to get on. So we headed up to the car park, where Hertz was located and tried to find the car. We found it after a short search and I asked Tom for the rental car paperwork, to check if all the damage was marked on it. There was NOTHING marked in the paperwork, so we flagged down a Hertz employee to mark all the damages. We started at the driver’s door and when we got to the rear bumper the employee got into my way and  just stopped  me and said that all these damages had already been noted and he signed the paper.

So we loaded everything into the car, got the GPS in place and off we went. When we left the car park we noticed the dense fog and it slowed us down a little bit, but within an hour we were driving onto Disney property. We drove over to the Hotel New York and soon had parked the car and were rolling our luggage into the lobby. Everything was decorated for Christmas and it looked pretty wonderful. There was just one family in line ahead of us and then it was our turn to check in. Check in took a while as they still fill in papers by hand before they go to the computer. We were assigned a room on the 7^th floor (8^th floor for all of you American friends) and handed two breakfast tickets. On the breakfast tickets you find the time you are supposed to show up for breakfast and ours were pretty early. 7.40 for the following day and 7.30 for Sunday. And off we went to check out our room. We took the elevator up and walked down the long corridor and opened the door and found a room with only one bed! Now, when I booked I told them that we definitely wanted a room with two beds. Okay, out again and down again to reception. Tom waited at the elevators with the luggage and I went back again. I was pleased to see that the lady who had checked us in, immediately walked over to me and asked if there was something wrong.

I told her about the bed situation and she went to the back room to try and get us another room. She was back within two minutes and told us that we would now have a room on the 8^th floor. Into the elevator again and up to the 8^th floor we went. Our new room was just a few steps off the elevator and when we opened the door there were two beds. Done deal! We were good to stay. Luggage inside we checked out the room and it was really nicely done.

There were lots of New York themed hints and after looking around for a short while we got interested in the water view we had booked. You could not see the water, not that it would not have been there, but the fog was pretty thick. But we had a lovely view of the Christmas tree beneath our window. We got some ice-water and had some of the chocolate covered gingerbread we had brought and then it was really time for bed. By 12.30 we were finally in bed and turned off the lights.