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Summer 2026 Graduation Celebration: Edinburgh, London, Disneyland Paris, Paris - Day 11 Versailles

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It was another slightly early morning, unfortunately, as all reluctantly got up and headed out to the train to Versailles. Roger had already been to the palace previously and was still exhausted so he opted to stay behind and catch up to us in the gardens after we toured the palace. We had the first entry time (9 AM) into the palace and rolled up pretty much right on time, which meant that the line was already insane. It took us about 20 minutes to get through the line for security and tickets. At around 11 AM we stumbled across a cafe and all three of us were like “YES PLEASE!” We sat down and rested our feet and had some coffees and snacks before venturing into the gardens.  We got a map and tried to orient ourselves which took us a bit. We thought we were on one section of the map, but then we came to the realization that the gardens were so much more massive than we realized and what we thought was about a quarter of the grounds we were looking at where only a teeeeeeny tiny li...
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Summer 2026 Graduation Celebration: Edinburgh, London, Disneyland Paris, Paris - Day 10 Disneyland Paris and Travel to Paris

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Another early morning but we had planned it because it was really our best option to ride Hyperspace Mountain, because it had been closed for refurbishment the rest of the days we were there. Except that you already know we got to ride it anyway. It’s okay, we were happy to ride it again. After that we gave Big Thunder another go before going back for a sit-down breakfast in Disney Village. We made it back to the room in time to finish getting packed and ready give our bags to the front desk so we could catch a little more park time.  We caught a bunch of shows (including the phenomenal “Mickey and the Magician”), checked out the new Frozen section of Adventure World, caught a fun marching band and had lunch prior to going back to the hotel to grab our bags and then we took the free shuttle to the train station to catch a train to Paris. We got checked into our AirBnB, which was actually two apartments on the same floor of a building in a little suburb of Paris. Dru had one tiny s...
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Summer 2026 Graduation Celebration: Edinburgh, London, Disneyland Paris, Paris - Day 9 Disneyland Paris

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We woke up extra early to take advantage of the extra hour before park opening that hotel guests get. We figured this was our best opportunity to ride Crush’s Coaster without a long line (or paying for a fast pass or whatever they call it). I will say that while it was great to ride without the crowds, the breakfast situation at DLP is really less than ideal if you’re doing this. There isn’t any quick service at the hotel we were staying at (not sure about others) and all the counter service stuff at Disney Village doesn’t open until 8 AM, at which point you already need to be in line for the early entry at 8:30, so I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do. We snacked on some snacks/bread/dry cereal we had brought along from home and from London and that Dru had brought, which wasn’t really much.  Crush’s Coaster was great and we hit some other rides before watching the parade at Disneyland, which was sort of a sister to Festival of Fantasy at Magic Kingdom park at Walt Disney World...
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Summer 2026 Graduation Celebration: Edinburgh, London, Disneyland Paris, Paris - Day 8 Travel Day: London to Disneyland Paris

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Another tube strike day so we took an Uber to the train station and I gave us a lot of extra time, which is good because we arrived pretty much at the time we were instructed to be at St. Pancras to catch the Eurostar (7:45 AM for a 9:00 AM departure).  We boarded the train and it was a pretty quick trip to Lille. I actually thought it was longer but I forgot about the time change to an hour later. We arrived in Lille at 11:24 and we had found some lunch options in town, but ultimately just decided to have some lunch in the station when the weather was looking rainy outside, plus the fact that the restaurants didn’t open until noon. Oops. We ended up having to deal with the rain anyway to get from the Lille Europe station to the other Lille station that handled more of the local trains. We made our way through a total downpour and got our train to Paris Marne-La-Vallée - Chessy - Disneyland which left Lille at 12:56 and got into Disneyland Paris at 2:10 PM.  We were meeting up...
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Summer 2026 Graduation Celebration: Edinburgh, London, Disneyland Paris, Paris - Day 7 London

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We had a break from the tube strike! We got ready and got on the tube to meet up with a friend that Emmaline went to elementary school (Charlie) with and by extension my friend (his mom, Octavia). We haven’t seen them since our kids were little (they had moved away to Oklahoma and then to London - they both have dual citizenship). We met at Tower Bridge, something none of us had done before. It was fun to go up and across the bridge and they have it set up like a little museum, which is really cool.  After that we grabbed some snacks nearby as it started to rain (again). We were going to part company because Octavia needed to write ( she’s an author) but she decided to write later and hang with us for the day. Charlie goes to university in London and was done with school so they got to tag along our itinerary for the day.  After our snack, Emmaline wanted to see Big Ben since the last time we saw it, it was covered in scaffolding so we went over there and took some photos in ...
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Summer 2026 Graduation Celebration: Edinburgh, London, Disneyland Paris, Paris - Day 6 London

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A couple of days before arriving in London, I got an email from the theatre where we had tickets to see Phantom of the Opera that we needed to allocate extra time to get the theatre because there was a tube strike on. Lovely. The strike would run two days: June 2 and June 4. Thankfully, I had planned most of our June 2 activities close to our AirBnB, so it didn’t impact us too much, but it did cause us some headaches, unfortunately. We awoke to a typically soggy London morning. We grabbed our umbrellas and walked over to Kensington Palace for our reserved-time tickets right at opening. There was already a pretty good sized line when we got there but we were in pretty quickly. Again, the included audio guide was quite good and we enjoyed our visit to the palace. Photos were allowed inside, but I didn't take many. I did find this wind clock thing to be intriguing. We had originally planned to have lunch elsewhere, but it was too early and nothing was going to be open, so we had a re...
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Summer 2026 Graduation Celebration: Edinburgh, London, Disneyland Paris, Paris - Day 5 Edinburgh to London

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This is a boring day and not really anything happened to feel free to skip! We were sort of tired and needed a chill day so we didn’t really plan anything for the day. We got up and got everything packed, which was no small feat because on the way out, the airline damaged our luggage beyond repair and we were down a suitcase. We had come with two mediums and a carry on and so I expanded the remaining medium and the carry on and unfolded a little packable duffle bag we travel with in case we need an extra bag. And everything just barely fit.  We gave our bags to the front desk and went out to do a little shopping, first to a bookshop and then to a vintage store. We didn’t make any purchases, but we had an enjoyable time. We then went to a little nearby cafe for some lunch before returning to pick up our luggage. We decided to take an Uber to the train station because it seemed simpler with all our baggage and it was about the same price as three bus tickets anyway. We got some coffe...
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