Jake and Josh’s Grand Adventure

Jacob Here!   For those who don’t know I am a major Disney fan, I have been going to the Disney Parks since I was less than a year old. I even worked at Disney World as an intern in the Disney College Program at Tommorowland Speedway. The experience of Disneyland Paris was very unique to the domestic parks in the U.S. For this blog I will tell you about my experiences since that’s what most people want to hear. Then I’ll give a more in depth analysis for those who want to know the deeper comparisons between the U.S Parks and Disneyland Paris.  Disney days are among the few days a year that I spring out of bed without a second of delay. I hurried to get my clothes on and off we went to ride the train down to Disneyland Paris. I felt light as a feather walking down to the train station and we rode for a while waiting for the stop with the mouse ears next to the name. When we arrived I had already spent the previous day strategizing on where to go. I choose Walt Disney Studio Par...

 Jacob Here!  The city of lights, the city of love, these are some of the nicknames given to our next location. Sadly my lovely girlfriend is unable to be with me in this romantic city so I am with Josh instead. When we took the train from Caen to Paris, we were on a rather full car and we stood until a seat opened up for us that’s when I spotted a young French girl and her mom talking with a couple of old ladies. My mom had given me some activities to do while I was away one of which was scratch paper that you have a special stylus that when you scrap the paper it reveals colors underneath. So I took out my bag and got a piece along with a stylus and gave it to the girl and although she spoke no English she was thrilled. I drew a smiley face to show her how the paper worked and walked back to my seat as she spent the next hour drawing all sorts of pictures of dinosaurs, trains, and many other things and just before they got off the little girl walked back over and handed me t...

Jacob Here Our next adventure brought us to the wonderful city of Caen, in Normandy France. We traveled via high speed train to Paris then walked across Paris to get to the next station to head to Caen. That evening we walked around the city to get acquainted with the city and stumbled across a castle which turned out to be free to go and explore, which Josh and I climbed all around looking at the beautiful city. While Josh mostly was stunned by the amount of churches, I was busy day dreaming of the castle being stormed while I pretended to launch arrows from the ramparts onto random people down on the street. I won the battle against the invading pedestrians, and came down victorious in my own mind celebrated the victory with the finest chicken feast I could afford. (KFC and yes I was surprised to find one here) The next day we woke up and went to the Caen D Day Museum which is housed on top of the Nazi Bunker of the general in charge of defending the beaches. This was an incredible m...

Jake here!  We successfully made it to London, and I must say we were treated better than kings. Considering most died horrible deaths of disease, battle, or execution I think we did better than most. Being an American I wanted to get up close and personal with what our ex monarchy is up too. I started by going to Buckingham Palace and looking at royal fashion followed by the Royal Mews. I saw all the royal coaches, cars, and a couple of horses who get more vacation time ( 6 weeks long twice a year) than I do. Then I got to go inside Buckingham Palace itself and walk throughout exploring the different rooms and paintings while the Royals were away. Couple key takeaways, 1 gold is on almost everything, think Trump level. 2 they have a bunch of art that they claim they want the most people to see yet keep them in their house and charge money (I’m calling bull crap). 3 The gardens are very lovely, I just wish there was less grass.  Of course London isn’t just about royalty, my ne...

Josh here! After disembarking from the Queen Mary II, Jake and I made our way through the city of Southampton to an Air B&B in a neighborhood in north Southampton called “Shirley.” A delightful couple, Mandy and Alan, shared with us not only stories their home but of their family and the history of Southampton. In his retirement, Alan volunteers a great deal of time in a local historical society which often focuses on the “Spitfire,” a fighting aircraft used by the Royal Air Force during WWII. After a pair of major Spitfire production factories located near the city were bombed by Nazis during the Battle of Britain, officials instead of rebuilding elsewhere conscripted small garages, parish halls, and other buildings, secretly continued construction of the fighters. (Alan shared many other lovely stories, but I won’t drag on with those). If you are interested in reading more about the project please do at:  https://spitfiremakers.org.uk/ Our other main activity of the day was a...

  Josh here! Our Cunard cruise to the UK has now come to an end. My main takeaways: The potatoes were meh. Mashed, baked, roasted, but never very good. Several tasty desserts.  But the BUTTER! Amazing butter, perhaps some of the best I’ve ever tasted. A deep yellow with just the right balance of saltiness. Needless to say, I ate a lot of butter on the ship.  On a more serious note, our time onboard the Queen Mary II really was wonderful! Ongoing deck games, speakers, dance performances, choir recitals, quizzes, and live music kept us busy. We shared meals with folks from all around the world; Australians, Kiwis, Americans. Though of all the wonderful people we met, Jake and I shared a large portion of our time with two groups. Jo and her daughter Holly, a lovely couple of English ladies from Coventry, as well as Alex and Marie, teachers from Luxembourg. We met Jo on one of the very first days at a shuffleboard tournament and later on Alex and I were later paired as teamma...