After 10 amazing days onboard the Disney Magic, it was time to say goodbye. People often wonder if they can stand being on a ship for 7 days, let alone 10 days. Let me tell you something, 10 days still isn't enough time. This was once again, the best cruise ever.
We woke up around 7:30 and headed to Parrot Cay for breakfast at 8:00. A nice benefit of late dinner is that you get to have later breakfast times. Since our flight wasn't until 12:30, we were not in a rush. We had the table to ourselves, and enjoyed one last meal with Summer and Igor. Willy stopped by to say goodbye to us, and wish the Gators luck in the coming year (Willy is a big Gator fan). We said goodbye to Summer and Igor, and headed down the gangway. On the way out the ship, we stopped to thank Brent for a great cruise, and let him know how well shore excursions had taken care of us. After our difficulties in both Pisa and Villefranche, we had left comments with the shore excursions team. The managers took great care of us on both accounts.
Once off the ship, we grabbed our bags (no immigration since we were coming from another EU country) and breezed by customs. There was an insanely long line for taxis, but they kept it moving pretty well, and we headed for the airport. I had read that the Barcelona airport could be pretty confusing, and that turned out to be very true. Fortunately, our driver did know where Air France was and dropped us off by their check-in area. European airports are set up much differently then most US airports. You must first find an e-ticket machine that serves your airline (not necessarily the one next to your airline that has a huge line, look around a little) and then get in a slow moving line to check your baggage. If you are flying out of Europe, I highly recommend online check-in. It will save you a good deal of time.
Once checked in, we headed through security, where we did not need to take off our shoes or remove our liquids. It was very nice. Past security there was a giant shopping mall and a large food court. We stopped at a really expensive pizza restaurant for some lunch. This airport definitely took advantage of the term "airport prices." They made Disney look cheap. We headed towards our gate and discovered that gate assignments are not posted until about 15 minutes before boarding, since all of the gates are shared by all airlines. All we knew is that we were in concourse B. So, we grabbed some seats in B and waited for our gate to show up. We lucked out, and were only about 5 gates away from our flight.
Boarding was a bit chaotic, as they just boarded everyone at once, but we made it onto the plane and to our three aisles seats that we had found at check-in. Air France was an impressive airline that included free drinks and sandwiches in flight. The sandwich was a bit odd (seafood sandwich), but it was food nonetheless. In no time we were landing at Paris CDG and were waiting for our bags. Our bags came fairly quickly and then we walked over to the train station and grabbed the CDGVAL shuttle that runs between terminals. This brought us right to terminal 3 where our hotel (and several other hotels) was located. The Hilton was absolutely beautiful and we were able to upgrade to a larger room that also had access to the executive lounge meaning free food, drinks, and most importantly, computers with free internet.
We brought the bags up to the room and spent some time reorganizing our stuff. Mom and I went down to the lobby to see if they had an electrical converter, but they did not. Back at the room, we grabbed Dad and headed over to the lounge to grab drinks and snacks. They had two computers and it was so good to finally be able to check facebook and emails at our leisure. Around 5 we headed down to the lobby so I could call Mary and set plans for tomorrow. After that, we headed over to the TGV train station via the CDGVAL to get a general idea of how things would work the next day. We decided to grab food in the airport, since we had heard the prices at the Hilton were pretty rough. We finally found a little cafe where we bought ham and cheese sandwiches and chips, which we brought back to the hotel to eat. We had dinner in the executive lounge and then I spent some time working on blogs well Mom and Dad went back to the room. After getting several things written I went back to the room and collapsed into bed.
Up Next Day 15: Disneyland Paris
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