Family Visit Week 1 and Disneyland Paris

On Sunday 29 November, my parents, my sister and Dex arrived in London for a 2 week holiday. I was very happy to see Dex. He handled the travelling very well, but he fell asleep during dinner (about 8 pm) and woke up at 2 am. I asked him why he can't sleep, and he sighed and said "I don't know!". Poor thing. On Monday, we went to visit friends and relatives (including Sam who has just been diagnosed with cancer). Dex suffered some jet lag, waking in the middle of the night, even though we tried to keep him up until 10pm with cartoons.

On Tuesday, my aunt and her friend joined us on the Eurostar on a 3 day, 2 night trip to Disneyland Paris. We stayed at the Explorers Hotel. On arrival, we checked in and then took the train into Paris. My mom wanted to go shopping at Louis Vuitton, so we went to the one on the Champs Elysees.

On Wednesday we spent the whole day in Disneyland Paris. Lucky for us it was a dry (but very cold) day. For some reason Dex knows that when it's cold there is snow, and he wanted to see snow. In Disney, they made snow out of bubbles which fell from the top of a building on Main Street. We told him it was snow and the smart little boy said it was bubbles! How did he know? (pic on left).

We went on a few rides. Dex did not like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride (it was dark) but he liked "It's a Small World", the Mad Hatter's Teacups, the carousel (he had his own horse) and Buzz Lightyear (pic on right). My Dad, Ai Li and I even went on the Space Mountain ride! I think in general Dex enjoyed it although it got quite cold and he was underdressed (or he refused to wear his hat, gloves and scarf). He was also slowly recovering from jetlag as he was waking up at 6 am instead of 5 am.

On our last day in Paris, we went to the Val d'Europe International Shopping Centre. It was a huge shopping mall (very long but only on 2 floors) one stop away from Disneyland Paris. Right next to it was the La Vallee Village outlet shopping. It was an expensive outlet as most of the stores were designer shops. It worked out well that we went there as it was a rainy, foggy and cold day in Paris and we sheltered there until our train home at 6pm!

On Friday we went to Portsmouth to Gunwharf Quays for more outlet shopping. This is one of my favourite places as it has normal high street stores which are more affordable. They also had Santa's Grotto there so we took Dex to visit Santa. I think it was his first time and he didn't like Santa very much until he got a present from him!!