A European Dream - Disney Dream Med 2023 5/20-5/27 - update 11/21

[Flossbolna]

Looking forward to reading the rest of this trip report.

I hope to have the next instalment up very soon!

What are queues like in europa? I'd really like to go (and stay in the wild West bit) but after visiting guardaland in September and hating it mainly due to crowds and long wait times I'm a bit scared of all non disney parks.

Generally we think the crowds are very manageable there. Some of our experience there has been in recent years when they were operating under capacity limits due to Covid, so I am trying to ignore these trips a bit. And then some trips were for their winter opening when the park operates a bit differently.

One thing about Europapark is that they operate the park also as a kind of showcase for Mack Rides (the company that manufactures rides and is owned by the same family). So they actually try to run everything at full capacity all the time to show how good the capacity of their rides is.

We have had a few visits on weekends, on public holidays and during school vacation time and none were unbearable. The park is fairly large and has loads of small attractions besides the big things. There is an app which offers a virtual queue where you can sign up for a window to visit one of the major attractions. It is similar to the old online Fastpass. This helps for the headliners. I would say that the only attraction that notoriuosly has long lines is Wodan, the wooden coaster. But we are not fans of it. Even on busy days it seems that wait times top out at 45 minutes. And after 430 pm wait times do go down quite a bit as for many people this is a day trip and they need to drive home.

Staying at an official hotel gives you some morning extra time which might be good for one or two attractions.

All in all, we think crowds at Europa Park are less of an issue than at DLP. In some ways Michael and I like Europa Park better than DLP. I would truly recommend to go!

 

[o&smom]

I guess you are currently enjoying your cruise! Hope Rome was great. 4 days to explore makes a lot of sense.

Michael and I talked about how the cruise in many places left us with the wish to return and actually enjoy the place for longer. I do think a city break to Rome will be in our future...

Yes, we have been here for a couple of days. Very hot! Crowds are crazy! We had a tour of the colosseum today, and even our guide could not believe the crowds. We have a tour of the Vatican and St. Peter’s tomorrow at 7:30. We have had amazing food, and service, along with lots of gelato. Everything is beautiful at night with all of the lights. We are staying one street outside of Piazza Navona. The bridges on the Tiber remind me a lot of Paris at night. Way different experience than our Port Adventure in 2010.

 

[Flossbolna]

Yes, we have been here for a couple of days. Very hot! Crowds are crazy! We had a tour of the colosseum today, and even our guide could not believe the crowds. We have a tour of the Vatican and St. Peter’s tomorrow at 7:30. We have had amazing food, and service, along with lots of gelato. Everything is beautiful at night with all of the lights. We are staying one street outside of Piazza Navona. The bridges on the Tiber remind me a lot of Paris at night. Way different experience than our Port Adventure in 2010.

Sounds like you are having a great time in Rome despite the crowds! I love Piazza Navona, so this sounds like a great location for a hotel!

 

[Flossbolna]

5/16 - Cologne and Elton

We began the day by going to breakfast again. This is the view from breakfast, it was very nice!

Those of you who know Michael will realize how great this breakfast must have been when I tell you that he made sure to get up in time for it every morning! One thing I liked about breakfast was that they also had some local specialties like liver sausage and blood sausage. They also had Mett which is raw minced pork. Yes, it sounds disgusting, but it is actually very tasty. And it is more a northern German specialty and not available in Bavaria, so I did enjoy it one morning. I also had some very tasty smoked mackerel - they had a number of different types: with pepper, with garlic, plain.

OK, please do not be turned off by the disgusting foods mentioned by the German above as breakfast at the Hyatt was, indeed, terrific and worth rising from their comfy bed for. To be honest, though, my limit on consecutive days of starting out with a huge meal were drawing to a close. I probably could have done one more day and then I would have skipped it, even for free. Too much food (even for a full-figured guy), too early in the day. BTW, to turn this back to Disney since we are on the DIS and the big news of late with WDW is the 2024 RETURN OF THE DINING PLAN, I can never understand how people can eat three table service meals a day -- or even three quick serve meals -- and have snacks and I am sadly obese these days. I just can't fathom consuming that amount of food in a day and it being enjoyable. Yes, that's why "someone" is suddenly talking about having our lovely travel agent book us some nights at Coronado Springs for next year with the dining plan added on! Come on, people. Gee, I thought my first rant here was going to be hating on Jill for seeing Elton 32 times on his farewell tour, not about Disney dining. See, that's why we get out of bed (when we're not at the Hyatt Cologne) ... because we don't know what surprises the day is going to bring.

Ok, it seems that @jedijill has replaced @Captain_Oblivious here... I am sure Mark is happy to be out of the limelight.

Of course, I started the day by checking if we had finally gotten a stateroom assigned. We were now only four days away from our cruise and it was getting ridiculous. We had booked an OGT rate when these came out - we actually got our lovely TA - She ain't THAT lovely and all our bookings are helping her put her kid through that rich ex-pat brat school that is going to set him up for life, so, don't feel so bad! - dealing with that on New Years Eve! And then around 12 days before the cruise everyone in our Facebook group who had booked an IGT, OGT or VGT rate reported that they got a stateroom assigned. But not us. I was manically checking the app every 15 minutes She really was! and couldn’t believe that we were left out. I even asked on the Facebook group whether anyone else was not assigned either and no one said anything. Our TA called twice to Disney and was told that we could possibly not get one assigned until the pier. As to how we were supposed to drop off luggage then, we were told that the porters have the manifest and they can look up our stateroom. I thought this was ridiculous as how could they print our stateroom in a manifest but not tell us? I went from being in a bit of a panic about this to being resigned to the fact that we would have some crazy situation at the port. And I can tell you that this day didn’t bring a stateroom number once again.


She was totally nuts about it all. I wasn't. I thought the longer we waited the better our cabin was likely to be. I even thought there was an outside chance of getting a significant upgrade. I knew we weren't getting to the port and DCL was going to tell us ''So sorry, no cabin for you. Since you can't cruise, we'll refund your money and give you 20% off a future booking.'' But watching the OCD trip planner in the throes of a slow meltdown daily wasn't fun either.

Today we had plans to spend the day with a friend and then go to the concert in the evening. Our friend S currently lives in London. We have been trying to see her for a long time, but it never worked out and she found a very inexpensive fare (20€ each way) to fly from London to Cologne for the day, so she decided to do that. We really appreciated her going through all the trouble, it was a very long day for her!

She's young and strong. She can handle it. It was great to see S. She is a young (she could be our daughter) artist with an old soul. We love her dearly. I knew I hadn't seen her in quite a while. It took some thinking to realize that the last time I saw her was in the BEFORE TIMES in February of 2020 when she was living in Orlando and met my family and I, sans M, at Blaze Pizza at Disney Springs for a quick late dinner. M had seen her in July of 2021 when I finally went home after a pandemic year in Bavaria and S came and stayed at our place, but for me, it had been over three long years. So, anyone who says that those of us (like me) lucky enough to never have the 'Rona or lose anyone close to me from it only 'suffered' by wearing a mask and staying home, are wrong. We lost time and that's something we are never getting back.

So, after breakfast I checked the status of her flight and realized that it hadn’t even departed and was massively delayed. So, we decided to go into town to the Taschen book store.

We went by tram and saw this highly interesting „Police-Tram“ at the tram stop. Not sure what it was about as it seemed to be a normal tram with passengers, I guess just some fun advertising for the police force?

The Taschen store was very impressive! They had their whole catalogue and they do publish a lot of amazing books. Some books were pieces of art and were over 1000€, but they also have a lot rather affordable ones. If you want to check them out, this is their website: https://www.taschen.com/en. They were actually founded in Cologne.

Their books are amazing. They are of the coffee table variety. Some are huge. Like you could injure yourself lifting them. I highly recommend the Disneyland one that was released around 2017.

Our next stop was to buy some wool for me. I have recently rekindled my love for crocheting. Since we had a number of long travel days planned, I wanted to take a project with me. But the one I had started a little while ago was rather large and heavy and I wanted something lighter. So, I found a pattern for a lovely very thin alpaca yarn and I needed to pick up the yarn at a store that was selling it. This took longer than planned as some 90-year-old woman needed a lot of help finding her wool and I had to wait for her being helped at the small store before it was my turn. But it was lovely to watch her enthusiasm for the next project!

This is the yarn I bought:

Insert your own Old German Woman joke (about M, not the younger woman in front of her at the store.

Some interesting Cologne architecture:

In the meantime, our friend had landed and was on a train into the city. We told her to get off at the main station and then meet us at the Cathedral. Which is huge and directly next to the train station. Unfortunately, her phone is sort of broken and she ended up exiting at the wrong side of the station. When I got a text from her asking "Where is the Cathedral?“ I thought she was joking. You can’t miss it! But then we figured out what had happened and as soon as she turned around, she saw it.

Unfortunately, the weather was not warm at all and the plaza in front of the Cathedral was rather windy and by the time she had made it there I was quite cold. So, I suggested going for coffee at the lovely cafe we had discovered last summer. The Funkhaus Cafe. Funk means radio in German - it was in the old headquarters of the area's public broadcasting station which was built in the 1950s and has a lovely high end 1950s design with wall paintings and such. Also, the food is delicious and so was the coffee that we had this time.

We wandered a bit around town, tasted some cheeses in a Dutch cheese store that is on the main shopping street (last year we spent a lot of money there buying cheese). No cheese was purchased as we couldn’t really travel with it for over two weeks nor take it on the Dream.

If you love cheese, this is definitely for you. They basically give unlimited samples of the 300 varieties they sell and you can just graze (like the cows that gave you this magic in your mouth). This time, we didn't go to the international candy store where you can buy a box of any candy you can buy at a Dollar Tree in the USA at a low-low price of like €8. Not kidding here as one of us still is a kid (at least inside) and likes his Spree. But not at those prices!!!

On the way back to the hotel we visited the Cathedral. It is very impressive on the inside as well. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the largest Gothic Cathedral in Northern Europe. It has a very interesting history as it was started in the 13th century. By the 16th century they stopped and it wasn’t until the 19th century that it was finally completed. It needs constant renovation, which costs two million € per year, and there is even an entity called „Cathedral Building Hut“ which employs craftsmen and architects specializing in old church buildings.

]

We headed back across the bridge to our hotel from there. The bridge is actually a railway bridge, but it has pedestrian walkways on both sides. It is called Hohenzollern-Brücke, Hohenzollern being the name of the house of kings of Prussia (which then later became the emperors of Germany), so like Windsor is the name of the house of the kings of England (now, it was Hannover before). It is now full of locks - Michael is always a bit scared the weight might make it collapse. It did happen to a bridge in Paris.

We partook of the coffee and cake in the lounge and that is when we experienced a young woman swoop in with two hotel employees and a load of luggage who was dressed in „Princess Kate style“. She then started a conversation with this elderly couple who were dressed very casually but high end (very expensive designer jeans, hers with embroidery, and t-shirts) who looked hip for their age, he had long grey hair, and he then asked the Princess Kate lookalike whether they were coming to the show tonight. This again got me interested and we were thinking it might be some sort of band manager.

After our cake break, our friend and I took the beers from the mini bar (the mini bar was included as well because of our lounge access) and sat on the stone steps at the bank of the Rhine and chatted while Michael took a shower.

Michael sounds like a clean freak!

Dinner was again from the lounge offerings and we smuggled our friend in there as well. This was the second time the warm food offering was lamb. The first night it was lamb and shrimp on pasta, today it was lamb and couscous. Michael was very disappointed about this as he doesn’t eat lamb (nor shrimp, veal, venison, fish and a few other things - but he does eat any bizarre vegetable on the earth). I had the lamb and thought it was very good! They also had a beef salad, mozzarella and tomatoes and a dish called matjes. Which Michael took because obviously it didn’t state that there was anything involved that was on his don’t-eat-list. Well, I knew that matjes is soused herring served in a sour cream sauce. Michael was lucky that our friend commented on liking the fish dish and that cleared up his misunderstanding. So we did not have an incident with Michael spitting out food across the whole lounge.

Sorry, I did not take a picture of the Matjes.

The concert was at the Lanxess Arena, Cologne’s big arena for things like that (including the Kölner Haie - Cologne Sharks - the local hockey team). This was a 10-minute walk from the hotel. That was another reason for staying there. We walked over there and said goodbye to our friend who was headed back to the airport for her flight home.

I know that we had spent quite some time looking at the seating chart for the concert trying to figure out what would be good seats without breaking the bank. We sat on the upper level in the first row. We thought we had great seats, but we did have a railing in our view and a walkway in front of us. This was nice to stretch out our feet though! The tickets cost 121,50 € each and we thought that was a fair price.

The concert was wonderful! Elton John said it was his 192nd concert in Germany, his 9th time in Cologne. He said he loves how he was always felt welcomed in Germany, but I am sure he says this in every country.

The concert was amazing. Did I mention that I hate Jill? I did? It's worth mentioning again. It might be love-hate, but there's a lot of hate there. I couldn't believe we actually were sitting there listening to one of the all-time greats of an era. Unlike M, I had seen him probably 8-9 times over the years, including a pair of amazing stadium shows with Billy Joel in the 90s. But it just seemed like it was never going to happen. Due to the insanity of our lives, I missed the chance to get tickets in 2018 for 18-19 dates in any German city or FL city or CA city. Then, came the chance again when he announced more dates in Germany in 2020 and you have heard the rest ... but those tickets sat in my German sock drawer for 3.5 long years. Did I tell you how much I hate Jill?

]

See the guy with the guitar and the long hair. He is the one who we saw in the lounge this afternoon!

After it was such a climb and difficult to find our block when we got there I thought it would be difficult to get out after the concert. But it turned out to be amazing how easy this arena was to leave. There were stairs everywhere and we were out of there in no time. And it was so nice to be able to just walk back to the hotel from the arena. There was a steady stream of people with the same destination. I can see how the hotel makes a lot of business on nights of events in the arena. Especially when it is artists whose fans are more likely to be a bit more established in life and can afford a Hyatt Regency.

Just an odd cultural note, but in the USA, you'd see loads of kids at shows like this (at least in the past, as this was my first major concert in well over a decade ... what happens when you marry a German). You might even see generations of a family with someone like Elton who has been a fixture on the music scene since 1970! But I don't think I saw enough kids to count on all my fingers.

And this ends our adventures in Cologne and we are off to the next stage tomorrow!

 

[Louise97]

I finally had a chance to start reading your trip report! Cologne looks lovely, the only part of Germany I've visited is Berlin and I'd really like to explore more.

We just watched Elton John playing at Glastonbury (on TV, rather than in person) and he certainly knows how to put on a show!

Looking forward to reading the rest

 

[Flossbolna]

I finally had a chance to start reading your trip report! Cologne looks lovely, the only part of Germany I've visited is Berlin and I'd really like to explore more.

We just watched Elton John playing at Glastonbury (on TV, rather than in person) and he certainly knows how to put on a show!

Looking forward to reading the rest

Hi and Glad to have you here. There are so many interesting places in Germany, it does have so many regional difference. That's one thing I really like!

It's amazing what a show Elton John can put on in his age. I just hope to be as agile as him when I reach that age!

 

[Flossbolna]

5/17 Travel Day - Arriving in Barcelona

We headed for the last breakfast at the Hyatt. Is this like the Last Supper? I was surprised that Michael made it to three breakfasts in a row, but in my notes I said that I was sure that these were going to be the only three for the rest of the trip and I think I was right with that prediction.

We packed our stuff which was easy as we hadn’t really unpacked and we were ready well in time. We left the room at noon and headed to check out where a small issue developed. They somehow had charged our lovely breakfasts to the room even though they were supposed to be free. That was 72€ for two people for every day!!! But the receptionist caught it immediately and took it off without us having to complain. He was very apologetic that the restaurant put it on as it was supposed to not be charged.

A last look at the lovely flowers in the Hyatt lobby and at the cathedral:

We headed over to the train station to catch our one-hour train to Frankfurt where we were flying to Barcelona from, for this direction we didn’t have to do the detour with the tunnel for the metro, but could just walk out to the platform. We had a special ticket that you can purchase in addition to your plane ticket, called Rail & Fly. It’s a flat price of 30 € per person one way. It was a good deal as the train that we wanted to take would have been 100€ each for the short trip for some odd reason. The train was on time and had all the coaches it was supposed to have. But then we still ended up changing our seats because in front of us sat a young lady that was coughing like crazy and we felt that there was no need to be doused in whatever germs that were causing her to cough for one hour.

We arrived at the airport with a lot of time to spare. Partly we had planned this as Michael had recently upgraded one of his credit cards so that he would get a Priority Pass membership that would get us into airport lounges. The options in the Lufthansa terminal were rather slim, it was just one lounge called Luxx Lounge and it was before security. So, he wanted to have time to enjoy the lounge and I wanted to have a time buffer as I am always scared that some crazy train delay (like 90 minutes or so) would cause me to miss my flight.

You have no idea how insane she is about things like this even though we have never come close to missing a flight or a train ... except when there was an issue on the other end. We're just always there waaaay too early.

The lounge was not as Luxx as the name with two xx seemed to try to advertise. It actually felt a bit like time travel back to the early 1990s. It also had a strange layout and the women's bathroom was indeed a full bathroom with a shower stall that was however blocked off with some tape.

The Luxx Lounge did, indeed, start off life as the American Airlines Admirals Club sometime in the 90s and likely hadn't seen many changes since. But it was comfortable enough. The food, largely German sausages and breads and veggies and lousy watery tater soup, and the coffee, booze and soft drinks made it worth it. The wifi was also nice as it enabled us, with some difficulty, to book a weekend in Prague this fall with Bucky (my favorite sister-in-law in the whole world ... if she's reading ... and even if she isn't!)

We had some snacks there and drinks and just sat. I started my crocheting project and was battling with the pattern (it involves three colors that you change in between). But I thought I finally had it figured out. Of course, that was the last day of the trip that I worked on it! While we sat in the lounge, I saw in the Lufthansa app that the incoming plane for our flight was delayed, but our flight kept showing as on time. So, I figured considering this is their hub, they might be able to switch out planes and we would still be leaving as planned.

Ah, Lufthansa, the DB of the German skies!

Finally, it was time to head to security to go to our gate. Just as we get to security and I pull up our boarding passes on my phone I get an alert that our flight was delayed - of course because of the delay of the incoming airplane!! It was supposed to leave 70 minutes later now. This led to us sitting around a long time, in the end the plane left two hours later, but made 30 minutes up in the air. There were some more adventures with a strange gate change and constant announcements about how we should gate check our hand luggage. I never experienced that threat in Germany! I am still bitter about Delta forcing me to hand check my luggage because supposedly all bins were full and then I board and there is no single piece of luggage above my seat! After that traumatic experience I was totally scared, but I only had a bag and Michael refused to give them his little carry-on suitcase. In the end they must have scared enough people into doing that and we boarded without issues with all our hand luggage.

There was actually lots of drama. The delay included numerous gates changes. It also included them calling me, and just me, up to the counter when I was babysitting our luggage and M was exploring in the nearby shops. I didn't get what they could possibly need with me, but when she returned, we went up. Only to find out that there was a dude with a very similar name that actually is pronounced like my name (first and last) in English, but my name is pronounced differently in German, so it wasn't actually me they were calling. If you can actually understand that, then you likely are much smarter than I am giving you credit for. But for the first time in the trip, I wasn't in a good mood. We left for the airport way too early. We left the Luxx Lounge way too early. And then we waited and waited ... We flew on an almost brand new plane, an A321neo, which was my first flight on this new Airbus variant that is quite popular. I had not been on an intra-European flight on Lufthansa in many years and they now charge for everything but water, so we had nothing but water. No, not paying 3,50€ for a small can of Coke on a 90-minute flight.

Michael took some pictures of the merchandise in the airport shops:

And finally our plane arrived!

The flight was uneventful and after a long walk through a very empty airport in Barcelona we were reunited with our luggage and headed to our hotel.

We had booked three nights at the Renaissance Barcelona Fira Hotel. Michael had some certificates from Marriott for five free nights (up to a certain point level per night) and this was the hotel that we figured would give us the best value with these certificates. Hotel prices in Barcelona really surprised me when I started looking for our three nights. They were so high! So, using those certificates there made a lot of sense.

In hindsight, and right after we just used the remaining certificates for two free nights at the Ritz Carlton in Berlin, Michael thinks we should have paid the cash rate there or elsewhere and saved the certificates for where you get maximum bang for them.

The hotel is not very central, but is directly at a metro station, the line that goes to the airport. So, it was really convenient for wherever we went. I had researched the metro a bit, so getting the tickets was fairly easy and we were very quickly on our way in a very empty and nicely air-conditioned metro train to our hotel.

Yes, when it comes to AC, Spain is a modern, civilized country ... unlike ... well, Germany!

By the time we got to the hotel it was nearly 10 pm. We had originally planned to have a meal at the hotel restaurant, which looked very nice, but that was not open anymore. But before dealing with dinner, we checked into our room. We got an upgrade to a high floor room, so we did have a nice view (which we appreciated much more the next morning). But otherwise the hotel room was … odd.

It started with us not being able to figure out to open the door. First, we got confused and tried to enter the housekeeping cabinet next to our door. The wall was all dark glass with just cutouts for the doors which were covered with the same material. Then there was a handle on our door and we kept pulling until we finally had the idea to push. And we had to push hard! Then the door opened!

This is a picture of the door the next morning. The hallway was very dark at night as it was actually outdoors on a gallery. The lack of light did not help…

We then were in a very long all-white hallway - actually the whole room was white! At the end was a window in the shape of a palm frond, two beds and, separated by a glass wall next to the beds, a shower and a wash basin. No toilet though… We found that behind a hidden door that you had to push in and then there was a very long very narrow room with a toilet at the end. The door here had no handles and you had to push on the end where the hinges are to make it close (or wait until it fell closed). Once in there you felt like you were in a room where there were no windows and no doors… spooky!

Just bizzare 'modern' design.

Here you can see the oddly shaped window without the curtain in front of it:

Luckily there was a white curtain that you could pull in front of the glass wall between bed and shower, so we did have at least a little bit of privacy in the shower. But since there was no door on the side of the shower/wash basin part of the room, walking towards the door you would still get a good view of who was in the shower.

Here you can see the curtain to the shower next to the bed:

I truly wonder who designs hotel rooms like that?? People who never stay in a hotel room with anyone else who they are not intimate with? Even if you are a couple, you might not want to watch the other person washing every place on their body under the shower. And what if you were to share the room with a coworker or another friend or relative? Our room even had twin beds as Michael and I cannot deal with sleeping under one duvet (that’s what happens if you get married and life and one of you is even used to the German bedding system of individual duvets anyway).

This has been a trend in hotel building that started in the 00s with barn doors on bathrooms. Those are fine, until you realize that many don't close completely or the seal doesn't work etc. Then came putting bath tubs inside the sleeping part of the room, which might be OK for some couples but that's a small portion of who is going to wind up with them. Then ... glassed bathrooms with no privacy at all. But this took the cake in that if say M was showering and I ordered room service, the dude would have walked right by the naked wife all lathered up. ... I didn't feel comfortable being in an open shower with my wife as the only one in the room. Imagine being with a guy from the office ... or your Aunt Frieda ... or your tween child whose body is starting to change and doesn't want to be on display etc etc. I could go on for a few thousand more words about it. Do you want me to?

Besides that the hotel was actually very nice and we would even live with the quirks of the room again if were in Barcelona again.

Hotel had comfy beds, great AC, nice employees and good location. I possibly would stay again, but would think twice.

It consisted of two towers connected with an open staircase between them with lots of plants, they called it a „vertical garden“. It did look very nice!

We now had a bit of a dinner issue at hand due to the late arrival. The room service menu and the bar menu would do, but were expensive and not very inspired. I checked Google Maps and saw that the building next to our hotel had a burger restaurant with excellent reviews and decent prices that was supposedly still open. So, we headed there. It was called Goiko.

We saw it crowded when we were dragging our luggage from the metro station and I just knew (like our new IKEA sofa ... sorry, inside joke) that we'd be dining there.

It seems to be a Spanish chain. Our server’s English wasn’t great, but she was willing to work with us. They had an English menu available via a QR-code which was helpful. We ordered „virgin frozen margaritas“ and decided to both go with the passionfruit flavor. She did not understand what we wanted and told us the available flavors. There I learned that the Spanish word for passion fruit is the same as the German one: Maracuja. We both ordered smash burgers with thin cut fries. Mine was with smoked mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, rucola and a pesto mayo. Michael had a burger with bacon and onions and he got a barbecue sauce for his fries. The sauce that was used on the burger is also what you get for dipping the fries in. All in all it was very good and barely more expensive than our last meal at Five Guys at home, but much better and with table service.

With dinner being so late it took us quite some time until we finally went to bed as neither wanted to go to sleep directly after a heavy meal. Luckily, we had no plans that required a specific start time the next morning.

Oh - and in case you were interested: Despite checking the app multiple times during the day, we still didn’t get a stateroom number this day either, even though there were only two full days left before we were supposed to get on the ship.

I was not interested.

 

[CarolynFH]

By the time we got to the hotel it was nearly 10 pm. We had originally planned to have a meal at the hotel restaurant, which looked very nice, but that was not open anymore.

This surprises me! I thought no one in Spain eats dinner until 9 or 10 PM. I’ll admit it’s been many, many years since I was there, though….

 

[disneyfaninaz]

I can't get over that hotel room!

 

[Flossbolna]

This surprises me! I thought no one in Spain eats dinner until 9 or 10 PM. I’ll admit it’s been many, many years since I was there, though….

It had just closed for new diners. I think they seated people until just before we arrived.

When we were in Madrid a few years ago, we had some very late dinners and saw people still being seated well after 10 pm. So, yes, your experience is still valid. It’s just that restaurant.

 

[Flossbolna]

I can't get over that hotel room!

it definitely was great trip report material!

 

[Magical_Suitcase]

This has been a trend in hotel building that started in the 00s with barn doors on bathrooms. Those are fine, until you realize that many don't close completely or the seal doesn't work

I HATE the barn doors on bath rooms, especially the ones that are glass. We had one "fall" off the track and almost hit our daughter, but even if that had not happened, there is just no privacy with them.

We both ordered smash burgers with thin cut fries.

Love Five Guys and these burgers look even better.

 

[dolphingirl47]

I totally don't remember that you went to Düsseldorf back then.

We flew into and out of Cologne, which is how I know that there are often crazy cheap tickets available on this route.

But I do have very fond memories of spending lots of time at Eiscafe Sirena with you and Graham!!

I have very fond memories of this, too. I would happily eat a Spaghetti -Eis right now.

Oh, I didn't even think about that, but I can see that you grew up close enough for it being the big "local" amusement park!

Technically the closes proper park was Holiday Park, but even then Phantasialand was in a different league.

Yes, some amazing books!

I like the look of that Disneyland book.

Ling Bao is truly an amazingly themed hotel. They have another one in the Africa area called Hotel Matamba that looks beautiful, too. It has a Central Africa theme. And then the Charles Lindbergh Hotel inside the Rookburgh area which looks great, but also very uncomfortable!

They all sound great, but I do have a soft spot for anything Chines.

They also had Mett which is raw minced pork. Yes, it sounds disgusting, but it is actually very tasty. And it is more a northern German specialty and not available in Bavaria, so I did enjoy it one morning.

I love this. I had not realised that this is not available in Bavaria. I suppose this is one of the advantages of living pretty much in the centre of the country. When I grew up, specialities from all over Germany were readily available.

Of course, I started the day by checking if we had finally gotten a stateroom assigned. We were now only four days away from our cruise and it was getting ridiculous.

I remember we had one cruise like this on DCL. people were joking that we would get the lifeboat suite.

We have been trying to see her for a long time, but it never worked out and she found a very inexpensive fare (20€ each way) to fly from London to Cologne for the day, so she decided to do that.

How nice that she was able to meet you. Was this good old Ryanai?

The Taschen store was very impressive! They had their whole catalogue and they do publish a lot of amazing books.

I would have been like kid in the candy store.

It has a very interesting history as it was started in the 13th century. By the 16th century they stopped and it wasn’t until the 19th century that it was finally completed.

That makes the construction of Sagrada Familia look speedy.

It is now full of locks - Michael is always a bit scared the weight might make it collapse. It did happen to a bridge in Paris.

I am sure I read somewhere while we were there that they found a way to reinforce the bridge to cope with the weight of the locks.

The tickets cost 121,50 € each and we thought that was a fair price.

That does sound fair.

Then, came the chance again when he announced more dates in Germany in 2020 and you have heard the rest ... but those tickets sat in my German sock drawer for 3.5 long years.

I am sure it was worth the wait.

It was a good deal as the train that we wanted to take would have been 100€ each for the short trip for some odd reason.

That really was a good day. Professionally, when I hear Rail and Fly, I break out in a cold sweat. We call it Rail and Schrei in the office.

Just as we get to security and I pull up our boarding passes on my phone I get an alert that our flight was delayed - of course because of the delay of the incoming airplane!! It was supposed to leave 70 minutes later now. This led to us sitting around a long time, in the end the plane left two hours later, but made 30 minutes up in the air.

Oh, what a pain. At least our flight was only 30 minutes delayed. However, this still meant that it was 3:00 AM by the time we fell into bed.

Hotel prices in Barcelona really surprised me when I started looking for our three nights.

The hotel prices in Barcelona are insane. We always stay in a nearby town called Molins de Rei when we are cruising out of Barcelona.

We then were in a very long all-white hallway - actually the whole room was white! At the end was a window in the shape of a palm frond, two beds and, separated by a glass wall next to the beds, a shower and a wash basin. No toilet though… We found that behind a hidden door that you had to push in and then there was a very long very narrow room with a toilet at the end. The door here had no handles and you had to push on the end where the hinges are to make it close (or wait until it fell closed). Once in there you felt like you were in a room where there were no windows and no doors… spooky!

That sounds and looks utterly bizarre

Mine was with smoked mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, rucola and a pesto mayo.

Apart from the rucola, this sounds amazing.

Corinna

 

[franandaj]

Lots to unpack here!

We began the day by going to breakfast again. This is the view from breakfast, it was very nice!

Definitely a very nice view!

he made sure to get up in time for it every morning!

That really is something!

They also had Mett which is raw minced pork. Yes, it sounds disgusting, but it is actually very tasty.

Actually it sounds like Beef Tartare with Pork, I'd try it!

Ok, it seems that @jedijill has replaced @Captain_Oblivious here... I am sure Mark is happy to be out of the limelight.

Interesting. I don't think Jill is even reading. I have to tell her when I post update on my TR....

She was totally nuts about it all.

I would have been too!!!!!!

Their books are amazing. They are of the coffee table variety.

I have so many of those types of books and I can't even put them on the coffee tables because the cats might puke on them.

This is the yarn I bought:

That is very fine wool!

This time, we didn't go to the international candy store where you can buy a box of any candy you can buy at a Dollar Tree in the USA at a low-low price of like €8.

Most of those price tags say 6 Euros which I looked up as $6.50US, that's insane, all of those are $1 in the US, or maybe now $1.25 because of inflation.

On the way back to the hotel we visited the Cathedral. It is very impressive on the inside as well. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the largest Gothic Cathedral in Northern Europe.

I think I visited there in 1988!

It is now full of locks - Michael is always a bit scared the weight might make it collapse. It did happen to a bridge in Paris.

Yeah, I would be too. That's A LOT of locks!

today it was lamb and couscous.

That looks delicious. Different than I make or have had in France, but delicious nonetheless.

a dish called matjes. Which Michael took because obviously it didn’t state that there was anything involved that was on his don’t-eat-list. Well, I knew that matjes is soused herring served in a sour cream sauce. Michael was lucky that our friend commented on liking the fish dish and that cleared up his misunderstanding. So we did not have an incident with Michael spitting out food across the whole lounge.

That would have been interesting to see him spit out the food!

He said he loves how he was always felt welcomed in Germany, but I am sure he says this in every country.

Probably.....

Did I tell you how much I hate Jill?

I think your hatred is falling on deaf ears, plus you haven't actually said exactly why you hate her....she only saw Elton four times, not 32.....

But I don't think I saw enough kids to count on all my fingers.

That's because no one was willing to shell out the $$$'s for their rug rats to not enjoy themselves. Sorry, I don't have a Euro on my keyboard and I'm too lazy to copy one of yours.

And this ends our adventures in Cologne and we are off to the next stage tomorrow!

Yay! Moving forward!

The lounge was not as Luxx as the name with two xx seemed to try to advertise.

Hotel prices in Barcelona really surprised me when I started looking for our three nights. They were so high! So, using those certificates there made a lot of sense.

I know what you mean. I just started researching Napa for a quick weekend for Jill and I and it's SUPER expensive.

Here you can see the oddly shaped window without the curtain in front of it:

That is truly weird.

But since there was no door on the side of the shower/wash basin part of the room, walking towards the door you would still get a good view of who was in the shower.

Don't tell me you two haven't seen each other naked?

Michael and I cannot deal with sleeping under one duvet

I relate to that. Fran and I always slept with separate twin comforters. Evidently I like to hog the covers.

All in all it was very good and barely more expensive than our last meal at Five Guys at home, but much better and with table service.

It looks pretty good!

Oh - and in case you were interested: Despite checking the app multiple times during the day, we still didn’t get a stateroom number this day either, even though there were only two full days left before we were supposed to get on the ship.

At this point I would have been in full panic mode!

 

[TillyMarigold]

Hooray! Longtime fan of yours, looking into my first cruise and saw your report.

 

[Flossbolna]

Sorry for the current delay in trip reporting, but we are busy to celebrate Michael’s birthday with a trip to Disneyland Paris - his first summer visit here! We had a great day today and I am thrilled about a pin I was able to get:


If you look at my avatar here, you will see why I live that pin! It’s from the big gate to the Walt Disney Studios (the DLP second gate). Actually probably still the least interesting of all Disney parks worldwide. But I always loved the entrance that is themed to a classic Hollywood studio.

 

[Louise97]

Sorry for the current delay in trip reporting, but we are busy to celebrate Michael’s birthday with a trip to Disneyland Paris - his first summer visit here! We had a great day today and I am thrilled about a pin I was able to get:

View attachment 775812
If you look at my avatar here, you will see why I live that pin! It’s from the big gate to the Walt Disney Studios (the DLP second gate). Actually probably still the least interesting of all Disney parks worldwide. But I always loved the entrance that is themed to a classic Hollywood studio.

I love that design! I have a t-shirt with it, I might need to pick up that pin on our next visit. Hope you're enjoying your trip!

 

[I Run Long]

Just joining to follow along! Love your trip report so far and can't wait to see the rest. My DD went to see Elton John in Vancouver this year and loved it. I've never had a chance to see him - it looked like an amazing show!

 

[Flossbolna]

I love that design! I have a t-shirt with it, I might need to pick up that pin on our next visit. Hope you're enjoying your trip!

I saw the t-Shirt at Tower of Terror and was very tempted…

We are having a great time. It’s a bit hot here at the moment, but crowds are manageable and we are enjoying freshly refurbed Small World and Pirates a lot. And having Dreams back is wonderful!!

 

[dolphingirl47]

Sorry for the current delay in trip reporting, but we are busy to celebrate Michael’s birthday with a trip to Disneyland Paris - his first summer visit here! We had a great day today and I am thrilled about a pin I was able to get:

View attachment 775812
If you look at my avatar here, you will see why I live that pin! It’s from the big gate to the Walt Disney Studios (the DLP second gate). Actually probably still the least interesting of all Disney parks worldwide. But I always loved the entrance that is themed to a classic Hollywood studio.

I love the pin. I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip.

Corinna