Land Ho!!! St Maarten internet connection!

Friday, Sept 17

After updating pictures and the blog, we really didn’t do too much in Salou because it rained a good part of the day.  When it stopped for a few hours we ventured out.  A block away from our hostel is beautiful beaches on the Mediterranean Sea.  We walked along the beach looking at the restaurants and shops along the main drag.  I decided on El Toro for lunch, a nice second story restaurant overlooking the beach and water.  We just had some pizza and yummy garlic bread and made our way back to the room because it was clouding up again.  We rested and relaxed so we would be ready for the cruise.

Saturday, Sept 18

We woke up early, crammed our suitcases closed for the last time for the next two weeks and made our way the block to the train station.  It is fantastic how easy public transportation has been in the places we visited on this trip.  I don’t know how tourists make their way around the US after getting use to the efficiency and ease of public transport outside the states.

After a little over an hour and a half on the train spent traveling along the Mediterranean Sea passing beaches and industrial areas we arrived at Estacio de Franca, our stop and the end of the line for the train.  When Jessi and I arrived at this station three years ago, we walked the rest of the way to the ship because it seems like it was close.  It ended up being an hour and 45 minute walk.  Lesson learned.  This time, we hopped in a cab and 10 minutes and 11 euros later, we were at the ship.  There was an extremely long line for check in, but then a lady said, “US citizen? That line.” And we walked right through a queue with no people in it to five people waiting to check us in.  After five minutes we were making our way onto the ship.

We were very excited to be able to unpack our bags and do our laundry.  First though, we had to get in line to make brunch reservations for Palo, the adult only restaurant on the top of the ship.  While we were waiting I saw the couple who was at our table on the last transatlantic cruise.  I haven’t seen them for three years.  I had exchanged a couple of emails so we could sit at the same table again this time.  We were catching up with them and found out that by coincidence our room was right across from theirs’ on deck 5 forward.  We made our reservation, told Mike and Pat we would see them at dinner and made our way to the lunch buffet at Topsiders.  We ate our first of many, many meals on the ship that we were excited we didn’t have to pay for.  Then we went to check out our room, number 5509.  It is the cheapest room; I always just get a standard inside room.  This was the biggest room I have been in because it was a unique layout.  There must be service areas around the room or something.  We have also been in tiny hostels and homes for two weeks so that made what usually seems like tiny rooms appear larger.

After a few minutes in the room we got off the ship to go to Las Ramblas, the major shopping road in Barcelona and get some tshirts for people and alcohol for the cruise.  After an hour and a half, we were back on the ship and ready to rock.  We made our way to the safety drill and saw that another couple that was at our table in my January cruise was on this cruise too.  And they were right across the hall in the room next to our other friends.  It is a small world after all!

We worked on our laundry and saw the welcome aboard show with an amazing ventriloquist and another guy who did unique juggling.  After the show we made our way to the first of what will be many delicious four course meals.  Our server Cornwall from St Vincent and assistant server Eric from India are our dining room staff for the cruise.  We went to bed in nice comfy beds for once and called it a night.

Monday, Sept 27

Well I have been terrible about updating the old blog during the cruise.  I keep intending to get to it but it never seems to happen.  Nothing overly exciting happened during all our sea days so I will just hit the memorable highlights.

After our first night on the ship we had one day at sea before we got to Gibraltar.  It was so nice being able to sleep in and enjoy a day with no theme park or airport to run to.  Dinner was the Prince and Princess menu and it was a formal night so we were looking good in ties and I was rocking my new Express pants (that I got on sale… woot!)

The next morning, Monday, Sept 20, we arrived bright and early in Gibraltar.  It was an overcast day and you couldn’t see the top of the rock let alone across the channel to the coast of Africa.  I wasn’t overly inclined to do too much here because three years ago I went on a shore excursion to the top of the rock and saw the wild monkey’s jumping from person to car to wherever and running all over the place.  I also toured the Great Siege Tunnels on that trip.  It was completely clear then so the view was fantastic compared to the overcast day we were experiencing on this trip.  At any rate, we ended up just getting off the ship for a few hours and walking to the main city center and looking at the shopping area.  It was pretty much a random mish mash of alcohol, tobacco, jewelry and electronic stores for blocks and blocks that were selling things for the exact same price as every other store.  My highlight was once again seeing the airport runway that was built on land reclaimed from the water.  It runs perpendicular to the two lane road and is where the Gibraltar and Spanish borders meet.  When a plane needs to land, the railroad like barricades come down, stopping traffic, the plane lands and then traffic proceeds.

Back on the ship, they brought on a UK Beatles tribune band which people seemed to love.  They really know their target audience, because these people loved this show.  We were at Animator’s Palate for our show dinner, when the restaurant starts in black and white and slowly changes to in color over the course of the meal.  It is a unique environment.

Tuesday, Sept 21 brought another sea day and another day of sleeping in and relaxing.  It also brought the first of six nights we turned the clock back an hour which I find one of the coolest parts of this cruise.  Lots of 25 hour days!  It would be difficult crossing east from the US and losing all that time.  We skipped the early show, a night of Spanish dance and music, went to our Island dinner at Parrot Cay and then went to bed fairly early because we had a big day ahead of us.

We woke up on Wednesday in Funchal, Madeira a Portuguese island off the African coast.  We made our way off the ship and met up with Alex, a couchsurfer I found to give us a crash course Madeira tour before the ship left at 6:30.  We were originally scheduled to leave later but there were hurricanes brewing in the Atlantic that Captain Thord wanted to get ahead of. 

Our stop in Madeira will definitely be the highlight of our stops on this cruise.  Alex was an amazing tour guide and the terrain was unbelievable and very memorable.  We started out with a drive out of Funchal.  Madeira has about 300,000 residents; half live in Funchal and the other half in the rugged sides of mountains and the few flat areas in the rest of the island.  We stopped at a few beautiful overlooks where there were a lot of tourists before we stopped and took a half hour hike up a mountain to the third highest point in Madeira.  It was beautiful.  We were above the clouds and could see down to a city 1600 meters below us, as well as the Ocean in the distance.  It was stunning and beautiful.  We made our way past a wind farm where we learned that 50% of Madeira’s energy is derived from here and the other 50% is from Hydro energy.  They are definitely energy efficient here.  We then stopped at the edge of a crazy cliff.  There was a cable car that went straight down to a little grouping of houses and farming area.  Alex said the only way to the houses was by boat, cable car or to hike down the side of the cliff, about a hour and a half walk on the way down.  We then made our way to another touristy city on the northwest side of the island where there were interesting pools filled by the Ocean water since the beaches suck here.  They are all rocky and black stone filled with no sand.  No one was swimming because on this side of the island there were the biggest waves I have ever seen.  Good surfing Alex told us.  We then started taking the quick route back to Funchal.  Instead of driving through the mountains for hours, we took the more modern (built in the last 10 years,) tunnels through the mountains.  We stopped at a Poncha tavern which is a unique drink that they make and everyone drinks in Madeira.  It is firewater (rum as far as I can tell,) mixed with honey and lemon.  It is decent tasting but has a very high alcohol content so I would never be able to drink too much of it.  We resumed our drive and took the scenic route through Funchal.  Alex told us that 500 years ago the primary moneymaker was sugar cane, then it changed to bananas and now wine plays a small part of farming but tourism is the source of income on the island now.  There are 27 five star hotels in Funchal, a higher concentration than anywhere else in the world.  It is the vacation destination of choice for wealthy Europeans.  We finished our tour with a walk through old Funchal and had some yummy traditional bread from a sidewalk stand.  We thanked Alex and said goodbye and got back on the ship with amazing memories of one of the most unique places I have ever been.  Another successful couchsurfing experience even though we did not stay on anyone’s couch!!!

Back on the ship we had our French dinner at Lumiere’s and went to bed early after an exhausting day ashore.

From Funchal it would take five sea days traveling 400-500 nautical miles per day to get us across the Atlantic Ocean.  Currently, we are on our last day at sea.  It has been a fantastic few sea days of sharing great dinners with our retired friends Pat and Michael, seeing comedians, production shows and musicians and relaxing watching movies in the movie theatre.  They premiered “You Again” the same day as on land and I thought it was pretty funny.  My mom would definitely love this movie!  They have a drink of the day that we try just about everyday and if I don’t like that there are always the raspberry daiquiris I make in my little Wal Mart blender in the room.  I have also been kicking Matt’s butt at Yahtzee.  All in all, this is just a fantastic relaxing time after the craziness of all the exhausting places we went before the cruise!  I love this ship, it is definitely my second home after Madison!

That’s about it for now.  I’m off to see another movie.  I won’t be going outside because I left out of the story getting absolutely sunburned to a painful degree at the pool a few days ago.  We are definitely feeling a little better day by day and will be ready for fun and excitement with Kyle and Gene in a few days!

Mega Update. Days 12-16. Monday Sept 13- Friday Sept 17

Wowza!!  We have had a jam packed schedule for a few days and I have been exhausted and terrible about updating.  Here are the updates!!! Thanks for reading!

Monday, Sept 13.

Well today we woke up and checked out of our Hong Kong hostel.  It is a shame, all we did was talk about getting pictures of it when we weren’t there, and then we forgot.  It was a super nice tiny place.  There was just enough room for two small beds and room for one person to fit between them.  I paid a couple extra bucks for a private bathroom.  Matt loved it because it was a tiny little room where you could sit on the toilet, wash your hands and take a shower all at once. 

After showering, we gave Mr. Philip, the hostel manager our bags and made our way to the train and then bus station.  We were on our way to Ocean Park, Hong Kong’s local non-profit park.  It is kind of a mix of an amusement park and Sea World.  The setting was absolutely beautiful, on the Southern part of Hong Kong Island overlooking the South China Sea and lots of mountains and islands. The park itself was built in the mountains.  We definitely got our workout walking steps and hilly paths.  They also had tons of escalators as well as our favorite mode of transportation, the cable car. 

One of our best memories of this trip is definitely going to be our cable car rides.  The views from the cable car were stunning and I also will remember the absolute silence of being suspended in a car all alone and taking in the surroundings.  It is very interesting to reflect on the stark contrast between this and the absolute chaos of populated Hong Kong, just a few minutes away.

A few of our other memories of Ocean Park will be the amazing aquarium, the giant jelly fish exhibit, the nightmares I will be having from the ugly goldfish area and the two adorable pandas China gave Hong Kong in 2007 on its’ 10^th anniversary of being a special administrative region of China.  We will also remember the aggressive people.  There are times when there is nowhere to go, but these people are always pushing up on you from behind trying to get one extra step.  I don’t understand it.

From Ocean Park we made our way back in the packed bus and subway to get our bags and make our way back to the airport.  We were now at the juncture of the trip that I was most nervous about.  Before leaving home a bought standby tickets on Cathay Pacific for the portions of the trip that American doesn’t have flights for.  From Tokyo to Hong Kong we had no worries because there are more than five flights a day so if the first one was full, we could just try again an hour later.  On the Hong Kong to Paris part of the trip there is but one flight a night, at 11:45 pm.  I knew the flight looked pretty full before I left home and during four hours sitting at the airport was just wishing and hoping that a few people wouldn’t show up.  We didn’t have any back up plan if we didn’t get on, we were going to have to find somewhere to stay at midnight and try for the flight again the next day.

Well after pacing and worrying for hours, at 11:10 they said anyone on standby for Paris can come get boarding passes.  Luckily, we were the only people on standby and there were four open seats after accounting for no shows, so we got on.  It was definitely one of the biggest relief’s of the trip and I was so so happy that everything was working out on this trip.  I know some people may ask why I go through the stress of standing by, but for $94 for a 6,000 mile flight, it is worth it, and I wouldn’t be able to afford it otherwise.

Matt and I were sitting in the middle of the bulkhead seats on the plane, the first double decker plane I have ever been on, and although it was super uncomfortable and crazy turbulent and the longest time I have ever spent on an airplane (12.5 hours,) it was all worth it when we landed on schedule at 6:30 am in Paris.  I had not slept more than and hour or two and we had gained six hours so I should have been exhausted, but the excitement of being in a new place gave me energy for the day.

Tuesday, Sept 14.

After asking a few people which direction to the Disneyland Paris shuttle, we made our way outside to the bus stop and were immediately happy that we were going to be provided with some relief from the heat we experienced the entire trip.  It was about 65degrees and perfect outside.  We took the harrowing 35 minute bus ride to Disney, stored our bags at the train station and made our way into Disneyland Paris (MAJOR thanks go out to Gary for getting us free tickets!!! This is the most expensive Disney in the world to get in to after accounting for exchange rate, so it is SUPER appreciated!!! Thanks Gary!)

The parks were open a short eight hours, 10am until 6pm.  We went to Disneyland first and before telling you about it, I will say I got increasingly tired and cranky through the day because of lack of sleep, so I saw the park through those eyes.  The park was unique in the respect that they have a lot of similar rides to other parks, but they are presented in a different, unique way.  Space Mountain was more like Rock N Roller Coaster, being launched up a hill and going upside down.  Big Thunder Mountain was on an island by itself and the ride went under the river to get out there and back which was pretty cool.  Indiana Jones has his own unique roller coaster here and this Pirates of the Caribbean presents the scenes in a completely different order from the other parks and is the only Pirates not to have added Capt. Jack Sparrow after the movies came out.

In my crankiness I noticed how dirty and not kept up the entire place was.  I also noticed how inefficient pretty much everything was, from food service to loading rides.  These people are definitely not in any hurry to get anything done.  That might be a cultural difference though.  Another distinct difference is that this is the only Disneyland that serves alcohol in it.  Another cultural difference I think.  Matt couldn’t believe the smokers.  Although this park did have smoking areas, they were obviously not enforced like every other Disney park.  People were smoking absolutely everywhere and in every cement crack or other open space there were cigarette butts.  They love their cigs here. 

After knocking out all the major attractions and getting tired of Disneyland by about 1pm, we made our way to Walt Disney Studios park, the last Disney Park on my list to see them all.  This was not a good park to go to cranky.  It is by far the crappiest, most thrown together piece of garbage I have ever seen Disney produce and it is completely clear they are just trying to get another days money out of people.  The place is teeny tiny.  They have tons of dumb shows, a cheap version of Rock n Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror, an Armageddon walk through show that fails to impress and a number of other things not worth mentioning.  I know this is a crappy park when Genie’s Flying Carpets (a carnie ride that goes around in circles,) has fastpass.  Are you kidding?  Fast pass on this?!  They also have an even worse version of the Backlot tour than the one I worked at when I lived in Florida.  I didn’t know it was possible to make it worse, but they somehow managed.  It looks like they recently added some kids’ rides themed to Toy Story and this is the most themed area of the park.  Well after wasting some time here we picked up our luggage and got on the train for two stops to meet up with our couchsurfer host.

After struggling trying to use phones not in our language, I got a wireless internet connection and sent a message to Jean-Marc who met us at the train station.  He and his girlfriend Laure are lifelong Parisians and live in an awesome two bedroom condo/townhouse two blocks from the train station.  It looks all sleek and modern and straight out of Ikea.  Hopefully my place looks like this someday!  We were super exhausted from being up two days.  Jean-Marc and I walked and picked up Chinese for dinner.  We went back to the house and ate and had great conversation.  Then we went to bed for some much needed rest.  I was definitely all theme parked out so Jean-Marc said he would give us some ideas on sightseeing in Paris in the morning.

Wednesday, Sept 15.

This is going to be a short update, the pictures are cool for this day, so go to facebook! 

I woke up late, at 9:30, but was rested and felt great.  Jean-Marc was working at home today and he had yummy French pastries waiting for us at breakfast.  He gave us a tour plan for Paris and we bought an all day rail and metro pass and we were on our way.

Montmarte was our first memorable stop and looking our over all of Paris was a beautiful sight.  The black dudes trying to sell dumb bracelets and the Indian women trying to get money were super annoying and ruining the moment.  Other memorable placed were Notre Dame, Champs de Elysee and the Arc de triomphe.  We had a great time just meandering from place to place and then just finding random Metro stations to figure out where we ended up and how to get to our next place. 

I made a few observations as we went.  First of all this is the dirtiest place we have visited on our trip.  From the trains to the streets there is dirt and grime everywhere.  Second of all, there is absolutely nothing in English.  Jean-Marc says it is because the French never need to leave France because they have everything here, from Ocean beaches on one coast to the French Alps on the other.  They are stubborn people, but not unfriendly.  He says they have a life disposition that they are in a bad situation and it should be better, no matter what their situation.

After six hours of sightseeing we made our way back to the house.  I had mentioned I like crepes so Jean-Marc was nice enough to make them for our dinner.  They were so delicious.  I loved them!!! We started with meat and cheese crepes and ended with dessert crepes. YUMMY!  We also talked for a few hours.  This is exactly what I imagine couchsurfing being all about.  Talking about each others’ backgrounds and asking questions and learning about each others’ countries.  (Let me tell you, they could not believe the health care cost and situation in the US!  Or that people could so readily get guns.)  After a great evening of crepes and conversation, we made our way to bed.

Thursday, Sept 16.

We woke up and packed up (and had a few leftover crepes,)  said goodbye to the awesome Jean-Marc and felt totally awkward doing the kiss near both cheeks goodbye with Laure and made our way back to Disneyland to kill a few hours, do some shopping and see the few things we hadn’t done yet.  Nothing to eventful happened.

At two we left for a long train ride and bus ride to an airport on the outskirts of Paris where we had a cheap ($44 each including one checked bag) Ryanair flight to Reus, another small airport an hour south of Barcelona.  They don’t assign seats and you pile onto the plane, but it’s cheap, so what are you going to do?

After an hour and a half we were in Spain and back in the humidity.  It’s not as hot as it was in Hong Kong, Tokyo or California though.  We took a cab to our hostel in Salou.  The owner, Pep, was really laid back and chill and there is calmness to this place.  After checking us in he took us over to the bar area for our welcome drink where we chatted for a while.  It was a great icebreaker and we feel totally comfortable here now.  Matt went back down there and had drinks after I went to bed.  This pace really reminds me of the

Willy Street

vibe in Madison.  Hopefully we will be able to check out the area a little more.

Friday, Sept 17.

Well, here I sit in the hostel doing a mega-update.  The plan originally was to go to Port Aventura theme park today but we are honestly all theme parked out (We have been to eight so far!)  Today ends the race around the world and we are going to be able to relax starting tomorrow on the cruise.  Mercifully, we will not be taking any more flights for 19 days when we are headed back to Madison.  I can say with absolute certainty that I have had more diverse experiences than I have ever had, I have been taken out of my comfort zone in sometimes scary but always in a good way more than I have ever been and I have learned and observed many amazing things along the way.  It is very hard to convey or even remember lots of things when I am doing a blog so I can’t wait to get home and share my experiences.

I am not sure how difficult and costly it will be to update from the cruise ship, but I will definitely update as often as possible.  Thanks again for reading, Talk to you soon!

Day 11. Sunday Sept 12

After a good night sleep in our teeny tiny hostel, we got on the very convenient Subway, switched trains twice and pretty easily got to Hong Kong Disneyland. It seems isolated all by itself on Lantau Island. By some stroke of dumb luck, we happened to be visiting on the exact day of Hong Kong Disneyland’s 5th Anniversary. When we went through the entrance turnstiles they gave us a button that said “Happy 5th Birthday,” so that was pretty cool. We made our way under the railroad station to Main Street USA and noticed that we were back in the land of small castles. This park had the Disneyland Sleeping Beauty Castle. What was striking more than the castle was the beautiful backdrop to the park. The skyline behind the castle was a beautiful rolling mountain backdrop. It really set this park apart in setting. There is so much natural green and a diversity of trees and plants that are cool because they are actually native to the place and not transplanted.
The next thing you notice is there is not a whole lot at this park. Three lands, Tomorrow, Fantasy and Adventure. You know there is a dearth of attractions when they list the Leaky Tikis in Adventureland, the kids’ water feature in Tomorrowland and just walking the 30 feet from one side of Sleeping Beauty’s castle to the other as “attractions.” We went on Space Mountain, Ghost Galaxy, Special for Halloween and that was nice because it was different. Buzz Lightyear was a copy from Disneyland and Winnie the Pooh a copy from Disney World. They really played up Small World since a Disney was built in Hong Kong, it really was a Small World after all. The Jungle River Cruise was strange. It took the place of the River’s of America from all the other parks and ended with a fire bursting, water flooding grand finale. There was also a different version of Festival of the Lion King from Florida and The Golden Mickey’s from the Cruise Line. The very distinct thing about the park is they try to work three languages into everything they do, Cantonese, Mandarin and English. This makes things very interesting when they are trying to spit out main plotlines in three languages. The woman at Golden Mickey’s was amazing, singing and speaking seamlessly between them. We also noticed we weren’t in Tokyo anymore. The rude, pushy annoying people were back. We had a very enjoyable day overall and it was very nice relaxing and slowly making our way from one place to the next because you could easily see everything at a slow pace. The Halloween decorations would never fly in any other Disney park, a little too hardcore. It started to rain in the early afternoon and we were again soaking by 7:30 watching the fireworks, which, by the way, were very impressive. This park was built for lots of close range fireworks around the castle. This was the most impressive thing of the day.

Anyway, I’m tired and creating lots of run on ideas. That’s about it for today. We had an uneventful ride back on the Subway and started relaxing early.

Day 10. Saturday Sept 11

Today started out a little rough. After doing laundry last night I went and met up with Matt and couchsurfing Katie at a bar. I knew we had to get up early so I only had one drink. Matt, Katie and some of her friends wanted to go and Karaoke to show us how it’s really done in Tokyo but I am Mr. Responsible and said I had to get back and pack. I got to bed a little after one am. Matt got back at about five am. The plan was to be on the train to the airport at 6:30. I jolted awake at 6:20. I hurried through showering and dragged Matt out of bed. By about 7:30 we were on our way and were making great train times and connections. We made it to the airport a little late but the first flight was full anyway so it didn’t matter. The next flight was an hour later and we made that one so we were all good. It was my first time on Cathay Pacific. It is crazy the difference between crappy US air carriers and an airline from a different country. We sat in coach and got a full meal and had the individual tvs.




After a 1,845 mile flight we arrived in Hong Kong. It took a while to make it through customs and get our bags. We made our way to bus A21 that would take us to our hostel. All the buses were double deckers and it took forever to make it to our stop because the traffic here is crazy! A million double decker buses, taxis and a few normal cars. We finally made it to our stop and our hostel gave us instructions to get there and warned us that there were aggressive people outside that are bothersome so ignore them. We fought our way through and ignored the people trying to get us to go with them and made it to our building which is absolutely full of little hostels. We got to the 15th floor where our little nine unit Ocean Hostel is located. It is really nice, a tiny place in a big old building. Photos are coming! After checking in we made our way on a walk to see what is near us.



It turns out we are in the middle of the chaos and the action. My mom would HATE this place. There are a million loud people packed into a small space. It is quite the shock after coming from the calmness of Tokyo. There are people of every ethnicity and walk of life. There are people hawking things on every corner. It is crazy. But it is also beautiful. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region consists of four areas. Lantau Island is where the airport and Disneyland are, New Territories is nearest the border with China proper and then there is the heavily populated Kowloon, across the water from Hong Kong Island. We are in Kowloon right by the water and the Hong Kong Island skyline is amazing. The view is of skyscrapers with mountains going into the clouds immediately behind it. We walked around the water for a few hours and they do a laser light symphony show at night on the buildings of both sides of the water. The vast majority of the people here speak English as well as Mandarin Chinese or whatever their native tongue is. This is truly a world city and cultural melting pot and I again can’t believe what a stark contrast this place is from Tokyo. A little too disorganized and stressful for my liking but it was cool seeing it. I anxiously await Hong Kong Disneyland tomorrow so I can be back in my comfort zone for a bit. It is getting late and we had a long day, so I’m off to bed!

Day 9. Friday Sept 10

Today I dragged Matt out of bed and we headed for the parks at 7:30am. We got the picture of the crazy Tokyo train rush during this time. From the train we could see that there were a few thousand people in line at Disneyland waiting for the 9am park opening. We were headed for Disney Sea and hoping it wasn’t as mobbed. We found it was busy, but not mobbed. Upon entering we shot over to Tower of Terror for a fastpass and then ran back over to Journey… and waited nine minutes for that pretty cool ride. Nine is a lot better than the 110 minute wait of last night! We then had a little time before our fastpass so we got an early lunch in Cape Cod. It was typical American burger and fries except on all burgers here they put eggs. It is strange but I figured it was more like breakfast time anyway, so why not try it. The seating area for eating the food was in a live theatre room where a show called, “My Friend Duffy” almost perpetually plays. I just found out about this Duffy and I don’t know where he came from, but now I can’t escape him! As far as I can gather he is Mickey or Minnie’s teddy bear and you can buy this (absolutely plain) teddy bear at every store and buy him outfits and whatnot. Now these Japanese people all have at least one of these things. Some people have multiple as well as key chains and other Duffy crap. We say an hour or longer wait to take your picture with this thing and I just don’t understand it!




Anyway, I digress. From the new and cool Tower of Terror, we made our way to Disneyland to get our Fastpass for Haunted Mansion Holiday Nightmare and then to the Cirque du Soleil Theatre Tokyo.



We went to the 1pm Cirque show Zed. It is a newer Cirque show and I think it’s my 18th or 19th different Cirque show. It had an amazing post modern looking theatre and although, as Matt said, none of the acts alone were particularly strong, when you took in the whole scene that was being created it was pretty amazing overall. My favorite acts included the Lasso guys, Chinese Poles with a trampoline twist and Banquine, where it’s nothing but people throwing other people around. I really enjoyed the show and it will be a highlight of my trip.



After the show we rode the very cool Nightmare Before Christmas version of Haunted Mansion. I will have to do this in Disneyland in Cali sometime so I know what they were saying during the Japanese narrations. We then said goodbye to Tokyo Disney Resort and made our way back to Chiba. The only disappointment was the crappy selection of merchandise here at Disney. No magnets and no t-shirts. Every store has tons of candy and cookie things. I guess that’s all these people buy. Oh well, we have plenty of stops ahead of us to buy soveniers.



Back in Chiba we waited for a bit for Katie to get off work and get back in the apartment. In the downtime meandering around I bought TJ some crazy Japanese candy and a friendly and probably a little crazy Japanese guy that knew a little English talked to us for a half hour.



As I am sitting here doing laundry on our last night in Japan, I think of our brief time here. I will definitely be back someday. The people are amazing and will help you at every turn, even if they don’t speak the language. They are a quiet, respectful and efficient bunch of people and those are all traits I respect. I have a million more things to see here next time, for early in the morn we are off to Hong Kong

Day 8. Thursday Sept 9

Every day I seem to wake up really early. Between 5:30 and 6:30. My body has obviously still not adjusted from being half a world away from home. The only good thing is that it gives me time to write in my blog and upload pictures.




The first thing we did today was go to Chiba University with Katie because her friend is a doctoral student there. We were to be guinea pigs in a study comparing Americans buying instincts with those of the Japanese. She was having trouble finding Americans. Apparently Katie has Canadian, German, British and other European friends, but Americans are few and far between. The setup was interesting. There were lots of computers and you put your chin on this chin rest and they put a piece of equipment that was like glass between you and the computer screen and calibrated it so the machine could see exactly where you were looking on the screen and what you were instinctually drawn to. After that, we headed back to the house and then got some Dominos pizza comfort food before making our way on the train to Tokyo Disney Sea.



Tokyo Disney Sea is the best themed and most intricately detailed park I have ever been to. Not a single penny was spared in recreating amazing different areas themed around water. You walk in the park at Mediterranean Harbor with an amazing view of the canals of Venice, Mt Prometheus and other park landmarks. All of the parks lands were amazing. “American Waterfront” is themed in two areas, Cape Cod and 1900 New York City. This is where you’ll find an all new version of Tower of Terror (without the Twilight Zone part.) There are also shows and lots of transportation vehicles here… cars, ferries and an electric railway. Next to that is Port Adventure with Aquatopia and Stormrider (like Star Tours and Soarin combined.) In the back of the park is Lost River Delta where an almost exact duplicate of the Indiana Jones ride from Disneyland resides. The kids’ areas are Arabian Coast and Mermaid Lagoon, both charming and amazingly themed and detailed. And finally is the centerpiece of the park, Mysterious Island. Journey to the Center of the Earth is the parks flagship ride, with its next generation Test Track ride system and a thrilling end to the ride shooting you out of Mount Prometheus. There is also 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, one of the more interesting dark rides I’ve been on. The definite highlights of our day were the shows in Mediterranean harbor. The day show, Legend of Mythica was like a water parade and fountain show combined, and the night show BraviSEAmo was a fireworks, fountain and fire show that reminded me of Reflections of Earth at Epcot. The park was great just to walk around in and take in the detail of paths that lead to Venetian Gondolas or exploration trails. You could have a fantastic time in this park without going on a ride or seeing a show. We had a great Beef Curry dinner in the Arabian Coast section. Just the atmosphere of the place takes you away to a different world.



Its good people here don’t mind waiting in lines because these places are mobbed. They patiently wait hours for rides and shows. They just started the Halloween special programming and these people LOVE Halloween. They are dressed up in the most intricate Disney costumes I have ever seen. These people are born seamstresses! In Florida all you see is the off the shelf crap Disney makes. Here if you dress up like Ariel or Jasmine you have to wear a leotard under your costume (not socially acceptable to show all that skin…) They have decorations for Halloween in every corner of the park. People wait hours to see the special Halloween shows and meet and greets and the Tokyo Disneyland runs a special afternoon parade, Welcome to Spookyville, three times an afternoon it’s so popular. They even have a crappy four minute long fireworks show that is special for Halloween. It was so busy we refused to wait 90 minutes for Tower of Terror or 110 minutes for Journey to the Center of the Earth and resolved to get up tomorrow at the crack of dawn to try and beat the crowds. We headed back on the train at about 10pm and met a few more friends for a couple minutes, but we got to bed pretty quick having to wake up early.

Day 7. Wednesday Sept 8

We decided we were going to do some sightseeing on Wednesday because it was Ben's day off from work so he could come along with us.  We didn't really do anything overly exciting in the morning.  We swung back by Disney to activate our tickets because we weren't sure if they would cancel our remaining days if we didn't use them consecutively. 

It turns out Tokyo was getting hit with the outer bands of a Typhoon today and it poured down rain almost all day long.  It at least cooled things off.  We were determined to still see some sights but being soaking wet took away a little of the fun.  Also, to the people who say trains in Tokyo run on time, I say, apparently you have never been here during rain because almost every train was delayed or stopped altogether today.

After my update it is really going to sound like we didn't really do anything, but we walked around a super duper lot, the trains were taking forever and the rain was slowing us down.  The main sights we saw were the Tokyo Tower, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris.  It even had crepes under it.  Another random, polite person walked us half the way when we looked lost.  These people are endlessly nice.  We also visited the Senso-ji temple complex.  Check out the pictures for more about these places.

We had lunch at a restaurant in Tokyo.  No tipping here.  It is hard for a tipped worker like me to wrap my head around no one getting tips.  Being the picky eater I am, I settled on noodles with dry seaweed on top. 

Perhaps the craziest thing we saw all day was the crush of after work commuters.  Matt described it best.  They are like ants.  Hard working, efficient and pouring out of every opening and crack trying to get to their destination as fast as possible.  People were just streaming into the Subway station.  There was no end to the chaos, just a constant rush of people.  On the escalators they stand in a perfect one person line on the left, leaving the right open if you need to run down the stairs to get somewhere.  The sight is even crazier when the train pulls up.  It does not look like you can fit even one more person on, but they politely but firmly cram themselves in.  Matt and I had trouble doing that so we became separated from Ben.  We took a few different packed trains and made it back to Chiba a few hours later.

The rest of the night, we chilled and played board games with our awesome couchsurfing hosts.  Tomorrow, we are off to Tokyo Disney Sea for more fun.

Day 6. Tuesday Sept 7

First whole day in Tokyo!

After waking up before dawn and killing some time updating the blog, Matt and I made our way to the 7-11 store.  It is a very nice store here.  Fresh food and other convenience store products.  We were going to get something to eat, but then we remembered reading that the Japanese do not eat while they are walking.  It is also bad to put soy sauce on rice, blow your nose in public and they have very specific rules on shoe wearing inside the house.  Point of the story:  We ended up just getting drinks.

From there we made our way a block to the train station.  Now this station is one stop away from the main Chiba station.  I had directions from that station and over there everything is in Japanese and English since it is a main transfer point.  But not here... We looked at the train map and tried to buy tickets from the automated machine for a few minutes, but that definitely wasn't working.  We made our way over to the one ticket booth and like a dumb tourist pretty much just put up two fingers and said Disneyland.  The guy told us our total and I paid him and Matt started freaking out, saying we just paid like $130 for the train tickets.  We tried to put them in the entrance machines, and they wouldn't work and the guy in the window was pointing back around the corner.  We didn't see any other train entrance over there so we went by the buses and the lady was like "No, Disneylando No."  We were starting to get frustrated and were already confused when the very nice man from the ticket booth showed up by the bus and walked us back down to the train station and pointed at the ticket we needed to buy and helped us with the ticket machines.  Thank god for nice, helpful Japanese people.  We then realized that what we bought from him were the actual tickets to get in to Tokyo Disneyland.  We were quite relieved that it only cost 450 yen (5 bucks) to get to Disney, and not $130.  Having made it through the station gate, we easily figured out how to get there, all the route signs were now in English too.  We ride the yellow train toward Tokyo for 23 min and then transfered to the Orange train to Maihama station 12 minutes away, which is right at the entrance to Disney.  Easy enough.  By the end of the day we had the train system all figured out and were pretty proud of ourselves.

We arrived Disney with mobs of other people.  I have never seen so many people in my life streaming off a train and into a Disney park. It was 95 degrees and 100% humidity and we were dying the whole day.  Disney here is by far better than any other Disney (according to me, Matt says he still likes Florida best.)  There are more people working than I have ever seen, every food cart stand and restaurant is open with no waiting, and there are not a million fat rude Americans plowing through on their ecvs and wheelchairs (there were two wheelchairs in the disabled section for the parade.  In the US, they would be fighting over who gets in this area.)  I think in Tokyo residents' fantasy world they imagine actually have a little elbow room and that is why the walking paths and park just seem massive and why the lay out is so huge.  The parade floats they run down the sreets here would never fit down the paths in the US.  They probably need so much room because the place gets so packed too.  It's sad to say, but another reason the place is probably so awesome is that it is the one Disney Park complex not owned by Disney.  When Oriental Land Company makes gobs of money, they reinvest it in the parks, it doesn't go to shoring up the lagging film studio, television network, consumer products division or whatever other area of Disney that is lagging that quarter.

Anyway, Tokyo Disneyland is awesome!  I never in my life thought I would say that a Winnie the Pooh ride was awesome, but Pooh's Hunny Hunt is unbelievable.  The technology I have never seen before.  There is no track, you leave the station with two other honeypots and you move from one scene to another scene, room to room, moving around each other, sometimes being the first pot sometimes being the last, until finally you get to a giant grand finale room where about 12 honeypots are all zooming around each other and going to see different effects in different parts of the room.  You would have to ride a few times to try to get to the variety of areas in this room.  I guess it is hard to explain, but it was amazing.  I also loved that the roller coasters (Big Thunder, Space Mountain) were so much smoother and less herky jerky than other places.  I also found the Country Bear Jamboree Vacation (think Chuck E Cheese show, but better) especially amusing because it was in Japanese and they were singing songs like "On the Road Again," and "Achy Breaky Heart."  The Tokyo Disney Electrical Parade "Dreamlights" was the best, longest, biggest Disney parade I have ever seen, so that was the entertainment highlight of the day.  They cancelled the fireworks because of high winds... It was sweltering hot but at least there was a breeze I guess.  After 11 hours at Disneyland we called it a day and got back on the train to Chiba.  We met Ben and Katie and, despite being exhausted, we went to a little restaurant with them where they got a scary, scary salad with raw octopus, tuna, salmon and other gross things.  Matt and I got chicken and pork kabobs and pot stickers.  I am a super duper picky eater so it is definitely difficult to eat here.  It took me about an hour in Disneyland to find something I would eat (chicken and scrambled egg rice.)  I ordered a slice of pizza special and it had shredded crab meat and I don't know what else on it.  I scrapped the top off and ate the crust. 

Back to the restaurant, an interesting thing happened.  Katie said it is why they don't really have Japanese friends here, only other foreigners.  A guy (who had been drinking) kept peeking around our booth and finally came over and tried, despite only knowing a few words, to talk to us.  His girlfriend who spoke more English came a few minutes later.  Katie said it is always the same.  They find out you are American, ask the same six questions like "Where are you from," "How long have you been here," "What do you do," etc, etc and then they ask to be friends so they can learn and practice English.  Well, this is frustrating to teachers who do that for work all day and don't need to practice English because they already know it.  They were super polite and friendly but I could see how it would definitely be annoying.

That is about it for today.  We went home and crashed.  We were crazy tired and other then the short train frustration and sweating like crazy people all day we had a pretty excellent first day.

Days 4-5. Sunday Sept 5 and Monday Sept 6

Jet-lag confusion!!!!!!!!!!!

Here I am, sitting on Chiba (a suburb that people include in the 34 million population of Tokyo,) at 6:20 am on Tuesday, September 7.  In Madison right now, it is still Monday, 4:20 pm to be exact.  For some reason, this is endlessly confusing to me.  Hopefully it is because I just got here, was tired and and just have to acclimate myself.

After my last post, we got on the plane, AA flight 169 and got our first class seats.  My first experience with those on an international flight, and it was Awesome!!! We were definitely spoiled on the flight.  We had like a seven course meal, I am not joking. Bread service, then grilled chilled shrimp, then salad, then a steak, then a sundae for dessert.  Then up in front they put out snacks and sweets in case you were hungry before they fed you again.  Toward the end of the flight they served another meal but I was sleeping and full so I only ate the fresh fruit and just baked cookie.  We left LAX at 12:15pm on Sunday and arrived at NRT on Monday at right around 3:30pm.  The actual flight time was just under 11 hours.  It didn't seem that long with seats that transformed into beds and the on demand video screen... I watched Date Night, five 30 Rock episodes and played some Tetris.

The plan when we got to Narita was to take the long journey through Customs, after which we would collect our baggage, then get in the Immigration line, and finally find our way to the rental phone counter so we could get the phone I reserved and call Katie, who with her husband Ben, were going to be our couchsurfing hosts while in Japan.  Katie said when they came six months ago this process took them about two hours, so she would meet us in the airport Subway station at about 6pm since our flight was scheduled in at a little after four.  Imagine her surprise when I was calling her at 4:10 telling her our flight was early, we walked right past an empty massive queue to get our fingerprints and picture taken by immigration, down the escalators where our bags were waiting for us and right through customs where the guy barely batted an eye.  He just took our sheet and we were officially in Japan!  Of course, our flight had 97 empty seats on it and if other flights are similarly empty, we picked a great time to come for a visit.

We called Katie and decided we were going to venture to the Chiba station near where she lived on her own since it would take her a while to get to the airport.  We encountered nothing but calm, helpful Japanese people everywhere in the airport.  It wasn't massive, loud disorganized chaos like in the US.  There were people everywhere and even if they didn't know English, they were happy to help.  Matt said he is not use to me being as lost and confused as he usually is.  We have mostly only been places together I am super familiar with.  We pretty much just kept saying "Chiba Station," because that is where we needed to get to and eventually found our way to the Subway where another nice lady zoomed through all the Japanese prompts to get us Subway tickets. 

We met up with Katie and ventured (not too far) to her apartment. She and her husband are from Seattle, Washington and came here six months ago to teach English.  She made us yummy chicken, broccoli and rice for dinner.  I noticed there was no oven, just a stovetop and she said that Japanese people really don't eat food that needs to be baked.  That would never work for me!  Where would I cook all the frozen pizza?!?
I was expecting a little tiny apartment, and it was small, but definitely not as small as I imagined.  We are of course a ways from the shoebox living of downtown Tokyo proper.  At about nine pm I was having trouble keeping my eyes open after the time change and long journey.  We decided to lay down and that's right when Ben got home from work.  We said hello and talked to him for a bit.  He has Wednesday off, so hopefully we can hang out more then.  We went to bed and now I am up bright and early, ready to explore when Matt wakes up.  It is ungodly humid here, like 95 degrees and 100 percent humidity, but it's better then it being winter I suppose. 

After our first few hours here I am excited that we lucked out and got such a great couple to stay with for our first couchsurfing experience and I know we are going to have an awesome next couple of days... Stay Tuned!!!

Day 3. Saturday, Sept 4

I am going to try to do a quick update while I am sitting at LAX awaiting our 5,451 mile journey to Tokyo.

Saturday was another great day at Disneyland.  It was the busiest day we were there, but we had already done everything, so we were relaxed and hit the few things we had yet to see.  The distinctive difference between Disney World and here is that these are very regional parks, not vacation destinations so much.  At Disney World the majority of people are definitely 40something tourist families, whereas around here there is a much more diverse and interesting bunch of locals.  Young styling families from around my age on.  It's a really fun atmosphere for someone my age.

We ate our only sit down meal of the California portion of our trip at Tortilla Joe's.  I love chips and salsa and Mexican food and we also had a pitcher of strawberry margarita.  Needless to say, we had a pretty awesome lunch here.  I also got a little tired, so we made our way back to the hotel for a nap.

At night, we went back in the picture perfect weather to the parks.  We saw a couple 3D movies, rode the Disneyland train around the park and ate some quick food at California Adventure.  Then, as has become our nightly tradition, we made our way to the Paradise Pier area to watch the awesome World of Color show for the third and last time.  We have now watched it from dead center in the audience the first night, our best view, as well as from the back where it's easier to see everything going on and the very front row where you see more of the details (and get a little wet!)  This was definitely the highlight of our California time.  The Disney magic that brings the entire bay alive in fountains, fire, and animations projected on water is just amazing and the technology is unbelievable I'm sure!

Anyway, we got up bright and early at 6am because the Disneyland 1/2 marathon was going on and all the area roads were closed so we wanted an early shuttle to LAX. Definitely don't want to miss our Tokyo flight.  I will write again soon, next time, from the other side of the world!!!  The adventure to places unknown is beginning shortly and our trip  is about to get a lot more interesting!

Day 2. Friday, September 3

Nothing too exciting happened today. It was mostly a day to recover from not sleeping because we were so excited to go on the trip and recuperate from our long and exhausting day yesterday.

I slept in (until 8:30) and went down and got continental breakfast from our hotel. Nothing fancy, but nice to get some convenient (free) food. We hung out at the hotel for a few hours because we weren’t in any big hurry to get anywhere. The weather has been absolutely perfect here. My allergies don’t like the sun, but at least it is not crazy humid. The nights are my ideal temperature, mid 60s to low 70s.

We meandered around Disneyland and the stores for a bit, and then got some yummy kabobs in Adventureland. We ate at a buffet for lunch and then made our way to California Adventure to see the Aladdin musical, which is always fun. My allergies and the sun beating down became uncomfortable so we made our way back to the hotel. The shuttles that run are efficient and convenient. It’s only $4 for a one day unlimited ride pass. We must have been a lot more tired than we thought because we slept for a few hours.

At 8:30 I felt great, rested and it was dark (the sun makes my dumb allergies worse.) We made our way back to Disneyland and rode Indiana Jones again to kill time and since it’s so cool. At 10:30 we watched Fantasmic! It is definitely one of my favorite Disneyland shows. We then shot over to California Adventure to see World of Color again. It wasn’t as good as our first viewing last night since we were further back but it was still awesome!
Well, that’s about it for today, pretty uneventful. It was nice to just relax for a day and not have to be in a huge rush to do anything. Tomorrow is our last day at Disneyland so we will wrap up the last few things we haven’t done yet.

Day 1- Thursday, Sept 2, 2010

On our way!

After wishing and working summer away, vacation has finally arrived!

We got up bright and early (4:30 am) and mom and dad took us to the airport.  Stupid Delta cancelled a fight to Detroit, so they booked up our 6am Chicago flight.  Luckily we got out on the 6:30 to the AA mothership, Dallas.  Non-reving (travelling standby) is like the lottery.  We were standing by gate C4 in DFW, hoping we could get on the oversold flight to LA and as each minute ticks by, you are fearing you will get rolled over to the next flight.  But then, at the last minute, hope!  They start calling names of people who haven't shown up yet, and then... Now! Now! Now!  "Wilson, Snyder, Get on the plane!  It needs to leave!  Now!!!"  I told the cranky gate agent I don't know how she works gates everyday at the hub.  She said, "I know, it's horrible here."  Oh well, so much for trying to have a pleasant conversation with her.  After a smooth flight we landed in LA and made our way to the Happiest Place on Earth and Walt's original park, Disneyland.... HOORAY!!!

We checked into our hotel (Ramada Limited, $35 on Priceline!) and immediately caught the Shuttle to the parks.  We entered Disneyland at 3pm and were no longer tired from not getting any sleep last night because of the excitement or having to get up so early (2:30am California time!!!)

I love Disneyland, probably because this is only my 4th visit, Not my 1000th to Disney World.  And it is so much smaller, more intimate and so many more rides!  We spent the next nine hours between Disneyland and Disney California Adventure.  We stayed until midnight when we were whipped by the exhaustion of the long day.  We couldn't bring ourselves to leave before closing because it was so dead. We got on nearly every attraction in both parks with a wait of nothing to 10 minutes.  We didn't think our luck would last the next two days during a packed weekend so we wanted to take advantage of no waiting while we could, despite staying up nearly 24 hours straight. 

Highlights of the day included the Indiana Jones ride, the Magical fireworks and the absolutely unbelievable World of Color show at California Adventure.  That show was amazing.  I do not even know how they figured out all that technology to make such an awesome show!

Anyway, we bought noodle cups out of the hotel vending machine after a crazy bus ride back to the hotel at midnight.  We must look like easy guys to talk to because the Guatemalan bus driver was telling us crazy stories not appropriate for this blog until we got to the hotel where the moral was to find Jesus Christ after your life gets crazy.  People are so interesting!  I love them!

Time to get going... Another fun day in the theme parks is ahead... But today we are well rested!