From Europe to Africa in America - A Sisters' Expedition

[glennbo123]

Magdalene and Katharina, just a heads-up that I had to start a Part II thread to finish my TR....I haven't seen you find your way over yet, so I thought I'd let you know. There's a link in my signature.

 

[englishrose47]

Bumping this up !!!

 

[Flossbolna]

Hi everyone! Sorry for being away from my own thread for quite some while. Work hasn't been fun recently... But the good news is that we have three updates finished to be posted soon. So things will start moving again! I still hope to finish this before we depart for Paris!

What a lovely tea! I'm glad you took the pictures and posted it. I'm also glad they didn't catch you.

I really enjoy the history lessons too.

Thanks! It was a fun event! I am sure the signs were mainly because they have so many tourists coming in that they don't want their own guests to be subjected to constant flashs...

Thank you Magdalene!! I LOVE all the pictures we did see the Aldon Hotel too (just the outside) when were in Berlin! Didn't know about the tea, that would have been fun next time maybe (oh there will be a next time) And I heard a few interesting stories about our American Embassy All I have to say is nice way to spend our tax dollars........

I could look at Germany pictures all day. You know I love pictures...

Hi Wendy! Everytime I post pics from Berlin I think that you must have seen those places as well. The embassy was quite a political issue in Berlin as well... And for some time it seemed like it would not be built in its old spot... But I think the result does fit into the square now!

 

[Flossbolna]

Such a great update!! I just invited our Goddaughter to tea at the Plaza in NYC for her birthday this summer- I'll have to take lots of photos to compare!

Sounds like a wonderful event to do with your grand daughter! Tea at the Plaza in NYC sounds great, I must put that on the list of things to do when I revisit NYC (hopefully sometime this decade!).

Loved the Berlin Tea and the History lesson !!! The Hotel looks elegant as does the Tea !!Thanks for sharing Magdalene !!

Thanks for the nice comment Rosie. The good thing about the hotel was that while it was very elegant, we felt that the personell was still very welcoming.

Thanks for the mini-trip to Berlin! Always interesting to get a glimpse of life in Germany.

You are welcome! And I really hope that I finally get around to write that postcard that I bought weeks ago!

Hi Magdalene--

Not to hijack your TR, but had asked me to let you know if I was writing up any other trip reports. We just took a day trip to the Statue of Liberty for my daughter's birthday, and I started writing up a TR on the DIS Dads website. So, if you (and anyone else) are interested, please come check it out!

DIS Dads web site link

Thank you very much! I did read the first installment when you posted this and thought it was very interesting. I was in NYC in 2008 and we visited the Statue of Liberty then - on a lovely sunny September day. It was a great excursion and one of the highlights of the trip! Have to check wether there are any new updates!

 

[Flossbolna]

Nice bonus!!!

The hotel was beautiful - I can see how it would evoke the same feel as the Grand Floridian. Everything looked yummy - EXCEPT the sandwich with the sunny side up egg on it!

That was a strange sandwich: it had a thick slice of cucumber and then the egg on top. I think it wasn't our favourite...

What a lovely tea and a beautiful hotel

So did you drink the whole bottle of champagne?

I have often taken pictures while pretending to text Hee-hee

Tracy

I am sure the "look like you text while taking a picture" is quite common!

And no, the tea included only one glass of champagne, but it was poured at the table, which was nice! No way would we have been able to dring a 1.5 litre bottle between the two of us!

Thank you so much for sharing your tea with us!!! It looked wonderful. WHEN I make it to Germany, this will be on my list! The tower of food does look huge, but I saw your comment that it's just the angle of the picture.

I also see Liesa's "headline".

Ah! Hopefully the training gets easier quickly! I'm still stuck in the 10-20 minute run range. Hopefully as the weather gets warmer I'll get back out there and push myself to make 20 easily, then up it to 30 eventually. I want to enter a 5k sometime this year.

I am really looking forwart to WHEN you come to Germany to meet you here!

I think entering a race is a great motivator, especially if it is your first one. You really want to make sure to finish the race!

 

[englishrose47]

Morning Magdalena !!I am anxiuosly waiting the next update!!!

 

[Kleese]

18 more days till your next trip!!!

 

[All7OfUs]

You must be terribly, terribly busy getting things done ahead of your trip!! Hope you are able to keep up and arent' too stressed out!!

 

[podsnel]

Sounds like a wonderful event to do with your grand daughter! Tea at the Plaza in NYC sounds great, I must put that on the list of things to do when I revisit NYC (hopefully sometime this decade!).

GOD daughter....you mean... My kids haven't even gone on a date yet, I think my 1st Grand daughter might still be a year or two away!

Anyway...just wanted to say, if you DO go to NYC someday, you'd better count me in for a meet- I live so close to the city!

 

[Flossbolna]

Ugh, how did I miss the German tea update?

Thank you Magdalene for the history lesson and what a beautiful building! It's angles are so precise! The lobby is stunning and I love the seating area, looks so cozy! The food looks delicious, was there any dairy in that egg? Oh, how I love scones. I can't have them anymore but I miss them! With lots of clotted cream and jam!

Wow, what a special treat! You should absolutely should go again with Katharina! And thank you for sharing this is, I love all of your German bonus posts, keep them coming!

Hi, I am glad you enjoyed the update! I will be in Berlin soon and we are planning to incorporate another tea during that time.

I love bonus updates!!

Just want to send a quick thank you out to you & podsnel for the info about AKL and especially tiggrbaby for posting the link to the AKL thread. I've been learning a lot. Gosh there's so much to read but I'm so excited!


How's the planning for DLP going? It's coming up really soon and then not to far after that DW Very excited for you!

I am glad that you are finding useful AKL information! It is a wonderful resort!

Planning for DLP is actually not so much. With just two parks which are in walking distance from each other (and from our hotel) it is more just "go where your fancy takes you" which is quite nice in contrast to the planning involved with WDW. The only thing I need to do is to make a reservation for a restaurant on Sunday night - but according to other DISers, there is no need to be super early. Many people make reservations on the day of without any problems.

 

[Flossbolna]

Bumping this up !!!

Morning Magdalena !!I am anxiuosly waiting the next update!!!

Hi Rosie!! I must say, I love your little bumps! It always is very motivating to see that you haven't forgotten my report!

18 more days till your next trip!!!

Wow, you are right, today it is only 17 days! I hadn't looked at my own ticker for quite some time, so I was really surprised when I saw your post yesterday!

You must be terribly, terribly busy getting things done ahead of your trip!! Hope you are able to keep up and arent' too stressed out!!

Things are getting better! And the good thing for me is that I will have the whole week before our DLP trip off from work. So plenty of time to get organised.

GOD daughter....you mean... My kids haven't even gone on a date yet, I think my 1st Grand daughter might still be a year or two away!

Anyway...just wanted to say, if you DO go to NYC someday, you'd better count me in for a meet- I live so close to the city!

I meant GOD daughter! I was even thinking that my god daughter would not yet enjoy things like that, she is still a bit young and I think she isn't used to fancy restaurants...

And meeting you in NYC would be fantastic! I really loved my first visit to that city so much, but knowing that I even would be able to meet some locals (you and Brook), makes it even more special. I think travelling becomes so much more interesting if you can meet the people and not only see the sights.

 

[Captain_Oblivious]

You are welcome! And I really hope that I finally get around to write that postcard that I bought weeks ago!

Looking forward to it! Thanks!

Thank you very much! I did read the first installment when you posted this and thought it was very interesting. I was in NYC in 2008 and we visited the Statue of Liberty then - on a lovely sunny September day. It was a great excursion and one of the highlights of the trip! Have to check wether there are any new updates!

Sounds like you had much better weather...I posted a chapter on Ellis Island about a week ago and I'm hoping to get something up later today on the Statue. We'll see if I have time. Thank you so much for reading along!

 

[Flossbolna]

During out tea Katharina and I had been talking about our plans for the rest of the trip. After this day we would have one full day and one half day left over. We decided that we would want to hit all parks for one last visit and consulting our ADR schedule and our master plan which had all the park hours and best park recommendations from touringplans, we came up with the following plan: today afternoon last visit to MK, tomorrow last visit to Epcot and DHS and then on Friday last visit to AK before taking Magical Express to the airport.

The only problem with this plan was that we had an ADR at Narcoossee's for Katharina's birthday dinner and we wanted to have nicer cloth for that restaurant.

So our original plan to check out the GF in depth after the tea was seriously abbreviated, we quickly looked outside, got a couple of pictures:

I had never been a fan of the GF, to me it had a stuffy atmosphere, a bit too exclusive. However, on this visit, I just enjoyed the friendly architecture, the beautiful beach and the light colours. I would have loved to explore more and for the first time thought that I might want to try to stay there once.

However, we were in a hurry. So what did we do to go back to AKL to change clothes? Of course we did not go to DTD to connect to an AKL bus there!! In German we have a saying “I did not swim here on a soup” meaning I am not an idiot, and this would fit here... No, of course we took another taxi! At least that's what we thought. But no, we did not take ANOTHER taxi, we took the same one again which had driven us from Epcot to the GF for our tea! I was feeling a bit sorry for the driver since it seemed that for the two hours we spent at the GF he just had been sitting there waiting for the next ride. I can't imagine that this is very lucrative... Our fare from GF to AKL was $ 19.25 on the meter, so exactly the same as the taxi from WL to AKL.

Once back at AKL I got the syndrom Brook described so well in her TR: towards the end of a trip one suddenly starts to take more and more pictures of the resort. So here are some random pictures of AKL which I took walking to our room (with a slight detour):

One thing that I always thought was very odd about AKL was the lack of design in the stair cases. There are two outdoor staircases next to the huge lobby window (the columns covered in leafs seen above), but otherwise the stairs look like this:

The first time I stayed at AKL I never used them because to me they looked like you would only be allowed to use them in case of emergency. Actually, I think that you could not use them to get to the pool since they would exit into a CM only area. Why could they not put some nicely themed and more available staircases into the building?

Continued in Part 2

 

[Flossbolna]

We quickly changed into something a bit more apt for dinner at a signature restaurant and headed out to the bus stop to catch a bus to the MK which appeared momentarily!

The sun was shining outside which made us very happy! My trip notes specifically say that we were in such a good mood! And I still remember this evening as particularly fantastic.

On the bus we started to make a plan of things we wanted to achieve during our last visit to the MK and came up with the following:

Get a Dole Whip
See Toon Town
See Tiki Room
Ride TTA
Ride BTMRR

We arrived at the MK and according to the properties of the following pictures we arrived at the MK at 5:10 pm. And our ADR at Narcoossee's was at 7:30 pm – so not much time to accomplish everything!

This is with my camera:

And these are the real photopass pictures:

We still took some time to enjoy Main Street in the evening light:

Stopped for another picture at the castle (you can't have enough of these, and I think it is the only time we got the castle behind us with sunshine on this trip...):

Looking at our skin I think we definitely weren’t used to the sun yet....

From there we split up. I thought I would check whether BTMRR FPs were still available. And yes, at that time of the year they sometimes don't run out until closing! But not on that day, there weren't any FPs anymore and the line was about 30 minutes. So we thought, no last ride on BTMRR for us...

Katharina had in the mean time procured a Dole Whip for us to share:

I knew that I really like this snack and Katharina liked it as well! I think the portions are very generous and sharing was definitely the way to go for us with this snack. But it was getting chilly outside again and we got to the point where we just could not face eating anything ice cold anymore. So I am very embarrassed to say that between the two of us, we were not able to finish it!!

We strolled over to Toon Town from Adventureland, took a picture of Tom Sawyer's Island, one attraction I still have not seen in the MK:

Had a looked at Columbia Harbour House which is a very well themed restaurant (and has a delicious hummus sandwich!). And then arrived at Toon Town! Which as I am writing this is already part of Disney history. It closed on February, 11. Unfortunately Toon Town was very crowded! Therefore we only saw Mickey's house. Minnie's had actually a line outside and a wait time!

Toon town was too overcrowed and hectic for us on this relaxing day. I enjoyed finding all these little details, but would have liked to be there only with my sister. At least I saw some of it before it was gone.


When we left Toon Town we also left the crowds behind and got on the Teacups without a wait:


Warning!!!! Don’t be afraid, it is still me and I’m NOT dangerous!

We were going really crazy with spinning the tea cup as much as we could and had a lot of fun! However when we got off we were severely disorientated and I felt like my vision was a bit off as well – I was seeing tiny stars all around me... Which of course we found pretty hilarious again! Katharina said it wasn't from the spinning but from the flash she used when taking my picture...

We then moved on to the calmer ride of the TTA – now called Peoplemover once again. We still had a little bit of time afterwards and thought we would check out BTMRR again. So off to the other side of the park again and YES! A 5 minute wait was posted and I think we did not even wait that long. By now it was pretty dark and we got a ride at night on BTMRR! It is a lovely coaster, but at the moment I am really looking forward to ride its cousin in Paris, which is even better (faster, on an island, with onride pictures...).

After that it was finally time to say goodbye to the Magic Kingdom for this trip:

And the only thing that was still missing from our list was the Tiki Room! Which isn't that great in its current incarnation anyway, the original is much better!

Leaving the Magic Kingdom for the last time always seems the most difficult of all the parks even though it isn't my favourite park. But I think that last look at the castle which kind of symbolizes all of WDW really makes me feel that my trip is going to be over soon...

But we had a lovely dinner to look forward to!!
Or didn’t we???????


Next: Chapter 34: Dinner at Narcoossee's

 

[Kleese]

I think my fav. pics of the whole trip of you and your sister are the teacup pictures. You can tell your both so happy and it shines through! I love those pics that true unplanned fun shows through.

Does anyone know what their puting into the toon area and when it's going to open?

 

[glennbo123]

That was quite a slight detour at AKL.

I think I like the pictures taken with your camera better than the Photopass pictures (yet again!).

I agree with Kleese -- I like the teacup pictures.

Oh, and "I didn't swim here on a soup". I've gotta see if I can use that sometime....I love expressions from different cultures.

 

[jenbear123]

So I'm WAY behind but I'm just going to jump back in here. Thank you for the great photos of AKL! I am glad you mentioned how much it cost to take a taxi from GF to AKL. When I go back again in July, I'll be at CSR and there might be times when parks close and the bus situation is awful. Taking a taxi might be the only option at the end of long day. Do you think MK to CSR would be about the same price?

So glad you got to see Toon Town before it closed down. I'm really regretting not getting more detailed photos of the place in October. I didn't realize I wouldn't be going back again before it closed for good

Beautiful picture of the castle!

 

[tiggrbaby]

I'm glad that you still manage to fit in more updates with all you have going on - thanks!

 

[All7OfUs]

Katharina! Shame on you for that last sentence! A cliffhanger! (shhhh... don't tell anyone, but I love those!)


I too, LOVE your teacup pictures! HAPPY, happy times!

Maybe it's just me, but I always find (found) TT to be a frenetic place- too busy and edging on stressful.

YAY! for a nightime spin on BTMRR!! That's GREAT!! 5 minutes times are fun to catch!

Tiki- meh. Old one rocked! New one; nah. Except we do use the "tuna tostada" line here at home a lot.

 

[Poolrat]

Katharina! Shame on you for that last sentence! A cliffhanger! (shhhh... don't tell anyone, but I love those!)

You Do???? Well good since I left one on my TR ... I thought I would get to pretty quick but this week has been a bear.


Last visit are so bittersweet. So hard to say goodbye.


I think I have enough Toon town pictures for everyone.