Trip Report 12 Parks in 12 Months.

Hi,

If you are here for a trip report about WDW, please check back in December. At the moment I'm in Disneyland Paris, the first of the 12 parks I'm planning to visit this year.

A little background about this trip,
This is me Mimi, today, half frozen.

I'm travelling with my sister and we have both taken a year off work to cross some things of our wish list.
Visiting all 12 Disney parks was very high on my list. My sister likes Disney and is happy to indulge my slight obsession.
We started our trip around the world about 3 weeks ago but this is our first Disney Park. The rules for 12 in 12, that I totally made up for myself, are that I have to stay on property and visit each park for 1 day minimum. I'm hoping I can make 1 long trip report about all the parks, if someone is interested I can add some of my other travel as well.

But let's start with Disneyland Paris, First Park, First Day.
We've already been in Paris for about a week so all we had to do was take the subway from were we were staying, change trains once and exit at Disneyland. I woke up before my alarm and we were ready to leave an hour ahead of schedule. In the first subway I opened my big mouth and said we'd probably make Magic Hour as we'd left so early. Literally 1 minute later the subway slowed down to a crawl and an announcement was made. There was an issue and there would be a delay.
Apparently there was a person on the track at the major station we had to change trains at, so no trains were allowed in. Luckily our train terminated at a station where we could get a Metro that took us to a station where we could get on the train to Disneyland.

The extra travel time swallowed up our Magic Hour but I wasn't too upset about it.
I've always wanted to stay at the Disneyland Hotel, as it's right at the entrance of Disneyland Paris, so for this trip that's were we are staying.
Our room wasn't ready when we got to the hotel at 9.30am so we dropped of our luggage and walked into Disneyland. It felt a bit strange to me, very familiar but different as well. I didn't take too many pictures today as I really wanted to just soak it in and get to know the park, also it rained A LOT today and I didn't want want my phone to get too wet. I did take a picture at the entrance.

We were happy to be there, despite the weather.
First stop was Phantom Manor, there was no line so we rode it twice in row. As much I love the Magic Kingdom version I like this one a bit better. I'm going to try and get some pictures/film it tomorrow or Wednesday so I can show you.
We finished our second ride at 10am and walked past a stand where they sold these,

A cappuccino and these churros where €7 I also bought a coke for €4.20. The churros were okay-ish but we enjoyed them as they were warm.
We walked over to the theatre after eating our snack to watch a Christmas Sing A Long.

We got there late so didn't get the best seats but we enjoyed the show, Mickey spoke French but Minnie spoke English. The only other character that spoke English was Goofy. I thought the show was well done and easy to follow for everyone.
When we left the show it wasn't raining so we hopped online for Star Tours, wait time was listed as 35 minutes but ,as we found out throughout the day, the wait times weren't very accurate. Our wait was nearly an hour.

My sister (P) and I really struggle taking nice pictures, we usually just stand there and take a picture. But we see all these, mostly much younger, people doing all these poses and expressions etc. So we decided to mix it up as well and try some new things.
Here's us "being serious" while waiting for the Star Tours doors to open.

When we walked outside afterwards it was still dry and we saw one of my sister's favourites with no line.

He was fun and very talkative.

 

[Go.Nijntje]

The next day we drove in a van (I was happy it wasn't a train) to Jaipur and visited another market.
Markets are still the main shopping areas in India, you don't see large supermarkets.

After our visit to the market we met our drivers from the Pink Rickshaw Company. A project aimed at giving women a chance to earn a fair wage, they were our drivers and guide on a food tour.

P and me in the rickshaw, the ladies were safe drivers and it was a fairly comfortable ride.

We stopped for some Indian ice ream called Pandit Kulfi. It's made fresh on the premises. I had the condensed milk one.

After the tour the ladies took us to a very ornate movie theatre to watch a Bollywood movie. I only stayed about 40 minutes as the movie was in Hindu with no subtitles.

The next day we visited an old fort that had a beautiful mirror hall.

The fort had a defence wall around it that reminded me of the Great Wall of China.

It also had some impressive frescos.

On the way back we stopped at a swimming pool, used in the past by ladies only, to keep cool during the hot summers.

 

[Go.Nijntje]

The next day we had to get back on the train, luckily it was a chair train, that's what a train with just seats and no bunks is called in India. We travelled 4 1/2 hours to reach Agra. Our final and most important stop, this is why we were in India. I hadn't planned on going to India but P added to our itinerary because of...

Obviously I "slightly" tweaked this picture.
We arrived in Agra around mid day and checked into our hotel. After a short break we all changed into saris, helped by some local women. Putting on a sari is quite complicated and involved safety pins.
Here's me in a sari, but the fabric shouldn't be covering my arm.

Here's P wearing it correctly.

The Taj Mahal was very beautiful, clean and quiet and definitely the highlight of our trip.

Walking around as a white lady in a sari at the Taj Mahal is a sure fire way to get a taste of what it is like to be famous. I have never had my picture taken so many time or been asked to take a picture with people.
I did make some new Insta friends.

And before we left, one more group picture.

The next day we took a 2 hour chair train back to Delhi and P and I said goodbye to India.
While we certainly made some great memories, India isn't for me. I thought, after having visited several other Asian countries, I was ready for India, but I was wrong. It was a one and done for me, and I was happy to get one a plane to Hong Kong.

 

[Go.Nijntje]

The flight to Hong Kong was with Cathay Pacific.

I was happy I had a window seats, I got a picture of the sunrise when we approached Hong Kong.

P and I both received a lovely amenities kit filled with Bamford products.

We are giving away the orange one, if you would like it, please send me a message, either here or on Insta. We will draw the winner and send it for free.

Hong Kong airport is well organised and it didn't take us long to clear immigration and hop on the metro.
We had booked The Salvation Army Hotel. For some reason we just think it's so funny that they have a hotel.
It's been an excellent choice, here's our room.

The staff have all been so kind and everything is very clean and comfortable. Location wise it's perfect as well.
Our first day in Hong Kong we took the cable car from Hong Kong to Ngong Ping village. It's super touristy but fun. The cable takes 25 minutes and the view is worth it even on a cloudy day.

Half of the island is actually a nature reserve so we started with a a nature walk when we arrived in the village. Here's our guide Max showing us a tea plant.

Once we knew what a teaplant looked like we saw them everywhere on the walk.

We visited the village after our walk, it's famous for its temple and giant Budha. We made a little faux pais here. We saw a star on the ground on raised platform and thought it was a good picture spot so we took a selfie.

Some people laughed and said something to us, took us a minute to understand but turns out the star is to indicate where to pray and bow. Woops.

We made sure to look first what other people were doing before taking any more pictures.
This spot was popular with the Insta Girlies.

This one too.

Lots of people come to pray at the temple and burn incense to help the prayer get to heaven.