Japan (and Paris) trip part one

One of the reasons I wanted to restart my blog right now was that I really wanted to be able to blog about my travels again.

It was one of the things I always used to write about on my old blog, and you can see most of my old travel posts here.

Last February we went on a trip to Disney World, and it was our first time travelling internationally since 2013 (not counting visiting family in Sweden on Christmas). I’m a huge Disney park nerd and there was a period of time when we used to visit a Disney resort (mostly Disneyland) every year, but the very long gap was caused mainly by a combination of moving country and being busy with a new house, as well as not wanting to do any unnecessary air travel for environmental reasons.

Like many others we were really itching to travel again after the pandemic, and in 2024 we finally went back to Disney World. I was really missing my blog that time as well, but I eventually decided to blog about that trip on my Patreon. If you are interested you can read those posts (for free!) here, here and here. It didn’t feel like a good fit though, so I’m very happy to have a proper blog again!

Anyway, on to the Japan trip! This first post won’t actually have any Japan in it, since our trip started with very long layover in Paris, where we decided to try to make a very quick visit to Disneyland Paris.

My last visit to Disneyland Paris was pretty disappointing, I think it was at a bit of a low point during the time, but I’ve heard there’s really been an effort to make the Paris parks better again so I’ve been excited to go back. We only had a couple of hours so I don’t think we were there long enough to really judge the difference in the whole feel of the place, but the Disneyland park certainly was looking gorgeous! I was especially impressed with the stunning landscaping, so many beautiful trees.

We mainly just walked around looking at the beautiful scenery, but of course we has to make a visit to the dragon, without question the best thing about Disneyland Paris.

We also had time for a ride on Pirates of the Caribbean. The Paris version has a really nice queue area, but the ride itself feels shorter and, I think, not quite as good as the Disneyland version (the original and in my opinion the best).

After this brief detour we got on the next flight, but unfortunately this is when our trip became a bit of a nightmare. About three hours into the flight (in the middle of the night) we were told the plane had to turn back to Paris to be repaired, and that we would be put up in a hotel and take a new flight the next morning.

While annoying this didn’t sound too bad, but once we finally arrived back in Paris there was just endless queuing for hours during which I kept feeling more and more nauseous. When we finally got into our hotel room we had literally one hour to “sleep”.

I have the world’s weakest constitution. I have lots of minor (and some more major) ailments and practically everything makes me sick or ill. One of the things I really can’t handle is too little sleep, and I think this night really messed me up. The added jet lag once we arrived meant I didn’t get a chance to recover, and unfortunately I was really unwell for most of the rest of the trip.

I had half expected to get ill in some way or other during the trip. It was just a bummer to lose time both to illness and to the heavily delayed flight. Fortunately we did get a pretty fair compensation, and I now really want to go back to Japan to do all the things I had planned but didn’t have time for.

As for what we did have time to do in Japan, stay tuned for the next travel post!