We kicked off our vacation on Saturday with a 1 night stay in Lisbon. We stayed at a hotel literally across the street from the airport. On Sunday our fight left around 8 something, so it was really nice to get up and just walk across the street to the airport. On Saturday afternoon we used the metro at the airport to head to the aquarium. We got to ride the cable car that had been closed last year. I’m terrified of heights, but I have really loved the cable cars rides we have gone on since moving to Portugal. The views are always stunning. As always, it was fun getting to be in Lisbon.

On Sunday we flew into Paris. It’s the first time in a long time that our fight left on time. Normally we take a bus or train to where we need to go, but there’s no direct train. We would have to take 3 trains and make 2 transfers. We had extra bags because we couldn’t do laundry this trip. Since it was already an expensive trip we decided to splurge and we hired a chauffeur. It was amazing. The driver met us at baggage claim, took all our bags and loaded them all into the car. And then we got a direct ride to our hotel.

We stayed at Explorer’s Hotel, which is about 10 minutes from Disney and 45 minutes from Orly airport. I picked this hotel because of the awesome indoor activities for kids. They have a great pool and a 3 story indoor play area. There’s also an outdoor playground which we did end up using for about 10 minutes one day. It was between 28 and 38 degrees during our stay. It wasn’t too bad in the sun, but the playground was in the shade so it gets cold pretty quickly.

On Sunday we got to the hotel early afternoon, so the kids got to play a lot and we went swimming. They warmed to the pool pretty quickly. We really wanted to go back, but we were just too exhausted. The hotel has a pizza place and snack bar type place. All of the food there was super overpriced and terrible. Luckily we figured that out the first day and we were able to order food through Uber Eats. It was still super expensive, but at least it tasted great.

The hotel also has a shuttle to Disneyland Paris. Both parks and Disney Village are all connected, as is the train station. It was pretty easy to get to and from the hotel and Disney. Kyle even took the shuttle to Disney Village to pick up dinner a few times.

Well, that’s part 1 of our trip. We just got home a few minutes ago. It was a super long day of a 1.5 hour car ride to the airport, 2 hour flight, 20 minute car ride, 2 hour bus ride, and 10 minute car ride. But everything left on time! So even though it was a super long day it went pretty smoothly. I have a ton of work tomorrow and Saturday, so I will post part 2 in a few days to talk about the parks.

We will definitely do this trip again in a few years. We will stay at the same hotel in Lisbon and if it’s winter or spring we will stay in the Explorer’s hotel again. If it’s warm or hot out we would try a Disney Hotel to see what it’s like, but it would be hard for a hotel to beat Explorer’s if you have small kids.