Just Trippin'

I didn't mean for that Angry Whopper commercial to stand at the top so long, but life got in the way. The weather has been outstanding the past two weeks, and we have taken advantage of it.

The Friday before Columbus Day weekend, we decided on the spur of the moment to join some friends on their long-planned weekend trip to Disneyland Paris. Jon secured a hotel room for us at noon on Friday, I quickly packed, we picked Katrina up from school at 3, and drove off. It was a good decision. The weather was beautiful, much better than when we visited in July.

And the park was all decked out for Halloween.






As you can see above, we traveled with some seriously cute children. Katrina and three boys. They all got along well, for the most part, and the three families separated and came together as our interests crossed. The boys were all much more into the rides than Katrina was, but she managed to visit her old favorites and even try a few rides she refused last time.



And at Disney Studios, we found something that highlighted one of Katrina's true talents.



Yes, the "scream machine" from Monsters Inc. It kept both her and her friend M amused for about a half hour. She outscreamed the mild-mannered M, though. No one was surprised.

And, this past weekend, I went on a girls trip to Cheb, in the Czech Republic. Well, at least that was the original plan. One of us (not me, thanks to an early-morning reminder from Jon) forgot her passport. We tried to get her through with her military ID, but just got turned around for our troubles. The Czech border guard was very friendly, but matter-of-fact. "No passport, no come into Czech," he said sympathetically, before he motioned us to turn around.

The German border guard on the way back into Germany was not so friendly. "Passport into Czech is normal," he said. My friend, in the driver's seat, answered yes, she knew, we just forgot it. And we thought that was the end of it. But no, the guard apparently needed to bully three American women that day. "I could call the military police and make a report! You need your passport!" he ranted. Later, all of three of us agreed that at that point, we wanted to see him call the American MPs and make a report. Because all that happened was that someone forgot her passport. It's not like we made a run for it. We tried, on the off-chance that the military ID would suffice. When told it wouldn't, we just turned around. Ah, well, hopefully the guard relieved his power-trip needs and was more civil with the next car.

But the adventure didn't end there! No indeedy, when it rains, it pours. Our forgetful friend urged us to drop her off at the hotel and head back to Cheb to shop at the Asian Market there, as we had planned. We decided to do just that, if only to see if it was worth it to our friend to try to come back. After about an hour strolling through booths of near-identical knock-offs of various designer labels, we headed back. We pulled out our passports at the German border. My friend handed them to me, I took mine and handed hers back. And that's the last we saw of my friend's passport.

We spent Sunday morning searching the car and retracing our steps to find the missing passport. Now WE were the ones calling the MPs. But no luck. So we headed back home.

And I checked my purse about every hour to make sure my passport was still there.