Disneyland Resort Diamond Celebration

The anticipation is building as Disneyland begins the countdown to the Disneyland Resort Diamond Celebration. As you may have heard, Disneyland is celebrating their 60th anniversary this year. Last month, they announced a new World of Color, and a new nighttime parade and firework show. The Sleeping Beauty Castle and the Carthay Circle Theatre will be decorated in diamonds to match the anniversary theme. The entire resort will sparkle with diamond decor and festive banners as well. The parade, "Paint the Night," and firework show, "Disneyland Forever," debuts on May 22. You can read more on the Disney Parks Blog.

Unfortunately, I won't be in Disneyland for the big celebration as I am visiting in April. I am so disappointed but I am still very excited about the release of the limited-edition memorabilia for the event.

We've purchased two five-day passes for our 7 day trip. We won't be going to Disneyland for the full five days (although that's not a bad idea)! I took at the look at the list of rides closed for refurbishment, and I'm slightly concerned. I guess they're planning to get all the rides ready for the 60th anniversary. Matterhorn Bobsleds will be closed during our visit. Thank God Splash Mountain reopens just in time! I hope the weather will be warm enough to get soaked this year. Last May, it was way too cold to get wet. However, it looks like there is a heat wave in Southern California right now, so we are hoping it continues through until April.

I'll be updating as Disney makes more announcement about the celebration!

Christmas High Tea

Here are some pictures from the Christmas high tea at the Fairmont Vancouver Airport during my afternoon date in early December! I love going to high tea during the holidays, the menu is always holiday-themed. Yum, look at that yule log cake, gingerbread scones and chicken pot pie!

Enjoy these cosy pictures!

Soon...

I have some exciting news to announce! We are headed to Disneyland in April for our annual trip! In addition to visiting Disneyland, we will visiting relatives (sadly, I missed my cousin's wedding in November), and my boyfriend also has a very special and important meeting! My Disneyside will be coming out in preparation for my trip. Lots of Disney posts coming your way in the next three months, get excited!

Arrivederci Europe...

We are a family in love with cruising. So naturally, on our last day of the cruise... our plan was to book another cruise. We slept in, and ate lunch at the Windjammer. We hung up our socks to dry, and we headed upstairs to book our next cruise. After a long discussion with the manager, the boyfriend's parents and the two of us booked a sailing on the Anthem of the Seas, which is still under construction! It will be one of Royal Caribbean's largest ships among the Quantum and Allure. The ship is due in April 2015, and our embarkation date is one year after its inaugural sailing. We are booked on a 12-day cruise sailing out from Cape Liberty, a new port for us (a trip to New York is on my 'must-do' if we sail from Jersey!). This cruise will be sailing to the Caribbean. Now you might be wondering, why did we book a cruise on board? Well, Royal Caribbean had a promotion during our booking as they usually do. We have learned in the past, that booking onboard is the way to go. Your deposit is refundable up till 75 days prior to sailing, and there are always promotions. The promotion that was offered to us was the Vow-to-Wow sale, and the second guest's fare is half off. This promotion is actually on right now! Unfortunately for us, the new ships are not included in this offer. The final price for the Anthem was $4700 (for a balcony stateroom). That is a huge difference in price comparing to our usual cruise fares. This is one of the main issues in regards to why we are hesitant about this cruise. Another important consideration were the ports. The Anthem dock in ports we have been to: Puerto Rico and St. Maarten, and ports we have not been to: Haiti and St. Kitts. It is a longer cruise. We have decided to make a decision when 2016 rolls around, so we have a year to mull over this. It is hard to be excited about a cruise that is over 18 months away but we were happy to have another cruise coming up.  

After we finalized our booking, we went up to the deck so I could finish my book. We enjoyed the silence as the ship sailed the sunset.

It was the perfect end to our cruise. We sailed back into Venice, where we spent one more day winding down before flying home. There you have it, our first Mediterranean cruise. I truly hope you enjoyed my cruise review!

Life is Better Cruisin' | Part 4: Katakolon

This is it, the last port. I've had so much fun reviewing this cruise, and looking through our photos. I'm so so sad that this is coming to an end. We aren't cruising this year (well, who knows! Maybe we can sneak one in later in the year) but we did book two cruises while we were on the Splendour. I will go into detail about that in my next post! Now onto Katakolon...

Katakolon is a small town in western Greece. It is the gateway to Olympia, where the ancient Olympics were held. For me, Katakolon was an afterthought. It was the "I'll decide what to do when time comes" port. I wasn't particularly intersected in any of the excursions. However, the boyfriend was interested in Olympia because of his interest in the Olympics. So we booked the excursion to Olympia (with shopping) for $80 per person.

Katakolon was beautiful. Clear blue skies, and clear blue water. It was another hot day, but there was a slight ocean breeze to keep us cool from the hot Grecian sun. There are olive trees everywhere! I have never seen an olive tree in my life, so I was pretty amazed. They are actually gorgeous trees. Naturally, I had to buy some olive oil to bring back home to my mom.

We started our tour with yet another scenic bus ride. Our tour guide was quite the talker. We enjoyed the tour, but our tour guide spent way too long at Olympia talking about the history. By this time of the cruise, everything was starting to look the same. We had seen so many statues and ruins, that we were starting to sleepwalk through our tours. Most of our group was getting restless. The boyfriend wanted to see the Olympic stadium, which was behind a vaulted tunnel. The two of us walked down the track to the marble finish line to take some pictures away from the crowd. We also stopped by the Archaeological Museum of Olympia (bottom right). We browsed through rooms of sculptures and a bronze collection, looking at objects and statues recovered from excavations. After we visited Olympia, we had two intervals of 20-30 minutes of shopping in the area (unfortunately, they were all overpriced souvenirs).

We were only dropped off at the port about 45 minutes before boarding time (we were 45 minutes behind). Our tour guide was very surprised to see three ships docked at Katakolon. She said she had never seen so many people and so many ships in Katakolon on one day. We had planned to check out the beach at Katakolon but I also wanted to hunt down some postcards. We didn't have enough time for both, so we felt that the longwinded tour cheated us a little bit. We were told that the beach had black sand, but I'm not sure if it's actually black. Nothing turned up when I did a little search on Google to find the name of the beach. We spent our last few minutes walking through the coffee shops and souvenir shops along the port. The boyfriend had one last ice coffee before we finally boarded. Here was our view of the Splendour from our cafe (bottom left)...

Well, there you have it! Have you been to Katakolon? What was your experience like? Leave me a comment! I'm going to do one more part on our cruise to wrap up the review and talk about the last day of our cruise. Stay tuned!