Christopher and I (Julie) traveled to Italy in October
to visit Angelica and her Italian relatives. As it turned out Jess, Marco and
Alex’s trip there overlapped for a few days, it was so good to see them too.
Angelica lives in Sconzo, a village on the edge of Bergamo. We enjoyed walking
around the village in the beautiful fall weather. One day we all went to Citta
Alta, the ancient part of Bergamo for lunch and a walk around the old city.
Jessica, Angelica, Christopher and I took the
train to Turin for and overnight trip to explore a city none of us had been to
before. Jess wanted to see the old
Fiat factory there and we all got a kick out of the building. It has been
converted into a mall including a hotel where we spent the night. 
When it was a factory after each car was
finished it was tested on the rooftop test track which is still there. We had a
great time on the roof walking the track and enjoying the views. Turin also has
a car museum that we walked to, there were some great old cars there.
Angelica and I took Christopher on a daytrip to Leolandia
near Bergamo that has a model of Italy dotted with miniatures of famous spots
in the country. Like a concrete Lego land and Christopher loved it. We had
visited Leolandia back in 2013 and Christopher really wanted to visit it again.
One day Christopher and I joined Angelica in
Lovere where she teaches English to local teenagers at a school. While she
worked, we explored the mountain village on Lake Iseo and we had a great
morning.
After a week in northern Italy, Christopher and
I flew to Paris for our second part of our trip. My niece Suzanne met us there
for our 4 night stay. Angelica took a
bus from Milan to Paris to spend 3 nights with us. Our first two nights were
at a hotel near Paris Disney where we spent two days at the parks to complete
Christopher’s dream of visiting every Disney Park around the world. He was so
excited.
Disney was all decorated for Halloween, we
especially enjoyed the Coco decorations in Frontierland. Our favorite ride was
the Ratatouille ride, it was a cool trackless ride that gave you the feeling
that you were in the kitchen from the movie. At the end of the ride we could
see into the Ratatouille restaurant that looked like fun. Christopher says
Epcot in Orlando will have this ride later this year, we are excited to do the ride there the next time we are at Epcot.
The castle has real stained glass windows made
by a man who helped to restore the stained glass in Norte Dame in Paris years ago.
From a balcony in the castle we could see Maleficent and her menacing tree.
Below the castle lives a dragon in his grotto that was very cool to see.
We laughed when we saw the Toon Town, it was
barely an alley, which was fine with us because we’re not big fans of the one
at Disneyland.
Our last two nights of the trip was in Paris,
which was what I was really looking forward to. Last time I was in Paris was
2008 and for Christopher it was 2005 and we had a great time. After checking in
to our hotel we wandered around and ended having dinner at a Creperie that we
first visited in 2000 and was still delicious. We ended our evening on a Seine
river cruise to see Paris at night and it was lovely as always. All the sights
were lit except Norte Dame, it was dark because of the fire earlier this year.
The next morning Suzanne and Angelica left so I asked Christopher what he would like to do and he chose going to the top
of Montparnasse, the only skyscraper in Paris. It was a first for him and I
hadn’t been to the top in a while and we enjoyed ourselves. We walked through
the Luxembourg Gardens to get there and we happened upon one of the three
Statues of Liberty that exists. After that we took the metro across the river
for a nice view of the Eiffel Tower and I was happy to ride one of the old
train cars. 
That afternoon we took an Uber to CDG airport
for our red eye flight back to Singapore and Christopher got to experience the
old terminal that I flew into back in 1980 on my first visit to Paris.
