On Friday we said a very sad goodbye to Eurodisney. Having pushed myself to do so much when I was already sick & run down, I felt pretty much delirious with tiredness when we had to get up in the morning to get packed up to leave, & that made the sadness all the more overwhelming. When the lovely man from our first day there recognized us at the front desk while we were checking out & was like "Oh! You have to leave already??" I pretty much burst into irrational, over-tired tears! Fortunately, as always, there is still so much to look forward to that I knew after a few hours sleep I'd be right again!

We stopped on the way out to buy ourselves some souvenir Disney mugs, which we posted home from the post office at the train station. Then we spent a grueling hour (actually I think it was more than an hour…) at the ticket office trying to get our train tickets to Chamonix sorted out. Turns out the Eurail pass has a pretty big catch…there's only a certain (rather small) number of seats on any given train that are reserved for Eurail passes. After those have filled up, even if every other seat in the train is empty, bad luck! No seat for you! Well, unless you want to pay for a seat on top of all the money you've already paid for the Eurail pass - no thank you! On the day we wanted to go to Chamonix (& we were booking two days in advance, which should be plenty of time!) there were absolutely no places for Eurail pass holders available. This is further complicated by the fact that Nigel had a first class pass (because you can't get second class passes when you're over 26) whereas I have a second class pass because I'm a lowly student. So the only way we could both get on a train to Chamonix on the Sunday was to pay about 50 euro to upgrade me to a first class pass for the day…ridiculous! The lady there said she could reserve the rest of our seats for us then, which would hopefully avoid that problem again, although I'd been told at several other stations where I'd tried to do this previously that a train could only be reserved from within the country that you're taking from AND there's no way to make reservations online. It's crazy! I've had problems with it on pretty much every leg of my trip, so crossing my fingers that now we've made all those reservations life will get a little easier…

When we finally made it back to Paris to the Plug Inn hostel, Nigel went out to get some food for us, while I lay comatose on the bed! We had managed to change our tickets to the Moulin Rouge to the Friday night, but only if we went to an 11:00PM show, so I managed to sleep from about 4:00PM until 9:00PM when we got up to get ready. I had a cold shower & tried my best to wake myself up! (I was wearing the special earrings that Nigel got me for my birthday specially to wear to the Moulin Rouge!). Because our hostel was only a five minute walk away we got down there around 10:00PM so we had a cocktail at a nearby bar (O'Sullivans), & then saw the line rapidly grow in front of us until it was at least 500m long!!! Fortunately since they're used to putting on 3 shows a night, they have the whole changeover thing pretty much down pat, & once the queue started filing in it moved pretty quickly.

We were shown to a lovely little table over to the right of the stage. All the tables were lit by small red lamps, giving the room a night soft glow, & the curtains covering the stage were all glittery & glamorous. The show didn't actually start until 11:30PM & I was really in struggle town by then, but the moment the curtains came up & the music started I was wide awake & I loved every second of it! The costumes were amazing - so much glitz & glamour!! There was a circus themed dance, a pirate themed number, the can can (complete with red, white, & blue can can skirts - tres francais!), & a 1940s style performance. There were also 3 acts in between the dance numbers, which included a juggling guy who juggled 7 silver batons really, REALLY fast, a two person balancing act, & a hilarious ventriloquist. The ventriloquist not only worked with puppets, but also with a live dog, & with several audience members. I have NO idea how he did it - you really had to see it! It was amazing! Oh, and th22 was also a girl who swam in a big tank with these seriously huge sea snakes *shudder* really cool…& kinda creepy!

The closing number saw all the girls wearing these amazing feathered pink outfits that were nearly twice as tall as they were & looked like they probably weighed a fair bit too! Halfway through they all light up & were covered in light bulbs - it looked amazing! You're not allowed to take any cameras into the Moulin Rouge so I'm afraid a written description is the best I can do, but it was fantastic, & I'm just so glad that we were able to move our reservation in the end…and that I was able to stay awake for the whole thing! :P