It's Like We Know What We Are Doing

June 11th, 2012 The last day of any trip is hard. Even when you have plenty of time, you are racing to get things done. You have to pack up. Then there's the check out. God forbid you check out a minute after 11a. If the flight is at 430p, you'd better get the car back by 2p, which gives you approximately 30 minutes to do something fun in the day. We attempted it. Whether or not we succeeded...it's a toss-up. Check-out was a breeze. We got our car and found Huckleberry. It's a restaurant I saw on Cooking Channel one day (LOVE Unique Eats/Sweets) and it was down the street from our hotel. We found parking (score!!) and there was no line for breakfast (double score!!). We knew we shouldn't do a big breakfast, because there was going to be a big lunch consumed. So we settled on a Breakfast Porridge and a pastry. I asked what they're known for. The Maple Bacon Scone. Done. We also got some coffee and tea. This I've learned, I don't lik...

June 10th, 2012 I knew my sunburned scalp was going to blister. I just didn't know when (answer: this evening). So I spent the day with my hair parted on the other side. I just had to make that known as my hair was being a little weird today. We must have still been on Chicago time, because we were both up earlier than we needed to be. Chris wasn't coming until around noon, so we had some time to kill. We knew we could take advantage of the morning by making a Starbucks run and looking around the Promenade we saw the day before. Shopping did happen during this time as Elias found J. Crew. He's right at that age/size where he can fit into certain kid clothes and certain adult clothes. At J. Crew, he can fit into both. So he found a pair of seersucker shorts and was happy as they were 20% off. We also stopped in this British store to see if there was anything we had to buy (answer, no). By this time, Chris was on the way. We decided the night before that Sund...

June 9th, 2012 And by a "change of pace", I don't mean that we've slowed down. Cause we most definitely have not. We just ditched the theme park and moved into the city. It's time to explore Santa Monica and Los Angeles!! It was bittersweet to leave the Paradise Pier hotel. We never slept too well there, but it was Disney and it's always sad to leave Disney. But we had things to do and people to see. For reals. We were meeting up with our cousin Chris. Now, no one really knows how long it's been since we've seen Chris. He said he saw Elias when he "was little.". I don't know what that means, but let's just say its been a long time. We easily made our way into The Georgian Hotel. This was a lovely art deco hotel that Elias said had been on a show referencing ghosts at the hotel, so we had high hopes. The hotel was beautiful. Elias seemed to think it was a little dated, but I didn't. There could be a bit of smoot...

June 8th, 2012 Luckily, we didn't have to be up as early this morning. I slept like the dead. Elias slept better than the night before, but he still wasn't as rested as he could have been. We both felt the results of the first day's massive amount of walking. Each of us made some sort of awful groan as we got up this morning. This is a groan that would only increase in volume every day of the trip. There's actually no way to prepare your body for a vacation like we take. You can't walk all day in preparation. You just have to muddle through it each day and pray that you'll survive the journey. I know last time we took a theme park adventure, I broke him. I was just hoping I wouldn't do the same this time. We walked across the street to the Grand Californian Hotel. Because we were staying on property, we had access to the park through the hotel entrance. We had decided the night before to go to breakfast at the Storyteller's Cafe at the h...

June 7th, 2012 There's no way I can go through the whole day. No way. It was just so much that there isn't enough time (or brain power) to put it all into words. So I'll do what I can. The original plan was to be at the park when it opened for Early Magic Hours and stay until the park closed. We had a bit of a later start than we expected in the morning. Oh well, we also didn't go to bed until 130a the day before. No worries. We got to Disneyland at 745a. Still fantastic. We walked from our hotel to Downtown Disney's Monorail. The Monorail dropped us off right inside Tomorrowland. So while we missed the whole "Grand Entrance" thing, we blew through Tomorrowland in record time. I haven't been to Disney since the new Star Tours opened, so the whole thing was new to me. We had some pod-racing and ended up at the Death Star. Awesome. The breakfast situation at the Disney hotels is not great. I'm used to every Disney hotel having a ...

I'm probably the most excited about this trip than I have been about any trip in the last year. I'm not sure why. I'm guessing part of it is because I haven't been on a full-on vacation in a while. I did end up in West Palm last week, so I can't say I haven't been anywhere . But a good, old-fashioned vacation...this is the first in a while. We started the planning a few months ago. Elias and I missed out on our "traditional" Spring Break trip. And it's good that we did, cause we wouldn't have been able to go on vacation as crazy as we're planning for next week. Because we're going to Disneyland!! I've been to Walt Disney World more often than I can say. I've written about it before. I'm going again (October!!). It's one of my favorite places to go in the world. It's a place I go when I don't want to deal with anything else. I can go to Orlando and leave all of my cares back in Illinois. This is w...

West Palm Beach, Florida Memorial Day Weekend I tend to break out my trips on a daily basis. Mostly so I can relive the trip day by day. I tried to think about how I would do this for West Palm Beach, but I came to the realization that this daily story wasn't going to work real well. The trip to visit Liz was so short and so compact that it wouldn't have made much sense. Considering this trip was the start to Summer fun and was just a short taste of West Palm, I thought I'd just condense everything into one post. Consider this the Amuse Bouche of the Summer travel. Why yes, it does all go back to food... Friday afternoon, I finally left the office. The office had a grip on me for the last several months. I fully accepted this fact because the work had to be done. But in the last few weeks, I was getting twitchy. I needed to get on a plane and go somewhere. The fact that I hadn't been on a plane in a while showed...while packing the night before. I had ...