Challenge Day #23

#23 My Favorite Vacation...

I haven't taken all that many vacations. As a kid, only one big family vacation sticks out in my mind. And I considered writing about it, but it was 18 years ago and the pictures I have are in boxes at my mom's house- not easy to find or scan. As an adult, I've gone to the coast for the weekend or taken small day trips here and there, but my favorite trip of all would have to be my honeymoon.

My dad offered us $1000 towards our honeymoon as his gift to us. And since he's done a lot of traveling, he was able to book all of our hotels, airfare, and entertainment for that price. We only had to pay for any additional gas, food, or souvenirs. 

The night of our wedding, we drove to Portland to the airport with my dad and stepmom. We stayed our first night in the hotel there and then woke up really early to catch our plane. Jesse and I flew into Los Angelos, California where my cousin Gabe (who lives there) met us at the airport. Gabe drove us to his house were we visited with his family and then borrowed his truck to travel throughout the rest of the week. I can't even begin to tell you how great that was for us. It saved us so much money in taxis or other public transportation, and allowed us to go at our free will. After picking up his truck, we drove to Anaheim, California where our hotel was and spent the rest of the night resting up. We then got up bright and early the next morning to travel to Universal Studios Hollywood theme park. Universal Studios is all about movies and entertainment. The rides are themed on various movies like Jurassic Park and Back to the Future. 

  

They have sessions that you can sit in on, where they show you how the behind-the-scenes parts of movies work. We sat in on one that told us about sound effects, particularly in animated movies. Jesse was called up as a volunteer and asked to play the part of Tinkerbell. 

Another session we went to was all about animals that act in movies.

They had movie characters everywhere, either in statue form or in costumes.

 

Then they had a downtown area filled with places to shop and eat. 

We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe- my first time ever- and it was absolutely delicious and super cool looking.

 

From there, we decided to explore L.A. 

We drove down to the Kodak Theater (where American Idol is filmed at times) and Mann's Chinese Theater, where many famous actors put their footprints and handprints in the sidewalk.

  

We saw lots of street performers too:

  

We ended the night at the Santa Monica Pier, where we rode the ferris wheel on the oceanside and watched the sun set over the beach. 

   

Day 3 we drove down to San Diego and went to the zoo. I was really excited about going to the zoo but found that it was so big it was overwhelming. The 100 degree weather and the blisters on my feet made the experience fairly miserable, but I tried my best to take it in and enjoy the sites.

   

Our park-hopper pass allowed us to also go to Sea World, which we almost passed up due to our busy schedule and limited time, but after dying in the heat at the zoo, we decided that Sea World sounded amazing. I'm so glad we did it because we had a great time and it was a nice treat after the zoo.

(On the map, you can see how far we traveled in our trip.)

   

Our favorite part of Sea World was the "Shamu Rocks!" show. They had 3 killer whales who did choreographed moves to the rock music. It was awesome! And the night ended with fireworks overhead in celebration of July 4th the next day.

   

Our final full day was spent at Disneyland and California Adventures. 

   

  

   

And the night ended with fireworks over Cinderella's castle, with a special fireworks show following the normal one for 4th of July:

 

We spent our final day with one last trip to Disneyland since our passes allowed us to come in before the park opened and ride the rides early. We took advantage of the cool weather and short lines before heading over to Huntington Beach and doing some shopping. 

  

We flew home for our first night in our new apartment together, and saw this sunset from the airplane. A nice end to our wonderful vacation and our first week as a married couple!