The Best Vacation(s) Ever

Carrie at The Slow-Dripped Life is having an incredible give-away.  You can read more about it here.  I am definitely participating in this one!

This week’s question is “What was one of your most cherished travel memories/trips?”

I’m going to answer this in two parts; my best travel memory as a kid, and my best travel memory as an adult.

Pandas at Zoo Atlanta

As a kid it was definitely when we went to Disney World.  Somehow, when I was thirteen years old, I won a free trip for four to Disney World.  The closest we came to figuring out how I managed this was that I must have been trying to enter to win a stuffed animal or something (I used to fill out tons of the entry forms for all of that stuff in the grocery store while my mom shopped) and just hadn’t paid attention to the fine print.  I was thirteen; fine print didn’t really matter to me!

It was a rainy Sunday afternoon and we were baking cookies the day the letter informing me I’d won came in the mail.  My parents didn’t believe it, and very nearly threw it away.  I pitched the kind of fit that only a thirteen year old girl can, and convinced them to at least call the number and make sure it wasn’t real before getting rid of it.

Tiger at Zoo Atlanta

It was one hundred percent legitimate.  It was five day, four night, all-inclusive trip for four to Disney World.  It included air fare, all meals, accommodations, and more passes to parks than we could possibly use. 

It was truly an amazing experience.  We didn’t take very many vacations when I was a kid; my mom was a stay at home mom, and my dad worked all of the time just to make ends meet, so vacations didn’t happen much.  When we did go on vacation there was always concern about how expensive it might be, but not this time. 

This place was interesting!

We went to all of the Disney parks, ate in fabulous restaurants, and stayed out until we are practically dead on our feet.  It was also the first time my sister and I ever flew.  We had so much fun, and we were able to see our parents kick back and have a wonderful time too, without worrying about paying for anything.   I think it’s probably the best vacation we ever took as a family.

My favorite vacation as an adult has been this year’s anniversary vacation.  My husband and I haven’t been on very many vacations together, but this year we went to Atlanta for our anniversary.  I had always wanted to see panda bears, and he really wanted to see the Jimmy Carter Museum.  We also went to Coca-Cola World, and the Margaret Mitchell House.

The highlight of the trip for me was the zoo.  I finally saw panda bears!!!  They are such beautiful and amazing creatures.  We spent hours at the panda bear exhibit.  They sleep a lot, so we came and went from the exhibit quite a bit though out the day.  We also had some wonderful conversations with some of the volunteers at the zoo who were fellow panda bear fanatics. 

This was also the first trip where we went to places that only one of us was seriously interested in; the Margaret Mitchell House was pretty much my pick and the Jimmy Carter Museum was pretty much Nick’s pick.  It turned out that we both had an excellent time at both of them and learned a lot of new things.

We take this kind of picture every year.

I thought an anniversary trip was the perfect time for learning that we were more interested in some of each other’s interests than we thought we were.  It was also just nice to get away.  We weren’t able to take a trip on our anniversary last year, so it was wonderful to get away this year.

I was also reminded on this trip how lucky I am to be married to my husband.  At the Margaret Mitchell House there was a lot of information about how much her husband helped and supported her in her writing.  I’m not sure if she ever would have written Gone With The Wind without him.  My husband is very supportive of my desire to write, and encourages me to keep going, even when I think we need to have a big bonfire.  I think I sort of took that for granted before. 

Also, when we checked out of our hotel, everyone at the front desk said they were so sad to see my husband go because he was so nice and pleasant.  A few people even said that he made their day a few times when he came in and smiled and said hello.  I’m lucky to be married to the person people hate to see go, but sometimes in the course of daily life that’s easy to forget.  This trip reminded me of that.