First, a brief introduction to ME (and my husband):
I'm Lauren - he's Brian. We're both in our late 20's, work full time and live in New York, about an hour from NY. We got married in May of 2007 and bought our first house together in September of 2008. We have two old men beagles and an adorable angora rabbit. We're both nerds who enjoy stuff like Star Wars and video games. And I'm a HUGE Disney fan. Obviously. And that about sums it up!
Us on our last trip to WDW together in May 2009
So anyway, I guess the best place to start is how we got to go on this trip in the first place.
When I was ten, my best friend's family moved to California. And ever since then, I've wanted to visit. Well, it took me a long time to get there, but better late than never! Brian also has a friend who moved out there, and he also wanted to visit. It was a trip we kept putting off because of the money and time commitment. And while the topic of going to California came up early in 2009, we initially dismissed the idea (again) because of those concerns. But then I decided - you know what? Stop putting it off, and just go already! Otherwise the day is gonna come where you REALLY can't go! So I figured if we went right after Christmas, we'd be able to take a 2 week trip by using the rest of 2009's vacation and the rest from 2010. I explained all of this to Brian, and he finally went for it! We were on!
All the planning was on my shoulders. Of course. I plan all our trips. Most of them involve Disney World, which I'm extremely familiar with. This time though, I was planning a complicated trip involving many places I'd never been before. It was a bit overwhelming.
Oh, right. The complicated part. Well, since we decided to do two full weeks, I decided we better make the most of it and see as much as we could in that time. My friend now lives in the San Francisco area. Brian's lives in San Diego. Those two places were a long way apart. I couldn't visit California without going to Disneyland. And Los Angeles was so close by it would be silly NOT to visit... And we both were interested in seeing the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, which is not far from San Francisco. So that's how we ended up with this schedule:
December 26th, 2009: Fly to San Francisco
December 28th, 2009: Drive to San Jose
December 29th, 2009: Fly to San Diego
January 3rd, 2010: Train to Anaheim
January 6th, 2010: Train to L.A.
January 9th, 2010: Fly back to New York
Yeah, it was a bit busy. And complicated. And it scared the hell out of me. But it ended up working out well for us.
So I relied heavily on Trip Adviser when planning this trip. I did a lot of research on the different hotels, and searched the internet for the best prices on said hotels. I'm happy to report that Trip Adviser did not steer me wrong - we liked every place we stayed, and would definitely stay at any of them again.
But something weird happened with this trip. Normally I'm an overplanner. I start planning waaaaaaaaaaay ahead of time. Even when there's not much I can do. So this time, instead of doing that, I decided to wait. And wait. And wait. And then all of the sudden so many things started happening in my life that before I knew it, the trip was days away and I hadn't done the extensive planning I would have liked to do. (Mostly involving places we wanted to visit while on the trip.) So I was a bit nervous that I hadn't planned enough. But I'm the easily stressed type!
Packing was also a bit difficult. I figured Southern California would be warm, but not warm enough for shorts. And I was sure San Francisco wouldn't be warm enough for a t-shirt. I must have looked at the average temperature chart dozens of times. I even went out and bought a new carry-on size piece of luggage. I had never been on a 2-week trip before in my life - never mind packed for one!
The day before we left was obviously Christmas. That morning we opened our gifts, had breakfast and finished packing some last minute items. Then we said good-bye to our dogs (Brian's dad would be arriving soon to take care of them while we were gone) and headed down to my mom's house to celebrate with family. (We had dropped our rabbit off with her the day before - she got to bunny-sit!)
We had a very nice Christmas (I got my Flip Video camera I knew I was getting!) and after everyone left, we showered and got ourselves organized for our 3 a.m. wake-up time. We were sleeping over since my mom's house is closer to JFK than ours is. Then I tuned into some Christmas movies that were still on TV and tried to get some sleep around 10. I actually managed to sleep much better than I thought I would.
Well, that ends part one. Not to exciting yet, I know. But next we'll get to the part that actually matters - you know. The Trip!
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