The Word Fantastic

Saturday, April 24, 2010

This trip started out amazing and ended wonderful, with nothing but fantastic in the middle. I could not, in my wildest dreams, have planned a better birthday surprise, or found a more special way to commemorate my teen years.

Since yesterday was such a long day, and blogging was not at the top of my list (gasp), I decided to describe yesterday's adventures in today's post (hopefully this doesn't throw you off too much; I'll include pictures if it makes you feel any better). So here goes. I apologize in advance if this turns into a monster post, and hope that you won't be repulsed by my blog because of the potential for extreme wordiness.

As I said, the adventure began early. I am convinced that was actually the best decision of the day, because it gave me the chance to take my first look at Disneyland without a million other people to cloud the view. What a fantastic first look it was. Never having been to Disneyland, I was thoroughly unsure of what to expect, but once I glimpsed the multi-colored, balloon-inspired lightposts, each hung with a basket of fresh flowers, I knew it had to be an amazing place. If the Disney architects spent that much effort on lightposts, I could only imagine how impressive the actual attractions must be. And they did not disappoint.

The farther in we got, the more magical the park became. I don't care that I'm twenty years old; age is relative when it comes to Disney. I'm sure that I would have been just as captivated had my first glance of Disneyland been at the age of ten, or even younger. Maren said that her favorite part of the whole park was the details, and she was right. Even the railings of the attraction lines somehow related to the theme of the ride. It was just that fantastic.

We rode every major ride (some of them we even rode twice); we met Buzz Lightyear (never mind that we were the oldest people in line to meet him); and we even saw a few shows (though I will confess that I fell asleep during them). I got soaked on Splash Mountain, took a picture with Goofy, and ate my first ever churro. We watched fireworks. We got a little sunburned (well, mostly just Skyler got sunburned). We spent entirely too much money on food. (I feel like I should bust out a MasterCard jingle right now, something like 'Burger: $8.99; T-shirt: $19.99; Experience: Priceless.') Can you tell it was a fantastic day?

While Disneyland was everything it's cracked up to be - and then some - the fantastic-ness of the trip did not stop when we crashed at about 12:30 this morning after sixteen hours of magic. Because this morning we went to the beach. In California. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to the beach in my life. And to count how many times I've been to California, just curl your fingers into a big fat zero. As you can imagine, this California-Disneyland-beach adventure has been a pretty big deal for me (contrary to Ames' belief that I'm sadly uncultured - I swear I have done cool things in my life, just none of them happened to involve anything remotely related to California).

Anyways, the beach was fantastic. We saw starfish, crabs, dolphins, ditsy teenage girls, mussel-creature-things, surfers, waves, boats. I got my romantic, barefoot stroll hand-in-hand along the shore that I've always wanted. And I'd like to think I got a good hour's worth of work on my tan. Again, experience: priceless.

So there you have it. The condensed version of the most fantastic vacation I've taken (I swear it really is condensed). I could go on and on for several more paragraphs about every minute detail, but I can imagine you're probably already tired of reading, so I'll try to refrain myself. And I know I said I'd include pictures, but as this post is already long enough to rival my grocery list, I'll have to post those at a later date. For now, I'm going to settle for my grateful item of the day: the word fantastic. You might have noticed the excessive use of it throughout this entire post, but really, what else am I supposed to say? It's the happiest word I can think of, and this trip deserves to be spoken of in the happiest way possible. I'm thankful for the word, because it lets me express at least a part of my excessive happiness.