Vacation Vacation

We just got back from a short vacation visiting my friends and family. While the visiting itself was great (thanks, all!), the vacation time itself was spent traveling a lot. As anyone knows who has done it, traveling is strangely tiring. Although you sit on your ass in the plane and the car, you wind up tired as hell whenever you arrive somewhere.

The trip down was a "me" travel experience; anyone who frequents this blog knows what I mean. We had delays while planes were fixed, late departures, rude flight attendants, and even mysterious liquid dripping on me from a hole in the plane (turned out to be water condensation, but still). Luckily, the trip back was a "her" travel experience; pretty much smooth sailing, everything mostly on time, no hiccups or real issues. It was a nice change, as we've had more "me" travel experiences lately.

The thing is, we arrived in Atlanta exhausted. We then spent the time there fighting with the Hotel Melia over silly things like crappy meals, them cleaning the dried vomit off our balcony (never did get it cleaned to our satisfaction), and getting wash cloths from the housekeeping crew (only got them two days out of four and one of those days was because we complained at the front desk in person). Stuff you shouldn't have to complain to a higher-end hotel about, frankly.

The trip to SoCal was equally tiring, especially when we had to add on the hour and a half of driving out to my mother's house after the plane ride from Atlanta to Orange County. Then we spent the time there driving to shopping, driving to visit my friends, driving to see my father and his wife. Then we had to get up at 4am to drive into Orange County for the plane back home.

I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation. As my wife said, we're going to sit on our asses and do nothing this weekend to relax from all the vacationing we just did. While I agree with that sentiment, I'll likely be working on getting the wood pile into the house before winter starts hitting the area (or maybe not, looking at the weather report-- might be raining for the next, oh, week or so).

Again, I loved seeing my friends and family. Wouldn't trade that time for the world. But all the traveling just wore us both out. Next time, we'll have to plan things better, and hope for more time there, so we can be more relaxed about our vacation. Maybe then we won't arrive home in need of a vacation!