Vacation: My Happiest Place (to visit) on Earth Part 1 of 3

We have been very fortunate and blessed recently to enjoy a couple of brief vacations. Our first trip was to Southern California, which is my favorite vacation spot.

This was actually a Disney trip; but Mike, Caitlin and I drove all day on Saturday September 22, just so that we could enjoy nearly 24 hours at my favorite place... the ocean, or as I affectionately call it... t'ocean. We traveled all day and arrived at our hotel in San Clemente at 5:50 pm, just enough time to check-in and get down to the pier to watch the sunset.

I have been vacationing in San Clemente since I was ten-years-old, and Mike and I spent our honeymoon here (there we are standing in front of our honeymoon hotel) and have been bringing our children here for over 28 years. It was surreal to us that we were actually here, having just left our own home eleven hours earlier.

It was a total coincidence that two of my siblings also planned trips to Disneyland and San Clemente that same week. When my brother Alan called me that afternoon wondering where we were at that point of our trip, he was so surprised to find out that we were driving to San Clemente to spend the night. We made a plan to meet up on the pier for the sunset.

We have stood on this pier many times over the years and watched beautiful sunsets. We didn't think we'd see it this night because the sun was hiding behind the clouds... but look how spectacular it is!

Some of our San Clemente traditions are: eating ice-cream cones while walking on the pier (it's the same ice-cream man in the shop year after year) and eating at Pick-Up-Stix (where we also ran into Alan and Marivic).

Seeing t'ocean was a huge BONUS for me on this trip. Part 2 of my vacation posts will be the reason we went.