Fall Travel Journal: The First Day

Dr. C and I are currently enjoying our vacation (for me) and vacation conference (for him).

Our first night, we left The Village at 9:30PM and didn't get to our hotel until 2:30AM.  When Dr. C was reserving our hotel for the midway-point of our drive, I told him my only requirement was that it needed to be nice enough that I could relax and sleep in it.

No such luck.

The non-smoking room smelled like it had been housing a chain-smoker for years.

The bathroom light/fan sounded like they had a hamster up there, running (and squeaking) it's guts out to make the blades go round.

The shower water smelled disgusting...I literally gagged a few times.  And then, randomly, it started smelling like a perm.  Not much of an improvement.

The toilet made the noise I would imagine a duck being strangled and drowned would sound like.

And let's just say I refused to walk around without my flip-flops on.

I'm beginning to think that the people that write online hotel reviews have a fundamentally different set of standards than I do.

We were too tired when we got in to find something else...and knowing we'd only be there for a few hours, we crashed, woke up 5 hours later, and got the heck outta Dodge.

After another 5 hours of driving (plus a detour in Houston--a city where you can apparently see where you want to go, but there is no way to get there without driving in circles on a zillion one-way streets first.), we arrived at Sea World in San Antonio.

Maybe it's because I'm a beach person, or maybe it's some lingering tween girl thing where you love everything dolphins (or horses or butterflies or whatever-girly-type-animal-you-can-think-of) but I absolutely loved Sea World.

Loved it so much, that I told Dr. C I need to add "marine biologist" to the list of degrees that I need to get.  "Marine Animal Trainer" is currently at the top of my Coolest-Jobs-On-The-Planet list.





And "Swimming With Dolphins" has been added to my bucket list.

I would even settle for "Swimming With Whales", if the dolphin thing didn't work out.  Either way, I'd be a happy, happy lady.

There is just something so graceful and powerful about the dolphins and whales...I could sit there and watch them all day.

Shamu waving goodbye. 
Although as far as I could tell, they call ALL of the killer whales Shamu.  So this could really be Shamu the Third or Baby Shamu or really Shamu's cousin.
Your guess is as good as mine.

It was Fab-U-Lous.

And then, when we checked into our hotel for the rest of the week, we were met with valet parking, a newly renovated room with a giant flat-screen, balcony view of the San Antonio Riverwalk,  granite counter tops, and a big comfy bed with a zillion down pillows that I easily relaxed in. 

Quite the difference from the night before!