Travel Lesson #2

I know you are waiting with bated breath to hear what the second lesson I learned from my travels is.

You will not be disappointed.

I am about to advocate spending MORE money.

Ok, so remember this post about trying to figure out cost vs benefit? Well, that's exactly what I learned on this vacation.

I spent 2 1/2 weeks traveling from my parents house in Florida to my grandfather's house in DC back to my parents house and then to Disney World in Orlando. I was on 6 planes for 4 legs of my trips in that time and slept in 3 different beds.

I think I slept around 7 hours a night, which for a 9 hour a night girl like me, meant I was fried by the time Andy and I got to Orlando. I thought for sure the parks would be fun and chill and easy. Like in the commercials.

But it was not.

It was about 95 degrees out with the humidity and my lack of sleep caught up with me. By day 2 at Universal, my legs were sore, my feet were blistered and I had so little energy I just wanted to skip the park and go back to the hotel. I had a headache pretty much every day and I knew exactly what caused it: dehydration and stress caused by lack of sleep.

We had talked about taking an extra day in the middle and not going to park to have a pool day, but ultimately decided against it to save money on the hotel and on airfare.

Travel Lesson #2: Take the pool day.

We would have spent an additional $80 for the room and $50 for the extra airfare to fly a day later. Looking back on this trip, $130 would have been well spent. I enjoyed the hell out of our time at the Disney parks we went to (Animal Kingdom, MGM and Magic Kingdom), but I know it would have been a little more bearable if we had had a day to rest our little piggies.

Andy and I have 2 very good friends who like to rotate their vacations by trying to do a domestic vacation one year and then an international the next. We decided on this trip that we like that, but we want to add a roller coaster vacation, too. Our rotation will be domestic-international-roller coaster.

And we will always take the pool day on the roller coaster vacations.