Our last spring break together as a family was in March (yes, this entry is a bit late). We really have no grounds for complaint, however. For several years, the college spring break for Jade coincided with the high school spring break for Marcus, and so we eked out a couple more years of spring break together than most families manage and feel fortunate for being able to do so.
A very wise friend of ours once told me that the way to get your children to continue to vacation with you once they leave the house is to choose interesting/fun places to go and pay for all of it. And so I bring you spring break 2022 in Los Angeles!
The kids started their spring break in San Diego visiting my parents (and eating). We then met up with the kids in Disneyland (Jade’s first trip to the mother ship!), where we stayed at the Grand Californian Hotel and spent 2 really fun days at the parks, riding rides (and eating). We then moved to Los Angeles itself (well, really, Marina Del Rey, for those familiar with SoCal) and did touristy things (and ate). We had a tour of the La Brea Tar Pits (very cool, with lots of bones and active tar pits still), a tour of the Getty Villa (it’s the classical antiquities part of the Getty—I will never look at Commodus in quite the same way again (in a good way!)), toured through the Getty Museum, and had an after hours viewing of the Griffith Observatory where we saw the Orion Nebula and an Orion star cluster, among many other things, and helped shut down the telescope for the evening. The common theme of all of the tours, for which we are immensely grateful, was the dedication and love of all the personnel we met for what they were doing professionally. Everyone was so excited about their work and loved sharing their knowledge with us. It was a good reminder to the kids that loving what you do is so important to leading a fulfilling life.
Memorable meals include Din Tai Fung (love, love those soup dumplings), Pink’s (an LA institution justifiably famous for its hot dogs), Spagos (a Wolfgang Puck restaurant that is still going strong after 30+ years), and Meizhou Dong Po (a transplant from China).
It was a fantabulously fun week with the four of us—maybe even more so because we know that opportunities like this, with all four of us together, will become scarcer as the years go on. I can’t complain—we’ve had more spring breaks together than we had expected and so each extra one is just a bonus. And this one was fun!