What is your favorite vacation?

What is your favorite vacation?  Was it when you were a kid?  How about as a parent taking the family on a vacation?  Or maybe it was your honeymoon... Please read about mine, then tell me about yours in the comments.

My memories of family vacations at the shore are the best.  When we were kids  my parents would rent a bungalow at the shore for either a week or 2 weeks. It was probably the most economical vacation for us because there were 6 of us kids and we could eat most meals at the house.  It was great because the bungalow was usually a block from the beach, so we could walk there, Mom didn't have to pack up the car.  We would spend all morning at the beach, then go back to the house for lunch and if we wanted to go back to the beach in the afternoon we would or we would hang out at the house reading or flying kites. 

My favorite reading materials were library books, I would stock up on them before we left home.  But even better were comic books from the little shop up the street from the bungalow.  I always had enough money put aside to buy several of  "The Archies" comic books; they were only 25 cents at the time.  If they were out of "The Archies" I would get Superman or another superhero comic book.  The funny thing is that I never read comics at home, only on vacation at the shore.

Then at night we would go to the boardwalk and go on the rides or play the games in the arcades or bet on the wheels on the boardwalk.  One year I won this huge stuffed snake, it was bigger than I was.  I was so happy.  It probably cost me more in bets on the wheel than it would have to just buy it, but I was happy.  I carried that thing around the boardwalk like it was a trophy.  In the arcades we would play pinball.  I'm showing my age, but that was the big game at the time and most of the games cost a nickle, some were a dime and the most expensive were a quarter.  You only played those if you were a pin ball wizard because it was really difficult to wind free games on the 25 cent machines. 

The last thing I'll tell you about, cause this is getting long, is the food.  Oh the wonderful smells on the boardwalk..... pizza, cotton candy, Philadelphia cheese steak, peppers and onions (I don't eat them but the smell, mixed with everything else made the atmosphere).  We always had to get a box of salt water taffy, it was the best.  I've tried salt water taffy in other parts of the country but it just isn't the same as the Jersey shore.  My favorite thing and probably the worst thing I could eat was cotton candy. My mother had a fit if we asked for it, but would relent at least once during vacation. As an adult I can understand that she was probably seeing multiple visits to the dentist in that pink and blue fluff, but we were just loving the sugar rush.

Well, I could go on and on but I won't. Now I don't get to spend much time at the beach, just too busy and don't really like the crowds.  I can still remember that wonderful, feeling of being so close to the ocean, the fresh salt air, the sounds of the gulls and all the lights of the boardwalk. 

What is your favorite vacation memories?