For a Birthday/Christmas gift, my kids and I took my wife to Disneyland for two days. We stayed at the Grand Californian, a 5 star resort that has a back door that opens right into California Adventure. That is the theme park that Disney built in their own parking lot just is case people weren’t spending enough money at Disneyland…

Now don’t get me wrong. I like luxury as much as the next guy. But we are more used to simple hotels. In most hotels you can get a cup of coffee and maybe a pastry for free in the lobby. A five-star resort means you can get anything you want… if you can pay for it. But it was sort of nice…

We had a nice room on the 5th floor with a view of other fancy places owned by the Disney corporation where you can also get anything you want if you are King Midas. And the Grand Californian was very nice on the inside too…

I wandered around and took some pictures. These are from the hallway near our room showing the huge open interior…

It had sort of an old-world European charm like a hotel in 1920’s Switzerland that had mated with some huge resort where the American railroad barons used to hold secret meetings in late 1800’s high society days…

And there was an impressive waste… errrr… use of overhead space. And lots of huge timbers anc comfy furniture…

After a long day of standing in line, my wife and I enjoyed a few drinks in that little alcove holding a fireplace big enough to roast an ox in. Helpful people would bring you anything your heart desired… as long as you had a pocket stuffed full of tip money. I would love to show you a picture of my wife enjoying her present, but as I have said, she really doesn’t want to be in this blog. So I can’t…

Oh, here is a nice view of the huge central courtyard in the center of which are three big pools and three big hot tubs. We used the hot tubs after the first day, because walking all over the place so you can stand in more lines is hard on the feet and the legs and the wallet… It would have been better if we weren’t sharing the hot tub with more people than we have at most of our family reunions, but it was nice. I do wish the big pool slide had still been open, but I guess that is reserved for people who can afford to stay there for the whole month and don’t mind taking a day off from the rides and lines.

Okay, I make fun of Disney… because they are an evil giant corporation… and I am a cynic… but I had fun with the kids, and my wife was happy and that really is important to me… no matter what she might tell you.

I leave you with a gratuitous picture of some rather beautiful flowers that were planted in front of the resort. Because my wife likes flowers… and so does Ed Hotspur.

Who, you might be asking, is Ed Hotspur? He is the guy who came up with this Romantic Monday idea, in which a lot of good bloggers give their thought on all things romantic. If you go back through my old posts… and you know you want to… you will find my unusual take on this series… where I have to get inventive… because I can’t just stick pictures of my wife in them and call it a day.

So visit Ed, and see what other people have to say about love and flowers and stuff. He does links so it is easy. Speaking about which, here is a link to his blog where you will find all those other links… Except he hasn’t done his post yet and I will have to link to his post from last week and maybe fix it later…

http://edwardhotspur.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/next-a-romantic-monday-post/

And here is one of his logo pictures to remind you that I am just a small cog in the large machinery inside the factory of love…