Why California?

When we announced our trip to visit the USA this summer, two of our destinations were obvious choices. Our primary family bases are in Michigan and Texas. The third destination wasn't quite such an obvious choice: Anaheim, California.

Michigan and Texas were 'must-dos' for us in visiting the USA, for obvious reasons. California is an extra...and here are the factors that added up in our decision to add such an 'extra' to our already complicated and full trip:

(Our Previous Layover Vacation in Oahu)

1. We're a fan of 'layover' vacations. My parents have used layovers successfully to visit France and England on layovers for no added flight costs. Angel and I had a 5-day layover in Oahu when we moved to China, essentially giving us a trip to Hawaii for no money spent on airplane fares. I knew from past experience that LAX is a very common stopping point when flying into the USA from Asia. Upon researching a variety of flight options, I was able to get us an arrival in LAX, a flight to Dallas, and a return flight to Malaysia leaving from Dallas for a total of $100 less per ticket than flying right into Dallas, and $300 dollars less per ticket than the best ticket for flying into Michigan (pro tip: if you want to be an American who lives in Asia, don't be from Michigan). This means our flight cost for adding a destination to our trip is -$200 of what it would have been if we'd simply just flown into Dallas. That 'extra' $200 will go a long way to the added cost of spending a few days in California.

(What Angel looked like when he lived in California, at least at the beginning.)

2. Although Angel, depending on his mood, either claims to be "from" Michigan (he moved there for college and came back for a pretty girl) or Texas (his parents moved while he was in college and he lived there for 1 year after graduation)....he's actually from California. He used to live and work biking distance from Disneyland. He still has relatives in the area but hasn't been back to visit since his last visit to California about 12 years ago. He's looking forward to seeing uncles and aunts and cousins and showing me the landmarks from the stories of his youth--his old home and school and the beach he always went body boarding at. He's made a special mention of taking me to visit his favorite panadería (bakery). He even looked it up on Google Earth to make sure it's still there. This must be some bakery. We will be staying with his aunt, which is another factor that will make the stopover more affordable.

(You can see on my face how excited I was about a real-life Pizza Planet, right? We didn't eat there, I was just happy it existed.)

3. Ever since visiting Walt Disney World and Hong Kong Disneyland in 2014...I have developed a gradual mission to visit all of the Disney parks worldwide. I've got seven down, and I might have the change to knock another two off the list since we're going to be in the area anyways. This is yet to be confirmed, as tickets to the parks in the USA are surprisingly expensive compared to tickets to the Asian parks. It's possible that just I will go to the Disney parks while Angel visits more of the people he knew growing up. We'll see...there's so much to do in Anaheim area that it's hard to figure out exactly how to allocate our few days...right now I think we'll definitely be visiting Joshua Tree National Park...but the rest of the itinerary is not really set.

I am definitely open to suggestions of things that are truly awesome to see and do in Anaheim area! If you've traveled around that part of the USA, let me know any advice or recommendations you have! I especially have no plans whatsoever for eating--I am imagining most of what we eat will either be from the grocery store or from Angel's favorite panadería...