What Was Your Favorite Part?
With Dylan auditioning for The Voice, we decided to make a weekend of it and spend the night in a hotel.
Shane loves hotels. When he was little, he wrote and illustrated his own book about going to California. According to his young brain, the characters flew on a plane and got special drinks! And then they stayed in a hotel and played board games. They saw the Grand Canyon (in California), and then they went home.
Shane enjoys vacations, and he’s definitely a fan of amusement parks, but really I think he’s just in it for the night at a hotel.
The audition was in Philadelphia, which isn’t far from home, so we had a late breakfast and left in the early afternoon.
We had to do the touristy Philly Cheesesteak challenge. Two take-out shops claim to have the best cheesesteaks in the world, so we had lunch at Pat’s and Geno’s. Three of us voted Pat’s as, hands down, our favorites. Shane voted for Geno’s, although he only had four bites of his sandwich. Mostly he liked the French fries with cheese.
Then we visited a few colleges – if you can call driving past a visit. Dylan decided he didn’t like the city much, and really didn’t want to go to college in the midst of all the tall buildings and dirty sidewalks. So we just drove around Philly and looked at the buildings.
And finally, we went to our hotel. We scouted the area to figure out where to go for the audition in the morning. We had dinner at a burger place next to our hotel. Shane and I visited the fitness center and looked at the pool. And then we went to bed.
In the morning, Dylan and I left super early for the audition, and Shane had breakfast with his dad, then went to the pool.
We were home less than an hour when Shane asked the inevitable question: “What was your favorite part of the trip?”
The question started emerging with episodes of Dora the Explorer, and never really stopped.
“Well,” I said. “I really enjoyed going to the fitness center with you. I liked the bikes with their own individual televisions. And I liked spending special time with you. But probably my favorite part was when all The Voice contestants were singing together while they were waiting to audition.”
“I didn’t do that part,” Shane said. “So my favorite part was probably the steaks.”
I laughed. “You liked picking which one you liked best?”
“Yeah,” he said.
Shane is incredibly picky about food, and normally prefers his steak and cheese to be separate from one another – and certainly not served on bread.
But now I know: taste tests are fun. We’ve done them at home for years. So now I plan to find one for him whenever and wherever I can.