Where will you travel for your upcoming vacation? Just asking out of curiosity.
Also, Buizel is both cool-looking and cute. I vividly remember that I adored Buizel back when I first saw it as a child on my brother's file of Diamond and immediately wanted to start playing Pokemon. I also like Floatzel for its more majestic design, and I'm a big fan of other weasel Pokemon like Sneasel and Weavile.
I apologize in advance for the wall of text!
My upcoming vacation will be to Dallas, Texas to see the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. I've been wanting to see a total solar eclipse in person for over 19 years now, so the fact that it is less than 6 months away now has me very excited! I even managed to grab myself a private room on Amtrak's Sunset Limited/Texas Eagle combo route over 2 nights, meals included, for under $40 thanks to the reward points I had saved up from my earlier vacations. Hard to argue with a deal like that!
I figured since I was heading out that way though that I'd add a couple extra parts to the vacation. Part 1 is the ride from Los Angeles, California to Dallas, Texas over 2 nights and days. I have family in the area I haven't seen in a few years, so we are going to meet up and I will be staying with them for a little under two weeks (hotels were already sold out over a year and a half in advance of the eclipse!), and will hopefully all be gathering to watch the eclipse together. I will be staying a couple days past the eclipse, then will ride the Texas Eagle train the rest of the way to Chicago (2 days/1 night). I will stay a couple nights there, and then I will once more try to take Amtrak's California Zephyr train all the way through to the California Bay Area (3 days/2 nights), a route that seems to be cursed for me since it has been canceled on two of my three attempts to ride it! The whole vacation is planned to be somewhere around 17 or 18 days, but I'm taking at least a full 3 weeks from work to allow myself a bit of leeway.
The eclipse is by far the part I'm most excited about. I wanted to go to Oregon for the total eclipse in 2017, but unfortunately life got in the way the week of and I ended up missing out. I've witnessed several partial eclipses before and am excited for the annular (ring of fire) eclipse in a few days, but from what I've heard even a solar eclipse with 99% sun coverage does not compare to a total solar eclipse, and everyone I know that has witnessed a total eclipse says it's not something you want to miss. This is a trip that is 19 years in the making, a chance to finally live a nearly two decades-long dream!
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Floatzel is a great Pokemon! Back in the early days of Gen 4 I used to prefer Floatzel over Buizel to be honest. It wasn't until fairly recently that Buizel overtook Floatzel for me. I do like Sneasel and Weavile too, though I haven't used them on any teams in any of the games yet. The designs are great though!