The strongest memories that we retain from childhood are usually the traumatic ones. I’ve been told that I had a good time in California my first time there. Unfortunately, I have no recollection of that. What I do remember is that we were visiting a friend’s house and they happened to have a pet parrot. Having never seen such a colorful animal before, I got a little closer and the parrot promptly bit my finger. And while I’m sure the rest of the trip was perfectly lovely, my six year old brain decided to only store that feeling of sheer terror. Luckily, I got a chance to go back to San Francisco later on in life and create new memories.
Pro-tip: Taking young children on vacation is fairly useless. They’ll only remember the bad stuff. But that’s just my pessimistic point of view.