Wondering and Wandering

My last blog post!

2011-07-20T18:21:00.000-04:00

Yes, it's true. After four years and 844 other posts, this is going to be my very last post on this blog. Since marieljohn.blogspot is not quite as accurate as it once was, and since I'm going to continue to try and get Jeff to write occasionally, I thought I'd better say goodbye to this trusty old blog. But not to worry, I'm just migrating things over to a new address (you can even get all of the older blog posts there). So from now on, you can read about our adventures through everyday life here:

The Borowitzes

Honeymoon Video

2011-07-19T22:03:00.000-04:00

Jeff and I took about an hour's worth of short video clips during our honeymoon, and I put a few of them together to make this short (about 2.5 minutes) video! Hope you like it!

Before and After

2011-07-12T21:29:00.000-04:00

Jeff's First Day of Work

2011-07-12T21:23:00.000-04:00

So business-y!

I made him a special dinner to celebrate. (Stuffed portobello mushroom caps.)

And now he's got a blackberry!

The Last Space Shuttle Launch

2011-07-12T21:06:00.000-04:00

The very last Space Shuttle Launch was on July 8th, and Jeff and I decided (kind of at the last minute) that we'd get a car and make the drive down to the launch.

We left Wednesday evening, spent the night in Florence, South Carolina, and got to Cocoa Beach in time for the official launch parties on Thursday night. We ran into friends at the parties and had a really good time. We were going to stay with our friend, Pete, in Melbourne Beach, but Stephanie offered to let us crash on her couch in Cocoa Beach. Since we were planning to be up by 5:15 the next morning to beat traffic to the 11:26am launch, that was much better.

The traffic in the morning was not too bad. Our friend had given us his tickets to the NASA Kennedy Visitor's Center (he'd gotten tickets to an even better viewing spot), and we didn't hit any traffic until the line of cars actually entering the visitors' center.

The weather had been really bad all week, and was forecast to be bad over the weekend, so most people (including us) were kind of expecting the launch to be scrubbed. But we parked and found a spot anyway.

At the visitor's center, there was a big clearing where most people had set up chairs and things. This made it possible to see the shuttle come up above the trees. The countdown just kept going smoothly and the sun kept peaking out until finally the countdown got so low that everyone started to get really excited that it really would go. Then there was a hold at 31 seconds, which definitely made everyone nervous, but they got the glitch cleared up, and the final countdown began!

We saw the shuttle come up above the trees - it really just looks like a very bright point of light - and then heard the rumble of the sound wave. It seemed like everyone there was teary-eyed. I was just holding my camera at my side (not looking through the view-finder), but I did manage to catch a bit of it.

It was pretty amazing to witness such a historic event in person. The last shuttle launch. I can't believe it.

Fourth of July

2011-07-12T20:27:00.000-04:00

Jeff and I spent most of the Fourth of July weekend moving things back into our apartment, doing laundry, and generally getting settled.

But on the evening of the Fourth of July, we did manage to make it out to the National Mall to catch the fireworks. Our friend, Rocco, was in town for a conference, so he joined us.

How was the Honeymoon?

2011-07-04T17:59:00.002-04:00

Jeff and I have only been back from the honeymoon a couple days, so we haven’t had the chance to talk to many people, but when we do, the main question people ask is, “How was the honeymoon?”

Well, it was amazing. And it’s really hard to describe beyond that without going into so many details! It was an adventure, it was relaxing, it was romantic. There were cities and beaches and historic tours and rooftop drinks and movies and weddings. There were breakfasts in bed, roadside snacks, gourmet meals, unrecognizable treats, and lots of champagne.

Looking back, I can’t think of anything I would change (except to make the whole thing longer!) – there is no location or activity that I would take out, but there weren’t any places I wouldn’t have lingered longer if we had the time. It was an amazing honeymoon.

Honeymoon Day 30 – June 30, 2011 – Napa, CA and San Francisco, CA

2011-07-04T17:58:00.000-04:00

Thursday was the last day of our honeymoon. We slept in, enjoyed our last gourmet breakfast in bed – by the fourth day, we were both convinced that the quiche of the day was the best option. Drank coffee and chatted, and then finally got around to doing the packing.

When we were finished packing, we left the hotel to go to a tour we’d booked at Schramsberg. It’s a Napa valley winery that specializes in sparkling wine made in the French style. Their label actually used to read “California Champagne,” until they decided to remove “champagne” from the label in deference to the French, where it’s against the law for French sparkling wine-makers to use the term if they aren’t actually located in the Champagne region.

The tour was a bit expensive (about $45), but it had been recommended by some of Jeff’s relatives that live in the area, and we thought that a champagne tour and tasting on the last day of our honeymoon might be really nice. The tour took about 45 minutes, and it was really interesting. Schramsberg was one of the first wineries in Napa, founded in 1863, by Jacob Schram. It stopped producing wine shortly after he died (in 1912), and eventually became abandoned and overgrown. In the mid-1960’s, the Davies family purchased the winery, fixed it up, and started making wine again. They decided to focus on French-style champagne, which wasn’t being done at all in the U.S. yet.

In 1972, the White House called and asked Jack Davies to deliver a few cases of the Blanc de Blanc to a nearby Air Force base. They were later informed that the wine was served during Nixon’s visit to China, and used for the “Toast to Peace” between President Richard Nixon and Permier Chou En-lai. They had a really cool picture of the toast up on the wall.

They took us on a tour through the caves – they’d been dug into the mountain by hand (using chisels) when it had first opened. It always stays about 55 degrees inside, which is perfect for keeping the wine. All of the wine is still kept there while it’s being made and aging. They showed us the process, including the hand turning-process they still use to get the sediment out of the wine.

At the end of the tour, they brought us to a tasting room, and we tried five different sparkling wines. All of them were really great – some of the nicest sparkling wine I’ve ever had. And looking at the price list, I could see that a couple of the ones we tried sell for $100 per bottle at the winery, which would probably be twice that at a restaurant – definitely above my usual level.

Also on our tour was a couple from Missouri and a couple of women from Texas whose kids were just going off to college. They were all really nice – especially the two women from Texas – they were really friendly. Everybody was congratulating us on our marriage, and we were telling them about our honeymoon trip. It was a really cute group. Jeff and I ended up buying a couple of bottles of the sparkling wines we really liked – maybe we’ll keep them to celebrate our anniversary!

Just down the road from Schramsberg was Beringer winery. Jeff and I served Beringer wine at our wedding, so we thought it would be cute to stop there. It turns out Beringer is the oldest continuously-operated winery in Napa Valley. It was founded in 1875, and apparently survived prohibition by producing sacramental wine and “medicinal” products. Jeff and I had a good time at our tasting – they gave really big pours, though, and after just visiting Schramsberg, we decided that Jeff would just take a sip and I’d do the heavy lifting here. I’m very helpful in that way.

After our tastings, we were ready for a late lunch, so we stopped at Gott’s Roadside Diner just off Highway 29. It looked like a really cute place with a window to order and an old-timey outdoor metal counter. Jeff and I ordered cheeseburgers and garlic fries, and enjoyed them on our long drive back into town. The burgers were great, and the garlic fries were awesome – they had some kind of green herb on them, too – almost like pesto fries.

We had hoped to stop by Dave and Taylor’s new apartment in San Francisco to visit for a while, but the traffic was worse than we’d expected (maybe people leaving early for the Fourth of July weekend?), so we only ended up having a couple of minutes to say hi. Luckily, we did get to see their new place. It’s a really cool apartment in the Mission area of San Francisco. Their windows look out over city streets that really make you feel like you’re in the middle of everything, which is a really cool feeling. And they’ve got an awesome neighborhood to explore.

Our dinner was only a couple blocks away, at Foreign Cinema. This is actually the restaurant where Dan proposed to Janet a couple years ago. It’s a nice place with all out-door seating. In some ways, it feels like its indoors – it has a front door and four walls, but there is no ceiling on the building. They play a movie every night on the back wall of the restaurant, though there is no sound (but there are sub-titles, because it’s foreign!). The food is really great, too. Jeff and I were not too hungry since it hadn’t been all that long since the burgers, so we decided to just get one full meal and share it. We had fresh oysters and then baked brie as appetizers, shared sliced zucchini, and then had duck for our main course. We finished with a crème brule and sparkling wine. It was a very romantic last dinner for the honeymoon.

Honeymoon Day 29 – June 29, 2011 – Napa, CA

2011-07-04T17:49:00.001-04:00

It was a bright and sunny day on Wednesday, and we did manage to get up and get going pretty quickly. We spent our morning on a long bike ride – the hotel provides free bike rentals. When we originally started planning, we talked about biking all 22 miles to Saint Helena, but when we saw that the bikes were a little slow and our time was a bit limited, we revised that to 5.5 miles to a couple wineries outside the city.

We visited Hagafen, which was small, but really cute and friendly. They had nice wines, which have been served at the White House many times. Their wine has also been given as a gift to the Prime Minister in Isreal (their wine is Kosher). The person pouring gave Jeff and I each a free tasting glass of one of their sparkling wines since we were on our honeymoon.

We also stopped at Black Stallion, which is a winery that was built on the site of a historic equestrian center. We enjoyed our tasting there, too.

We got back into the city in time to grab a quick pizza lunch (at Filipi’s – very good!), and then go to our 3pm spa appointment. We had booked a couple’s massage – our first ever! It was going to be a 90 minute hot stone massage, but the stones were overbooked, so we did a hot towel massage, which is the same idea. We both really enjoyed the massage – the hot towels are nice, and they do make you feel relaxed and your muscles feel lose. I’m not sure I’d do it again, though, because you do sacrifice some massaging time. The couple’s massage aspect was nice – though we didn’t talk or anything, it’s just kind of fun to have the person there, and you kind of get the sense that you’re doing something together. It can also be a bit distracting – I think Jeff fell asleep, and I spent a good while trying to listen carefully to his breathing and deciding whether to say something to him. (I ended up not saying anything, and he woke up when his masseuse moved something.) We both felt very relaxed when it was over.

After the massage, we headed up to Yountville (in the car this time) for our fanciest meal of the trip. We went to Redd, which is another Michelin star restaurant. It has great reviews on chow hound and Gayot. We both ordered the five-course tasting menu with wine pairings. They don’t actually tell you what’s on the tasting menu – they just bring it out, which is kind of fun. Also, when two people at the table order it, they bring something different to each person, so you really get to try two things at each course (the wine pairings are different too – one wine to go with each plate). Everything they brought out was wonderful. The food looked beautiful on the plate, the combination of tastes and textures was always creative and very well done, and the wines were great with each dish. Also, all of the portions were very generous, which is great for sharing. Some of the dishes we really liked – sashimi of hamachi and carmalized diver scallops with cauliflower puree and golden raisins. We also really liked the duck breast and the prime New York steak and short ribs. The other impressive thing about the restaurant was the service. The greeters and the servers were all really friendly. Each course was described to you, as were each of the wines poured, all in a very friendly and accessible way. Our server made a point of asking us if we wanted a break between courses to chat and enjoy the wine. (The answer was definitely yes between the main course and dessert – it was really nice to be able to let our food settle and to relax for a while before the last course.) Overall, we had a great experience – a great place for the last big meal of our honeymoon!

Honeymoon Day 28 – June 28, 2011 – Napa, CA

2011-07-04T17:44:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, we knew it was forecast to rain, and we had planned to drive around to a couple different wineries during the day. But somehow, when we woke up in the morning and actually saw the rain coming down, and then saw the cozy fireplace in our room, we changed our minds. We had a wonderful rainy day in, sitting by the fire, chatting, and watching movies (more Bond!). This also turned out to be the perfect time to open up the wine that the hotel had given us for our honeymoon.

We did finally venture out for dinner, but by then, the rain had actually stopped. We went to Ubuntu, a vegetarian restaurant in downtown Napa. The restaurant has one Michelin star, which I think makes it the first Michelin star restaurant I’ve ever been to. They have a yoga studio attached, and a lot of the food they cook comes from their own organic garden. Jeff and I had the tasting menu, and ordered a few different tasting-size wines along with the different courses. They had two options for each course on the tasting menu, so Jeff and I just always ordered different things, and got to try it all. All of the food was great. The ‘roast and raw asparagus’ was really good – the asparagus itself was really fresh and tasty, but also the sauces along with it were great. Jeff had a really interesting melon gazpacho, too.

After that, we stopped at Bounty Hunter again for a quick flight of white wines, and then it was back to the hotel!

Honeymoon Day 27 – June, 27, 2011 – Napa, CA

2011-07-04T17:40:00.002-04:00

We started our day off nice and slow, with breakfast in bed, and reading through the news.

Eventually, we decided to head out. Breakfast had been so big that we weren’t really hungry for lunch. After a little walk around town, we went to “Bounty Hunter,” a wine bar and barbeque place. We used a couple of our free tasting coupons, and ordered their taster platter to share. The barbeque was really good, and so was the wine. I had a Pursuit Pinot Noir, which I really enjoyed.

After our wine, we continued our little walking tour of town, before heading back to our hotel to make reservations at the spa. We also grabbed some coffee and spent some time relaxing near the river.

We had dinner at Angele that night, which is in the same building complex as our hotel. It’s a well-reviewed French restaurant with really nice patio seating. We enjoyed their cheese plate, and then I ordered the off-the-menu burger, which was very good, and Jeff had their vegetable risotto, which is one of the better risottos I’ve had – with a strong herb taste, and not too salty. We had their shortbread for dessert, and that may have been my favorite dish overall. It came with strawberries and ice cream, and was a great end to the meal.

Honeymoon Day 26 – June 26, 2011 – Los Gatos, CA to Napa, CA

2011-07-04T17:37:00.000-04:00

The day after the wedding, the whole wedding crew got up early to get the house straightened and ready for guests. Janet’s relatives came over and brought a huge collection of Dim Sum foods.

When it was time to eat, we all loaded up our plates with the different items (conveniently labeled in English). About 20 minutes into the meal, when everyone was too full to take another bite, we agreed that it was the most and the quickest any of us had ever eaten dim sum. Usually you’re waiting for a good cart to come around and trading off with other people at the table to get a piece of something, and it takes a long time to get through the whole meal. This time, you just took everything you wanted right away, and you got to eat everything you picked, and so we all discovered that our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. The food was great, though.

The brunch went until 3pm, but Jeff and I didn’t manage to leave until about 4:30pm – it was hard to go when there were so many fun people still around that we don’t see often. Also, a picnic table on a deck on a beautiful, sunny day, looking out over the mountains, is a pretty hard thing to walk away from.

Eventually we did, go, though. John gave us a ride to our zipcar, which happened to be only a couple blocks from his house (complete coincidence!). From there we drove (well, Jeff drove and I slept) to Napa and checked into our hotel.

We stayed at the Napa River Inn in downtown Napa. It’s a historic hotel, located in a building that used to be a mill. Jeff and I stayed in a room that had been a roller-skating rink at one time. Everything was really beautiful, and it had a nice fireplace with cushy chairs nearby. I could have used a bit more natural light than our one little window allowed, but I guess you have to make some concessions if you stay in a historic location.

We had ordered the hotel through Jetsetter.com, and it included not only the room, but also one $150 spa gift certificate for each night we stayed, gourmet breakfast in bed each morning, and a complimentary wine tasting each afternoon. And the first night we were there they sent up a bottle of wine with a card congratulating us on our honeymoon.

There’s lots of good food and wine in Napa, of course, but the night we got there, we were really ready for a night in with just the two of us, so we ordered Dominoes, and laid back to watch another Bond movie. This time we decided to start from the beginning, so we put on “Dr. No.”

Honeymoon Day 25 – June 25, 2011 – Los Gatos, CA – Janet and Dan’s Wedding!

2011-07-04T17:32:00.000-04:00

Jeff and I slept fairly late – which is reasonable, since it was our first full night’s sleep in a real bed in almost 50 hours.

We had breakfast at the house (Jeff was feeling much better!), and then went with Neera and Shreyas to downtown Los Gatos. We visited Janet at “I Do” Hair, the salon where she was having her hair and make-up done. When she had to head off for photos, the four of us walked around town a bit and got some falafel for lunch.

After getting ready, we headed to the wedding site a bit early, because the four of us were the ushers at the wedding. The wedding venue was really beautiful – it’s called Nestldown, and it’s in the middle of a huge red wood grove. The ceremony was at the bottom of a winding stone stairway, with a lake just behind the alter. There was a grassy area to the left of a big wooden building (they called it ‘the barn,’ but it was much more clean and new looking than the name suggests), and they had the cocktail reception in that outdoor space. There was another big grassy area to the right of the barn where all of the dinner tables were arranged. Each clearing was surrounded by tall, old red wood trees. It definitely had a fairytale feel.

We handed out the programs and directed people down the road to the ceremony area, and just before things started, we grabbed seats. We were in the last row, but that turned out to be ok, because we had a great view of Janet coming down the stone staircase with her dad. It was a beautiful entrance. (Also Janet said later that it was really nice for her that we were some of the first faces that she saw – smiling and excited!)

Janet and Dan’s ceremony was really beautiful – they had some really great personal touches. The officiant talked a fair amount about Janet and Dan’s cultural heritage – Janet being Chinese and Dan Jewish, and the history that involves. They had both the families and everyone present affirm their support for the couple (which we did too, and which I really like. It made me wonder - is this standard at weddings now? Does anyone still do ‘if anyone has a reason why these two should not be wed, speak now? It seems much nicer to have everyone affirming rather than an awkward silence of no one objecting.) At one point of the ceremony, they had both sets of parents come up and each give four of ‘eight blessings.’ This was building on the traditional seven blessings (like we had at our ceremony!), except in China, eight is a lucky number. Four of the blessings were from the Jewish tradition, and recited by Dan’s parents (in Hebrew and English), and four were Chinese proverbs and recited by Janet’s parents (in Chinese and English). I thought it was really cool that the parents were so involved, the prayers themselves were really nice, and even the overall structure (doing eight rather than seven blessings) was a melding of the two cultures. Janet and Dan each recited really sweet vows, completing the sentences, “When I’m with you, you make me…” “I knew I loved you when…” They were memorable vows – I think Dan said that Janet made him accomplish more and dream bigger and get more done, and that he knew he loved Janet when she went to Boston for the second time, and he knew his life wouldn’t be complete without her. Janet said that she knew she loved Dan when wherever she was, she didn’t feel at home unless he was there too. And of course, they broke a glass at the end, and everyone yelled ‘Mazeltov!’

After the ceremony, Neera and Shreyas, who are getting married in a month, were discussing their ceremony. They are having a traditional Indian ceremony, but after seeing Janet and Dan’s wedding, they’re trying to think of ways to make it more personal and tailored to them. Neera was telling Janet about their re-thinking at the cocktail reception, and Janet said that she and Dan had the same reaction after Jeff’s and my ceremony a month ago, and they had ended up making a bunch of changes! I thought that was so cute – the benefit of having three best friends with weddings all in a row!

The cocktail reception was in a nice open, grassy area to the left of the barn. There was an open bar and space to mill around and chat. There was also a miniature train that people could ride on, and a miniature “fantasy house” that you could visit. They had a guest book table set up with polaroids so you could snap a picture, put it in their book, and write next to it. There was plenty of time to explore the grounds, chat with friends (and Janet!), and enjoy a couple drinks.

At some point, people started making their way over to the tables for dinner. The weather was perfect for dinner outside – temperatures in the 70’s and light shade from the trees. Janet gave butterfly wine stoppers as table gifts – they were very cute and went with the butterfly theme of the day. The food was good – Jeff and I both had steak with au gratin potatoes, which were great. Jeff and I sat by Craig and Patrick, Neera and Shreyas, Stephanie and Aaron, and John Gardner.

Also, Janet had her first costume change of the evening, and was now in a beautiful red dress, rather than the white dress she’d worn for the wedding.

There were five speeches during dinner. Dan’s mom and dad both gave speeches, and told a bunch of short stories about Dan growing up. My favorite one was from when he was about nine. He’d been sick with an undiagnosed illness for about nine months, and he told his mom he had a question. She was sure he was going to ask her when he would get better, and was trying to think of what she could possibly say. But then he asked, “Mom… do you think four kilobytes will be enough for me?”

Janet’s dad told a really cute story about Janet when she was four years old. Janet had been born in Shanghai, and then her Dad had moved to Florida to go to school. He had been away for four years when he was able to send for his family to join him. When he met them in San Francisco, four-year-old Janet was very wary of him. She wasn’t sure he was really her dad, even though that’s what the adults were saying, and he did look like the guy in the pictures. He tried everything to get her to warm up and chat with him on the plane. In the connecting airport, he said he got an idea. At that time, it was still very difficult to get icecream in China, so he asked Janet if she wanted an icecream. He bought her one, and after that it was all smiles – he said she must have figured, if this guy can get me icecream, he must be my dad! (It was very sweet when he told the story – Janet was tearing up, though she noted later that the moral of the story is maybe not the best…)

Dan’s brother, who was the best man, gave a speech that was mostly made up of stories about how smart Dan is – like how he skipped a grade, and how he took the AP Probability and Statistics exam and only got a four – because he’d never actually taken the class.

Janet’s cousin, Dorothy, gave the most tear-jerking speech – it was very sweet and really heartfelt. She talked about how she had come to the U.S. in high school and moved in with Janet’s family. Janet was really supportive of her, and always there to talk to her when she was having trouble. Janet made her really believe that she could do things she never thought possible – take harder classes, apply to better schools – and it had a huge impact on her life.

Janet and Dan also performed a Chinese tea ceremony during the dinner. They bowed to each set of parents and to each other, and then poured tea for each set of parents. And the parents gave a gift to the couple. It was a cool tradition, and fun to see. It’s nice, in general, how involved the parents were.

After dinner, we changed locations (inside the barn for dancing and cake), and Janet changed dresses (now blue instead of red). There was dancing – including the Hora. The outdoor spaces were still open, so you could grab a drink and a piece of cake (which her little sister made!) or a chocolate covered strawberry, and chat outside. Lots of people were dancing, and the reception was really fun.

Things ended at about 9:30pm, which is a bit early, but also meant that almost everyone – friends and family – could stay to the end, which was really nice. Also, since Janet and Dan had rented the huge house nearby (the Wedding Mountain Headquarters), they could invite everybody over for a big afterparty.

Neera, Shreyas, Jeff, and I helped to pack things up and load them into the car, so we were some of the last to arrive. But when we did get there, things were going strong. The house has a large upstairs with a beautiful wrap-around with a great view, a fire pit, and a downstairs with a pool table, and ping pong. We had an awesome night back at the house, where Janet and Dan could stay up late with everyone, since they had their own suite just upstairs.

Honeymoon Day 24 – June 24 – San Francisco, CA

2011-07-04T17:16:00.000-04:00

Well, things didn’t go entirely smoothly on the flight to California – Jeff got sick on the flight from Bangkok to Tokyo, and was only a bit better on the flight from Tokyo to California. Other than being sick, he slept almost the entire time. Usually I’m the one that has an easy time sleeping, but I barely slept on the flights, and I didn’t sleep at all in the airports. I did manage to watch three movies on the second flight – The Adjustment Agency, Gulliver’s Travels, and The Green Hornet. They were all pretty good. I don’t know if I was just sleep-deprived, but I giggled all the way through Jack Black’s silly humor in Gulliver’s Travels – it seemed really funny to me. The Green Hornet was done fairly well, too, though I thought there were times when the characters would do things that seemed really odd or ‘out-of-character,’ which also tended to be boring – like when the Green Hornet and Kato got in a fight. Anyway, Jeff and I made it to California, both tired, but all in one piece.

We met up with Neera and Shreyas in the San Francisco Airport, which seems like it would be really difficult, but Neera and I have done it a number of times and had good luck – no delayed flights or weird re-routing (knock on wood). We all headed to Janet and Dan’s Wedding Mountain Headquarters (the giant house they had rented for their wedding ‘crew’), where our first order of business was to take a nice afternoon nap. (We found on our bed cute shirts that said “Janet and Dan’s Wedding Crew” on the front, and “bigger than a party, smaller than a brigade” (Janet’s general explanation of what a wedding ‘crew’ is) on the back.

In the evening we all went to Janet and Dan’s rehearsal dinner, which was in Palo Alto, and open to everyone attending the wedding. They had a great buffet set up with a combination of Mediterranean food and Chinese food. There were lots of people there, and this was the first chance to see everybody, so we spent a lot of time chatting and catching up with friends from college. Janet and Dan had a couple of friends give speeches, which were all very cute, and then people headed back to the Wedding Mountain Headquarters to hang out a bit before getting some sleep.

Honeymoon Day 23 – June 23 – Phuket, Thailand

2011-07-04T17:13:00.000-04:00

Even though I knew that we’d have to leave Phuket at night, I was happy when I woke up, because I knew we’d still have a full day to relax. The resort had given us a late check-out – 7pm instead of the normal noon.

We slept in, and then caught the last bit of brunch. We ordered two new made-to-order dishes – ricotta hotcakes with honey and bananas (very good, but not as good as the ones at Hell’s Kitchen in Minneapolis) and cinnamon encrusted pancakes with apple compote (also very good). We also shared fried eggs, assorted snacks from the buffet, and our traditional lychee juice. This time, I also had fresh coconut milk directly from a coconut.

Then it was back to the villa for our favorite activities – swimming, relaxing, and napping at our villa.

At 1:30pm, I went to get a Thai massage from the hotel spa. Thai massage is kind of like a cross between a normal massage and passive yoga. They massage you muscles, but then they also manipulate your limbs and body to stretch them.

When I got there, I changed into a thin cotton jump suit. The first thing was a foot wash, which was really nice and relaxing. Then I had the main massage, which was definitely interesting. There was the massaging, but also moving your legs or arms or body to do different stretches. Also, in order to reach to do all these things, the lady giving me my massage would often climb up on the table. She used her elbows, knees, and feet during the massage – definitely something I haven’t experienced before. Overall it was a really good experience.

The rest of the afternoon was spent whiling away the minutes at our villa – it’s impossible to spend too much time there. Eventually we got more practical and did our packing. Then we went out to catch the beginning of happy hour and to finish writing post cards. When we got to the pool bar, we learned that it was “GM Happy Hour” starting in 15 minutes, and that during that time, all of the drinks would be complimentary. Since we couldn’t stay too long, Jeff and I ordered a lychee martini while we waited. It was very good – obviously made with fresh lychee juice, and served with a lychee speared by lemongrass.

When “GM Happy Hour” started, they brought us each one of the Anatara signature cocktails, which was also pretty good. Jeff and I guessed that the “GM” stands for general management, because a number of managers came over and talked to us and asked us about our experience. One was particularly interested to know about jetsetter, because they’d just started working with them. From their first posting (which was the one we saw a couple weeks ago and booked with), they’d already booked 350 room-nights. Not bad.

Eventually, Jeff and I left the happy hour for one last swim and a shower before checking out. It was tough getting out of the pool for the last time – especially knowing that we’d have a long journey ahead of us!

We took at 9pm flight from Phuket to Bangkok that arrived at about 10:30pm. Our flight from Bangkok to San Franciso (via Tokyo-Narita) departs at 5am. That means, if we got a hotel, we’d (at best) be there from 11pm until 2 or 2:30am, which really didn’t seem worth it. I’ve decided to try to stay awake to get a jump start on jet lag. (It may be 3:30am here, but it’s 1:30 in the afternoon in San Francisco – the middle of the day!) We’ll see what happens – all of the time changes are pretty confusing. We’ll leave Bangkok at 5am, fly for six hours, and get into Tokyo-Narita at 1:20pm. Then we’ll take off from Tokyo-Narita at about 4pm, fly for 10 hours, and somehow arrive in San Francisco at 10am on the same day.

Honeymoon Day 22 – June 22 – Phuket, Thailand

2011-07-04T17:07:00.000-04:00

We started the day with an early breakfast – Jeff ordered the same fried rice and prawns as before, and I just had some fried eggs and things from the buffet.

At 8:30am, a driver arrived to pick us up for our day trip to Phang Nga bay. This is the beautiful area you often see pictures of in Phuket advertisements. It has huge limestone islands jutting up out of the sea – some are hundreds of feet tall. It’s also the area where the bad guy in the James Bond movie, “The Man with the Golden Gun,” has his evil lair.

We weren’t exactly sure what to expect from the trip. I had found a brochure for another tour of Phang Nga bay, but that company didn’t offer tours on Wednesdays, so the person at our hotel said she would book us with another company that did something similar. Lucky for us, the tour turned out to be amazing – Jeff said it was his favorite excursion of the honeymoon.

We rode in a big van with a middle-aged Japanese couple that was picked up from the hotel next door (the Marriott). After a 30 minute drive through the island, the van dropped us off at a port full of tourists – quick a change from our secluded beach and seemingly empty resort. We got on a big boat, and Jeff and I staked out a nice spot on a bench along the side near the front – and happened to end up next to the same Japanese couple. After a bit of a wait at the harbor, the boat headed out. It was a fairly long trip to get to Phang Nga bay – the limestone rocks were really hazy in the distance and then became more and more clear.

Our first stop was at James Bond Island – the particular island where the villain had built his evil lair and where a fair chunk of the movie takes place. The island was really crowded with tourists, and the middle is lined with little booths selling random souveniers (but oddly, no postcards of the island, which is the one thing I might have purchased). But the island is still really cool to see, especially if you’ve seen the movie. The shape of the rocks is interesting, and there are places around the main island to climb around. The Japanese couple told us later that they had visited the island 25 years ago (about 10 years after the movie was filmed) – it was much less crowded then, they said.

We got back on the boat and had lunch, which included a very scary looking fish (but also chicken drumsticks). After a little more sailing, made our second stop. This time, we climbed into little sea kayaks, which were inflatable. Each one had a professional driver/ paddler, so you could just enjoy the view. They told us to bring cameras, but it was a bit of a gamble – you’re right near the water, and the bigger waves get in the boat and get you wet. I kept my camera covered in a plastic bag as much as I could, but overall I was glad I’d brought it along – there were some pretty incredible sights. On the sea canoes, we went right up to the limestone islands.

We kayaked through a short cave – it was so low that you had to lay down in the kayak to get through – during high tide, the cave is completely gone. Once you get through, you see that you’re in a “hong” – a hole in the island where the top is open to the sky, but you’re surrounded on all sides by tall limestone walls. It’s a pretty cool experience. Jeff thought it seemed like a Disney World ride, except it was all natural, and you were really going through caves and ending up in magical hidden areas.

On the way out, we kayaked past a big jellyfish. Our guide picked it up with the paddle to show us. Apparently they’re not poisonous, because he asked if we wanted to touch it, and Jeff did. I did not. (I figure this should help me in the future – since I declined to touch the jelly fish, I think jellyfish should avoid touching me in the future. Ever.)

After lunch, we were happy to find that there was another kayak outing in the plan. This time, we went through a much longer cave – it was almost all really low – even when you laid down, you only cleared the space by a couple inches at times. In the middle of the cave it was pitch black if you turned off your flashlights. When we got through to the other side, we were in another hong. The water was really shallow and sandy, so we could get out of the kayak and walk around.

There were mangrove trees growing in the middle – it was all really jungle-y.

We also saw these fish that have fins kind of like feet – they climb up the mangrove trees so they’re half in the water and half out. When they move, they skip across the water like someone just skipped a stone.

We’ve had nothing but sun in Phuket so far, but heading back to the harbor, you could see that one direction was blue skies (behind us), and the other way was dark and stormy (straight ahead). Luckily, when the rain did come, it poured hard, but passed really quickly, so we could get back to our sunny tour.

Our last stop, coinciding with the end of the rain, was at a sandy island where we could kayak around on our own or just swim. They encouraged us to jump off the top deck of the boat if we wanted to. I convinced Jeff to do it, and then realized how scary it was when I tried to follow. I did do it eventually, though!

Jeff and I kayaked to shore (he did the paddling, I did the sunbathing). One of the incredible things was that the temperature of the water was perfect. There wasn’t a single moment of shock or a chill before you adjusted – you just jumped in and were comfortable. Even Jeff loved being in the water!

After about 45 minutes of swimming around, everyone got back on the boat, and we headed back to the port. From there the same driver picked us up and brought us to our hotel (which was the perfect opportunity for a nap).

When we got back to the hotel, we decided that since we were already in our swimming suits, we might as well try the swim-up bar for the sunset happy hour. Jeff and I enjoyed a refreshing Singha beer together in the pool, and then swam around a bit.

Once we were dry, we went to the tailor to try on the finished suit. It looked really good on Jeff – it fit him nice, and I really like the color. However, I also know that I really don’t know anything about suits, so I’m excited for him to get back and be able to show it to someone who will be able to tell us if it really is good quality. It’s also really convenient that he got a nice, new suit just in time for Janet and Dan’s wedding (which is in two days)!

Since we’d tried both of the restaurants in the hotel, we decided to save a couple dollars and have dinner at one of the places in the Turtle Village shops. Our two options were Bill Bentley’s (which was an English pub) and The Coffee Club (which was a trendy-looking coffee place). Despite their appearance, though, both sold a number of different Thai dishes at a good price (about $4 per entrée). We decided to go with The Coffee Club, because it’s a chain we’ve seen all over Thailand (or at least in Bangkok, where we’d done most of our wandering). We started with nachos, because I saw them on the menu and had a sudden craving for them. They were pretty awful – the chips were a little stale, the guacamole probably came from a can, and the salsa just tasted… weird. Luckily, the Thai dishes that we ordered were much, much better. I actually liked the dish I got (minced chicken and pork with hot chiles and basil) better than either of the dishes at the fancy restaurant the day before.

Back at our villa, Jeff and I decided to get fancy with our A/V set-up. We figured out a way to play the movie so that we could see and hear it while we were in the pool. We turned on another James Bond – “From Russia with Love” – which had been filmed in Istanbul. We swam and watched, and when we started to get a little chilly, we filled up the hot tub and moved there. We had even managed to find a bottle of champagne at the “Turtle Mart” in the Turtle Village Shoppes, so we enjoyed a romantic glass of champagne with our midnight pool-movie.

Honeymoon Day 21 – June 21 – Phuket, Thailand

2011-07-04T16:49:00.000-04:00

During our first full day at Anatara, we managed (just barely) to get up in time for the free brunch buffet. Again, they had a huge assortment of foods from all over the world. They also had fresh lychee juice, which we decided was one of our favorite morning drinks. In addition to the buffet, they have a selection of made-to-order dishes that are really tasty. I had tropical waffles – waffles with diced papaya and mango on top, and Jeff had fried rice and prawns. We also had fried eggs. Again, it was a big, late breakfast that made it impossible to even think about having lunch a few hours later.

After breakfast, we went to the “Turtle Village” shops, which are just around the corner from our hotel. Jeff is starting his new job, and needs some new suits. It’s possible to get tailor-made suits for relatively cheap in Thailand, and Jeff wanted to check it out. The tailor seemed really good, and the price for a tailor-made suit was going to be about the same as an off-the-rack suit in the states, so Jeff decided to give it a go. He got a free tailor-made shirt and a tie using a coupon we got from our hotel. The tailor works fast, so he told us to come back that evening for a fitting.

From there, Jeff and I went back to the hotel to relax and read by the pool. We had two comfy lounge chairs, and again they laid out towels, put up the umbrella, and brought us free water and apples.

We also walked along the beach a bit – there are huge waves this time of year, and red warning flags flying all along the beach, so it wasn’t possible to swim, but we enjoyed the view, dipped our feet in, and watched all of the little sand crabs scuttle back and forth.

Then at 1:30pm, we had to go back to Turtle Village for an appointment. The next two and a half hours marked the only bad experience we had while we were in Phuket, and I almost hate to write about it, since everything else was so great, but here it goes anyway…

As a bit of background, you need to know what happened the day before when we got off the plane. You enter the airport, and there are lots of people jostling to get your attention, asking, “Do you need a hotel? Do you need a cab? Do you want a shuttle? Do you want to book an excursion?” Someone asked where we were staying, and we said Anatara, and they pointed us to a little booth. In the booth, people were wearing nametags that said Anatara on them. They welcomed us, had us sit down, got us water, said they could arrange transportation, and asked us to fill out a form. Reading a little more about the form, Jeff and I realized that this booth wasn’t really for the Anatara hotel – it was for the Anatara Vacation Club – kind of like a time-share program that the hotel does. However, the deal was that if you sign up to go to the 90 minute vacation club talk (during which they’d be telling you all about Anatara resorts), you would get a free taxi to the hotel and a voucher for 4000 bahts (almost $150) to use at the hotel restaurants, spa, or excursions. So, knowing that this was the deal, we decided to continue filling out the forms. We paid a 500 baht deposit, which gets returned to you when you actually show up for the appointment the next day. But then, when we gave them the paper work, they saw that neither one of us was over 30 years old, which is apparently one of their criteria (maybe to keep backpackers from taking advantage of the free vouchers?) They said that we actually couldn’t do the deal and get the voucher. But since we’d already paid the deposit and they’d called the taxi, we should just take the free ride to the hotel, and then go at the 1:30pm appointment time to pick up our deposit and talk for a few minutes, but not go through the full 90 minute presentation.

So fast-forward to today. We went at 1:30pm, got our deposit, and then waited to be called to talk to the person that would give us the sales pitch. When she called us back, we explained that we were both under 30, so we didn’t really qualify, and we weren’t sure we could do this. She said she’d check with a manager, and then came back and said that it would be fine to continue. The woman – Lola – was friendly and nice and chatted with us about our travel style, about the vacation club program, about the Anatara resorts in general. The manager came in and gave us a price. It’s actually a fairly reasonable deal, and Jeff and I did think and talk it over. They also do all sorts of “first-visit discounts,” to encourage you to sign up immediately, but I know that I’m not the kind of person that can be happy making a big decision without sleeping on it, so I was happy to walk away from those discounts to have the luxury of thinking it over carefully (which they clearly didn’t really like). When we finally had all the information and reached the end of the presentation, Jeff and I asked about the voucher. She said that we don’t get one because we’re under 30. I was so frustrated that I didn’t think I could talk without crying, so we basically just said ok and left. It just seemed to misleading that we had said we didn’t qualify for the deal, and she had said that the manager had ok’d it (which we assumed meant the whole deal - not just the part about listening to a sales pitch for an hour and a half). Then we got back to the hotel and saw a clock and realized that it was 4pm. We had been there for two and a half hours – almost double the 90 minutes that they told us. I was so frustrated, because I felt like we’d been tricked out of our whole afternoon on one of our only full days at the resort. We had diligently showed up at the appointed time, mentioned the age issue upfront, and then listened attentively to the whole presentation, only to find out at the end that for the time and attention we had given, we wouldn’t be given the advertised voucher, and we had been kept there for almost twice the amount of time they had originally said. Back at the hotel, I did end up explaining the situation to a manager, though I think the Anatara hotel people and the Anatara vacation club people are not the same. Still, she said she’d look into it, and the hotel did send us an apology letter and a voucher for 2000 bahts (half of the advertised amount, but more than nothing).

Phew – I feel like it takes a lot of mental energy even just to remember and think about that whole episode – so frustrating! If only I could just go back and have those hours relaxing and swimming at the villa, enjoying my honeymoon! But what’s done is done. So…

The first thing we did after the whole two-and-a-half hour sales pitch fiasco was go back to our villa and swim. It’s impossible to be too upset if you’re swimming in your own private pool at your beautiful villa, so things got better pretty quickly.

Jeff and I also decided that those big glass doors opening onto the pool from the bedroom were just begging to be used – so we opened them up and took turns jumping straight from the bedroom into the pool – technically no different than jumping from the deck, but it still feels awesome.

There’s a daily sunset happy hour at the hotel pool bar from 5-7pm, so Jeff and I headed down there. We sat on big bean-bag type chairs in the sand in front of the bar, and tried the two-for-one rose wine. Not the best wine I’ve ever had, but the view was unbeatable.

Around 7pm, we headed back to the tailor for Jeff’s fitting – it was incredible that the pants were basically done and the skeleton of the jacket was finished, too. Jeff tried them on, the tailor made some chalk markings and showed us the look of various lengths, and then we were done.

For dinner, we tried the second restaurant at the hotel – it serves Mediterrean and Thai food. We tried two Thai dishes – Massaman curry and pad thai. Both were pretty good, though not as good as the seafood dinner we’d had the night before.

We went back to the room to relax and watch another movie (The Fighter, this time – from the resort’s DVD library). Just to prove how mesmerizing the pool is, Jeff decided mid-movie that he wanted to take a break to jump in – Jeff! Who usually never wants to go in the water unless I plead with him!) And once I saw him jump in, there was no way I was staying out, so we had a romantic midnight swim.

Honeymoon Day 20 – June 20 – Phuket, Thailand

2011-07-04T16:35:00.000-04:00

Our flight was pretty early on Monday morning, so after a quick skype call to each of our dads (it was Sunday evening of father’s day back home), and one last stop at the Lebua breakfast buffet, we caught our flight to Phuket.

We got into Phuket around 10am. We had originally booked a room at the Hilton resort in Phuket, which looked very nice, though it was in the main tourist area, which has a reputation for being crowded and a little rowdy. But then, while we were traveling on our honeymoon, a deal came up on jetsetter.com for the Anatara resort in Phuket. It’s located on a fairly secluded northern beach (actually part of a national park), and it’s a five-star resort. For not much more than we would pay at the Hilton, we were able to get a 2000 square foot villa with its own private pool.

It sounded like an amazing deal, and when we arrived and saw it all in person, it was even better. Our villa was completely surrounded by a high fence, so you really have your own private space. It has a beautiful blue tile pool that’s a really good size. The pool is surrounded by a deck on two sides, and by the villa (with big sliding glass doors) on the other two sides. The deck is big enough to have two lounge chairs and a big umbrella as well as a whole covered outdoor seating area with a couch and a table and chairs, and its own minibar.

Inside, the villa exudes relaxation. It has dark wood floors and tables. A big beautiful bed, on which they had arranged two swans making a heart shape, sitting in a heart made of rose petals, with “LOVE” written beneath. There was a desk (and free wifi!), and another sitting area with a couch and cushions. One whole wall of the room is big glass sliding doors that open directly onto the pool.

There was a back room with two closets and a make-up table. Then there was the bathroom. It had two sinks, and a small couch. There were two interior doors, one to the toilet, and one to a huge rain shower. Then there was an exterior door at the far side that led to the outdoor rain shower.

Like the bedroom, the big wall in the bathroom was actually sliding glass doors. These opened directly to steps into a big stone tub, which was built directly into the pool, and even had a side-section made of glass, so you could see into the pool from in the tub.

But it wasn’t just the amazing design and layout that made the room so great. It also had a bunch of great finishing touches. Cute decorations and candles and things made the room look like home. It had an iPod stand that allowed you to easily play music on the surround-sound system installed in the villa – which included a speaker in the bathroom that you could hear while sitting in the tub. They had a bowl with flower petals and a selection of bath salts. There were robes and flip flops and slippers. There were yoga mats (despite our best intentions, we never managed to use these), and a sketch pad. It was easy to imagine spending our whole time in Phuket just in our villa.

And we did spend a lot of our time there the first day. Because the villa hadn’t been ready when we first arrived mid-morning, they sent us to the pool area down by the beach for complimentary drinks. The pool and beach area is beautiful, and there were only a handful of other people around. We easily got beautiful seats out in a shallow-water pool area. They laid out towels for us, put up the big umbrella, and brought us our drinks, as well as waters and apples. It was not a bad way to wait for the villa. Still, when we did get in, after touring around and taking pictures in amazement, we decided to take a little nap. And then swam. And then we rested. And that’s pretty much how we spent our first afternoon.

We eventually left the villa to get dinner. The Anatara resort has two restaurants, and they’re a bit expensive, but we wanted to try them out. The first one we tried is located right on the water – it’s called “Sea.Fire.Salt,” and specializes in sea food. It also has a salt sommelier who comes to your table and recommends particular salts to try with your meal.

Jeff and I got a bucket of assorted cold seafood that was incredibly fresh and tasty (and the Thai, Hawaiian, and White salt were nice with it). It included oysters, mussels (or something like mussels or clams – we weren’t exactly sure), crab legs, scallops, and prawns.

We also shared tiger prawns, cooked on a salt rock, which is a specialty of the restaurant. This dish was very good as well. We had it with two sides – wok fried vegetables and thyme potatoes, which turned out to be huge portions. We had a strawberry sundae for dessert and went back to our room very full and ready to relax again.

Back at the villa, we filled the bath with hot water, rose petals, and bath salts, and turned out on the lights in the pool. It was one of the most romantic scenes I think I’ve ever experienced in real life.

Eventually, we decided to cuddle up in bed and watch a movie. We were able to hook up my computer to the TV (we’d brought cords for this purpose), which meant we could basically watch any movie we wanted via the internet. We decided to watch the James Bond movie “The Man with the Golden Gun,” because part of the movie was filmed in Phuket. The movie was entertaining and light, and had some funny 1970’s vibes, since that’s when it was filmed.

Honeymoon Day 19 – June 19 – Bangkok, Thailand

2011-07-04T16:22:00.000-04:00

We started our second day in Bangkok with another relaxing morning, though we did manage to make it to the hotel restaurant before the free breakfast buffet was over. The buffet was impressive – it had breakfast options from all different countries – miso soup from Japan, dim sum (including pork rolls) from China, boiled rice from Thailand, bread and cheese for Europe, and bacon and eggs for the Americans. Jeff and I basically tried a bit of everything, so there was no need for lunch that day.

After lunch, we caught a ferry on the river, which is supposed to be the best way to navigate from our area to the temples, which is where we wanted to go. If we hadn’t read the warnings in our guide book, we may have fallen prey to a common scam in Bangkok – apparently people tell you that the place you’re trying to go is closed, and then they try to direct you somewhere else – to their friend’s shop, or something like that. But when a random guy on the street offered to “help” us, asking us where we were going, telling us the ferry was closed, and saying just to follow him as he went down a street that we knew was the wrong direction, we politely, but firmly declined. My tactic from this point on was to always tell people who asked that we were “just walking,” because you’ve technically answered their question, but it’s basically impossible for them to tell you that it’s closed or to try to give you directions, and that tactic worked pretty well for us the rest of the time we were there. (And we saw this sign later in the day giving the opening hours of the palace and warning not to listen to strangers.)

The ferry was awesome (and cheap – about a dollar each to ride as far up the river as it goes). It was so great, that we decided to continue on past our own stop just to see how far it goes and get a little river tour, and then we got off at the temple spot after it had turned around and started going back. The river is lined with really fancy, tall hotels and also really ramshackle houses on stilts, with laundry hanging out front – it’s a really interesting mix.

The temples are really amazing. They’re really big complexes with lots of different buildings and statues. The architecture is really interesting, but it’s the details that are the most incredible. Every building is really, really intricate. It’s also covered with shiny metals and stones, so it just sparkles like crazy in the sun. It’s literally dazzling. I must have taken hundreds of pictures.

After seeing the temples, Jeff and I decided to get some sight-seeing variety by walking the three miles or so back to our hotel. Our route would take us through Chinatown, which we thought would be fun. The streets in Chinatown seem to be completely lined with people selling things. Some stands are like a mini garage sale, with a completely random collection of things – one pair of rollerblades, some jewelry, cups, etc. – while others sell tons of the same random thing – kitchen faucets, cell phone covers – we even saw a stall selling guns, ammunition, and crossbows. We didn’t buy anything until we passed a store with giant bags of tea for sale outside. Jeff couldn’t pass that up. Only after he’d bought the tea did we learn from the bag that we’d purchased tea from the Korean store in the Chinatown area of Bangkok – it’s practically the definition of pan-Asian. There were food stalls interspersed in all of this – Jeff tried a dish that looked like it might be fried rice and big noodles, but wasn’t – we’re not sure what it was, actually, but it tasted pretty good.

Eventually, we got back to our neighborhood, and we felt ready for dinner, so we just made our way back to the alley that we’d liked so much the day before. We tried a different set of linoleum tables this time – across from the ones we’ve eaten before. The people were different, but the menu seemed to be the same. We ordered the red curry again, along with a chile sauce dish and pad thai. We shared a bottle of Singha – a Thai beer. The food was all great, again, and somehow the price was exactly the same as the day before.

Back at the hotel, we decided to check out the sky bar. It’s on the roof of the hotel – essentially the 65th floor. The view is incredible, but dizzying. We enjoyed two nice cocktails as we admired the view.

(We would have ordered champagne, which has been our honeymoon thing, but for some reason, while the cocktails were a reasonable $9 or so, even the cheapest glass of champagne was about $50 – and that’s for one glass, not a bottle. We learned later that in Thailand there is a 450% tax on wine and champagne, which must be the reason.)

Luckily, either wine at the liquor store isn’t subject to the same tax, or we managed to get a wine whose base price was just a couple of dollars, because the price of the wine we’d gotten the night before was much more reasonable. We headed back to our room to enjoy the bottle and the view from our own balcony.

Eventually, Jeff decided we needed a midnight snack, and he went out on the streets to find something fun. He ended up buying these plastic bags that were filled with noodles and some other things (maybe veggies and some tofu?), with spices in the corner, and another plastic bag of sauce to put on top. Again, we didn’t know exactly what we were eating, but it was really good. (And now Jeff has cravings for it, but we don’t really even know how to describe what it was like!)

Also, around this time, I had turned on the TV and gotten sucked into the only English-language programming I could find – Terminator 4 (the recent one with Christian Bale – is that four?). By the time I finished my midnight snack and a bit more of the wine, I realized that there was no chance I was going to have the energy to pack, so Jeff took over that job while I finished watching Terminator and started on Ninja Assassin (which was the next thing that came on the same channel). I also had a stomach ache at that point – not super surprising given the random agglomeration we’d been eating, though Jeff was totally fine.

Honeymoon Day 18 – June 18 – Bangkok, Thailand

2011-07-04T16:05:00.000-04:00

We arrived in Bangkok very early – around 8am. We took a cab (about 40 minutes, but only about $10) to our hotel. We stayed at Lebua State Tower, which had great reviews and is supposed to be one of the nicest hotels in Bangkok. We got a great deal through jetsetter.com, and we were excited to see our room. After the taxi dropped us off, a hotel person took our bags while another hotel person greeted us and sat us at a comfy table and chairs in the lobby area. Then she went to get the information to check us in while we just sat and rested in the cute little tea area – definitely a good start. Then we found out that they’d upgraded us, since we were on our honeymoon.

She showed us to our room, and it was amazing. It was on the 23rd floor (great view!) and we walked in to see a small sitting room and a hallway. Along the hallway was a bedroom with a big balcony and its own attached bathroom. At the end of the hallway was a full kitchen and a dining room, with a balcony (Jeff was extra happy to see the drip coffee machine). Beyond that was a living room with a wrap-around couch and big TV. And attached to the living room was the master bedroom, with its own balcony overlooking the river, and a large master bathroom. We also found out later (after opening the various closets and things) that we had a washer and dryer, which was great luck, since we hadn’t yet come up with a plan to do laundry during our trip.

(Also, we found out via a multitude of signs in the hotel that “The Hangover 2” had done some of their filming at the Lebua State Tower, so if you see the movie, keep an eye out for it!)

We had originally planned to just drop off our things, get ready quickly, and head straight out into the city, but we decided to take our time and enjoy our room a bit. We did finally head out, because we needed to find some lunch. Jeff had read in our guidebook that there were little food stands all over the city – on streets, down alleys – and this is where the best food could be found. There was a specific little alley the book recommended not far from our hotel, so we decided to try that first. It was basically a little street lined with people selling fruits, vegetables, or other foods. Some places had a couple linoleum or metal tables out front. Jeff and I walked up and down and then picked a spot with a couple tables. We tried red curry and green curry – they were both good dishes, though the red curry was really memorable.

From there, we made our way to the skytrain – the above-ground metro system. It was really nice and new looking and easy to use. We rode out to the weekend market – it seemed like it was fate that we’d come on the right day to see it. The weekend market is made up of a huge complex of little stalls – some are kind of inside a covered area, some are outside but covered with tarps, and some are just outside and uncovered. They sell about everything you can imagine. There are a lot of clothing shops and shoe shops. Lots of little food stands and mini-restaurants. There are some souvenirs. There is also artwork, kitchen supplies, metal-work, pottery, and lots more. Jeff ended up buying sandals. We found a cute dress and a tea set we liked a lot shortly after we got there, but we wanted to shop around a bit more before buying anything. It was a mistake to leave the stall, though, because the chances to finding the same place twice in that giant maze were very low. By the time we did make it back (and then, only by chance as we were looking for the exit), the shop had already closed.

Jeff did get to try a bunch of different foods, including some of dish made with tiny eggs (quail eggs), and a sort-of barbeque meat thing. We sat down at a little noodle shop and had the only thing they serve – noodle soup with chicken.

Since we were having a big shopping day, we decided to continue on the commerce trend and visit one of Bangkok’s biggest malls. It had about five floors with tons of little stores. There was an area that was filled with tons and tons of little stalls, too. We found a Dairy Queen, and blizzards were less than a dollar, so we thought we’d try the double-chocolate – it definitely hit the spot. We wanted to get some champagne for back at the room, too, but we never saw a liquor shop during our tour of all five floors. But then, as we were making our way out, the escalator dropped us off right in front of a little corner area in the department store that was selling alcohol. We got a bottle of champagne and a bottle of wine (for the next day!), and headed home.

We finished off our day by having a glass of champagne on our balcony overlooking the city.

Honeymoon Day 17 – June 17 – Istanbul, Turkey

2011-07-03T18:52:00.000-04:00

Breadkfast on the patio at our hotel has become a ‘do not miss’ for Jeff and me, even though we do like to sleep in. The food and the view are both worth waking up for.

We only had a half-day today, so after breakfast, we went on the ten minute walk up to Topkapi Palace and did some sightseeing there. It was really beautiful, with lots of intricate architectural design and cool tiles. We saw a bunch of amazing jewel-encrusted thrones, pitchers, boxes, and other items in the treasury, and looked at religious relics displayed in other rooms.

We would have loved to spend even more time at the palace (an hour and a half was definitely not enough!), but we had to rush to have one last snack of Turkish food (kebabs and babaganoush) before making our way back to the airport!

The whole afternoon and evening we enjoyed flying on Emirate Airlines on the long trip from Istanbul to Bangkok. Their website says that they’re ‘fluent in luxury,’ and that seems pretty accurate. There are a million movies, the food is definitely a step up from the average airplane meal, wine is free, and the staff have never-ending smiles. Tomorrow we wake up in Bangkok!

Honeymoon Day 16 – June 16 – Istanbul, Turkey

2011-07-03T18:48:00.000-04:00

Our plans on Thursday were all worked out – a ferry cruise up the Bosphorus, an adventure into the Asian side to try a restaurant recommended by a friend, and an evening in the new part of the city – until it started pouring down rain while we sat at breakfast.

We decided to forget about the Bosphorous cruise – even if the boat was still running in the storm, you wouldn’t be able to see anything through the rain and fog. Instead, we ended up having a quiet morning in the hotel and getting some extra sleep – not a bad alternative at all.

When the rain finally subsided, we caught the metro to the Istanbul Modern museum.

The museum focuses on modern Turkish art, and the first exhibit when you walk in is one of my favorite art museum exhibits I’ve ever seen. The exhibit showcases Turkish art from the early 1900’s to the present. The little plaques next to each painting explain who the artist is, where they studied, and who they studied with, which is really interesting – funny to imagine all the international ties in the art world. The plaques also talk about what was going on in Turkey at the time – who was ruling, and what debates were occurring in the public and among artists. Going along all of the paintings, you really get a sense, not only of the context or importance of one painting, but of the evolution of Turkish art and art debates in relation to current events in the world. When the paintings become more impressionistic, you have a sense of why artists have made this change. When you see paintings of people working in machine shops or fields, you understand that the choice of these subjects, rather than the scenic water views popular in the past, are significant.

Even later in the museum, when the focus wasn’t on the evolution of art through history, the explanation plaques next to each painting were particularly interesting. They would give you not only basic information on the artist or the painting, but also some pointers as to why this particular painting is interesting or important in the world of art. The plaques would sometimes point your attention to the direction of lines, the use of particular colors rather than others, the direction of gazes, and many other details that you may not appreciate if you had no background in art (like Jeff and me). They were some of the most interesting and helpful descriptions I’ve ever seen in an art museum.

The basement of the museum has very modern, temporary exhibits. These were interesting, but a little overwhelming in their use of light and sound and video, especially after more than two quiet hours of strolling and reading upstairs. Jeff and I headed to the café for an espresso and a tea on the patio overlooking the water and Sultanhamet (the old town).

An aside – the espresso and tea together cost about $9 – which brings me to one of my un-anticipated findings in Istanbul – it’s expensive! I’m not sure what I expected – maybe something at least cheaper than the states on average, but meals in both the old part of town, which is touristy, and the new part of town, which is a bit fancy, always seem to be about the same as U.S. big-city meal prices. Unless you want to buy a doner or other sandwich from a to-go kiosk, you can pretty much expect to spend $30-$40 for lunch for two people. It’s not super expensive, but it's still more than I expected.

After the museum, we went on a somewhat round-about walk, ending up back on Istiklal. We decided to have dinner at a place just down the street from the restaurant we’d eaten at the night before, because it had looked good to both of us passing by. The restaurant is called “Canim Cigerim Ilhan Usta.” They really only serve one thing – kebabs, and they specialize in liver. They don’t bring out the menu – they just ask: liver, meat, or chicken? (Jeff chose liver and I chose meat.) Then they bring out durum bread (which looks like tortilla) and a bunch of plates of side items – mint, parsley, some other green leaf, peppers, spiced onions, finely chopped tomatoes and onions, and grilled tomatoes, onions and and peppers. Then, they come out with what seems like a million long, hot metal skewers with your liver, meat, or chicken. And then you eat. It was really good, and a lot of food, and despite my previous comment about high prices, was only about $25 for both of us.

After dinner, Jeff and I decided to retrace our steps to find the cute side-street lined with pubs that we had seen on our walk the previous day. We did manage to find it, and settled into a cute two-person table right along the street. We tried the local beer – Efes Pilzen – which was not bad, and talked about wedding things.

Jeff and I have gotten into the habit of constantly using the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife.’ They’re still so novel, that it still doesn’t feel quite real to say it – that Jeff is my husband and I’m his wife. It’s so exciting! And so we say things like, “Do you want another beer, wife?” Or, “Ok, husband, do you think we should take a taxi or walk?”

Sitting on a cute pedestrian (mostly – it seems like there is no place motorcycles won’t venture) street, having a relaxing drink, marveling at the fact that we’re in Istanbul, and we’re married, is a pretty incredible feeling.

Honeymoon Day 15 – June 15 – Istanbul, Turkey

2011-07-03T18:39:00.000-04:00

We managed to get up in time for breakfast at the hotel this morning. There were breads and cheeses and eggs and waffles – I’m not sure how authentically Turkish the selection was, but all the food was really good, so I can’t complain. The hotel is right on the Marmara sea, so Jeff and I got to enjoy our breakfast on our patio, watching the boats go by.

We started the day by seeing the Aya Sofia, which is a church built in 537 AD by the Roman Emperor Justinian. That probably makes it one of the oldest buildings I’ve ever been in, since even the amazingly old Cathedrals in England were usually built after 1000 AD. It was turned into a mosque when the Ottomans took over, and then turned into a museum by Ataturk in 1935, so its history seems to parallel Turkish history fairly well.

The next stop was the Blue Mosque, which is also one of the most well known, and most beautiful buildings in Istanbul. It’s still an operating mosque, though, so we had to hurry to be out before the noon prayer.

From there, we made our way back to the grand bazaar and the spice bazaar. It’s a bit chaotic, and everyone wants to talk you into taking a closer look at their booth, but the only thing we ended up buying was a little Christmas ornament and a pair of earrings.

The spice bazaar is very close to the Galata Bridge, which spans over the “Golden Horn” – the waterway on the European side of Istanbul (the nearby Bosphorus Straight is the waterway that separates Europe and Asia). We walked across the bridge, and feeling very hungry and not up to a hike, we bought a ticket to the funicular to take us up the hill. The funicular was actually the 2nd underground railway in the world (after London). The funicular dropped us off on Istiklal Caddesi, the main walking street in the newer part of Istanbul. We quickly found a cute little café for lunch.

After lunch, we were energized, and walked the entire length of Istiklal Caddesi and then continued into the Taksim Square and the park behind it. I wasn’t a big fan of the park though, because it was hard to navigate, and we kept seeming to go downhill (which meant a big walk uphill a little later), so we headed back to explore some of the lively alleys around Istiklal.

After meandering, we found the restaurant where Jeff had made a reservation – and it was lucky he did, because all of the tables sitting out on the side-street (I don’t think there were any tables at all inside) were covered with ‘reserved’ markers. The restaurant is called Antiochia, and it’s famous for having food from the town of Antakya, which is a unique take on Turkish cuisine. The waiter basically ordered for us – telling us to choose the meze plate (which samples all seven appetizer dips) and share the kebab and a durum (sandwich). (It seemed like he did the same for everyone else, because everyone seemed to have the same things). All of the food was really great. I think Jeff and I may not be knowledgeable enough about Turkish food to really appreciate the subtle spice differences between standard Turkish food and the food at Antiochia, but we really loved everything we tried, which is really the main goal, anyway. We even had their dessert – which was icecream with candied walnuts and eggplant, and was much better than it sounds.

After dinner, we walked down the black to the Hotel Marmara Pera. This restaurant houses one of the nicest restaurants in the city – Mikla. On its roof is the bar accompanying this restaurant. The view from the roof was amazing. And our timing was perfect – we saw the whole city in the day, then saw the stone buildings turn golden as the sun set, and finally saw lights flickering on as darkness set in. Jeff and I drank Turkish wine, and the bar provides cherries and some other small, green fruit we didn’t recognize as snacks.

As our last drink, we shared a glass of Turkish champagne (it’s our official honeymoon drink!), and enjoyed some olives. Sitting on this elegant rooftop bar, drinking champagne, and watching all of Istanbul laid out in front of us, was probably the most romantic moment of our time in Istanbul.

Honeymoon Day 14 – June 14 – Istanbul, Turkey

2011-07-03T18:21:00.000-04:00

After having barely slept the night of Christoph’s wedding, Jeff and I woke up on Tuesday to discover that we were not ready for a full day of sight-seeing. We decided that’s bound to happen when you’re traveling for a full month, so we took a re-charging day. We slept until noon, and then started our day with lunch. We ate at Ziya Sark Sofrasi, recommended by our tourbook. We had hummus, a really tasty lamb pide (Turkish pizza), and a chicken kebab. We love Turkish food, so every meal was exciting for us.

Right next door there was sweetshop with a window full of amazing-looking desserts, so we headed there next. Our eyes were definitely bigger than our stomachs, and we ended up filling up a box with about $25 worth of tiny desserts. The baklava is some of the best I’ve ever had, though. There was also Turkish delight, in all different flavors, many with nuts cooked into them. The Turkish delight was really great – there was no flavor that I didn’t like.

Whenever I think of Turkish delight, it reminds me of the C.S. Lewis book, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” which my dad read to me when I was little. Back then, I thought that Turkish delight, which the witch uses to lull Edmund in, was a made-up candy, just like the imaginary animal characters in the book. It wasn’t until my junior year in college, which I spent in England, that I saw some for sale and realized it was a real thing. But the Turkish delight I bought in the discount store in England is not even close to as good as the freshly made Turkish delight in the store here. I wish there had been a way to bring some home, but with the trip to Thailand and California still ahead, I thought it wouldn’t make sense. (Who thought there’d be a downside to the trip to Thailand and California?)

We spent most of our afternoon walking through the Istanbul Archeological Museum – it’s really big, so we still didn’t really see everything. They have so many sculptures and statues and sarcophagi, you wonder if there were any left for other museums. They have artifacts dating back to 2700 B.C., which is crazy – it’s so incredible to imagine that there were people making pots and living life almost 5000 years ago, and that we still have those pots today. They had an exhibit with coins dating all the way back to 100 or so B.C., which was also surreal. Probably our favorite part of the exhibit, though, was the collection of letters written in stone in the Hittite Language – I think they were from hundreds of years B.C. They were translated so you could read the random information that people thought was important enough to chisel into stone and send via messenger – some were agreements between kings, or explanations of recent events (usually by very important or powerful people).

After about three hours, we ran out of museum energy. We walked to a tea shop located at the wall of the Topkapi Palace, overlooking the Marmara Sea. We had a couple cups of really great tea and enjoyed the view, and then decided what we really needed was another nap.

We walked back to our hotel and spent the evening relaxing and reading (I finished the last book in ‘The Hunger Games’ trilogy!). Jeff ran out at one point to get us a Doner and a Kofte (Turkish meatball) sandwich, and that was it for the day!

Honeymoon Day 13 – June 13 – Freiburg, Germany to Istanbul, Turkey

2011-07-03T18:15:00.000-04:00

Despite our late night the previous night, Jeff and I were up and back at the wedding venue at 9:30 in the morning for breakfast. I really like the idea of having breakfast the day after a wedding, because it’s really nice to see everyone a bit more and to say your goodbyes when you’re (somewhat) more awake and focused than at the very end of the night. We ended up getting a ride back to Frieburg with Christoph and his dad, which was really nice, because it gave us a lot of time to catch up with Christoph. He and Karen are headed off for their honeymoon – in Copenhagen and Sweden – and then they’ll be coming back and moving to Geneva together.

Christoph and his dad dropped us off at the Freiburg train station, and Jeff and I made our way to the airport. We slept every minute of our flight to Istanbul.

We arrived in Turkey around 8pm, and decided to be adventurous (and thrifty) and take the public transportation to our hotel. The subway and metro are relatively easy to understand, so we made it without much trouble.

The most difficult part was trying to actually find our hotel after we got off the metro – we only had a general idea of where it was. As we walked along with our bags, people would stop us every 20 feet to ask us where we were going, and which hotel. We thought at first that people were trying to stop us to get us to come their store or get us to buy something or something like that, but actually, we discovered they really just wanted to give us directions. This is actually one of the really cute things about Istanbul – it seems like people are used to tourists and just take it upon themselves to help out. In this case, it was person after person insisting on giving us directions to our hotel. But we saw the same helpfulness in a lot of other ways throughout our stay. When you’re trying to figure out how to buy a metro ticket, the Turkish person in line behind you will reach up and press a button for you, or show you how to do it. When I wanted to find stamps, I got information from about four different people along the way (they could see me scanning the street looking for something) – telling me where it was, how far I still needed to go, and warning me that it would be closed during prayer time.

We mentioned to the hotel – the Best Western Citadel Hotel - that we’re on our honeymoon, and they upgraded us to a sea-view room and sent up a bottle of wine to the room! It was a really nice way to start out our time in Istanbul.

Honeymoon Day 12 – June 12 – Freiburg, Germany – Christoph and Karen’s Wedding!

2011-07-03T18:11:00.000-04:00

We got into Freiburg at 6am, and luckily, we had a room reserved at the Intercity Hotel, which is connected to the train station. It might seem a little silly to have a hotel room that you only use from 6am until noon, but those were some pretty key hours. We took a nap, showered, got ready, and had an awesome German breakfast (complimentary!), before Karen’s dad picked us up at 12:15pm.

After picking us up, Rudolf (Karen’s Dad), also picked up two other Americans – friends of Karen’s from when she studied in Barcelona. He dropped us all off at the church where their ceremony would be held. It was a really beautiful old church on top of a hill in the black forest.

People started arriving, and I found Jakob, Martin, Gabriel, and Tobie. Jakob had been in Minnesota on the same exchange as Christoph, and all the rest were friends that Naomi and I hung out with all the time while we were living in Germany the second time we came. It’s the first time I’ve seen this much of the group together in almost 10 years.

The wedding ceremony was very nice – they had a long sermon (about 45 minutes) with the theme of “the truth shall set you free.” It might have been a bit difficult, especially for Jeff, who doesn’t speak any German, but Karen and Christoph had printed out English translations of the sermon for us so we could follow along.

Since Jeff and I had no car and the wedding was in various locations around the black forest, Jeff and I were always just hoping we’d find someone going our way. Our ride to the ceremony was with the father of the bride, but he was fairly preoccupied afterwards. Luckily, pretty much everyone was going from the ceremony to the reception site, so it was easy to find a car with a couple extra seats. It’s a tradition in Germany to drive along all in a row and honk your horns on the drive from the ceremony from the reception, which was a lot of fun.

The reception site was a really cool old mansion, also on a hill. It’s u-shaped, with a really cool big tree in the middle. Christoph and Karen had picnic tables set up under the tree, so when people arrived to the champagne reception, they could grab snacks and drinks and relax at the tables. We sat with Jakob and the other guys from Hamburg and chatted and had great German snacks.

The area is well-known for hiking, so at one point, someone led a short hike around the reception area, and Jeff and I went along.

Around six or seven o’clock, it was time to start moving inside for the dinner reception. There was an ‘international table,’ since a number of people had flown to the wedding from far away, and needed translation, but Jeff and I were seating with the Homberg table with Jakob and the other people we knew. It was really fun to be able to sit with old friends, and easy to ask them questions about the reception.

The reception had a lot of programming. Karen and Christoph introduced every person at the wedding (there were about 150 people there). This is a tradition at German weddings – saying people’s name and a bit about how you know them or who they are. Christoph mentioned that Jeff and I had just gotten married two weeks earlier. He also told the story about the (joking) pact he and I had made 10 years ago (when Naomi and I were staying at his house) that we would get married if we reached some age (maybe 27 or so) and weren’t seeing anyone else.

Each of the dad’s gave speeches. Christoph’s dad talked about how Christoph and Karen had come from different backgrounds – Karen growing up in a loving, Christian household, and Christoph having it a little rough and having to grow-up fast (even at the wedding, his mom wasn’t able to make it) – but how they were both successful and made a wonderful pair. It was a very personal speech, and very nice. Karen’s dad talked about the speech that his father in law had made at his wedding, and said that the best quote that he could pass on came from Mary in the Bible – in the story about the Wedding at Canaan, they run out of wine, and Jesus tells the people to get a bunch of jugs of water. Mary tells the people to “Do as my son has told you.” He said that quote is the best advice for them to keep in mind, too, as they start their life together.

After people got their dinner, there were a bunch more presentations. There was a game where Christoph and Karen stood in front of a screen, and a phrase was projected behind them – things like “under 35,” or “play the piano,” or “more than 3 siblings.” If the phrase applied to you, you stood up. Then Christoph and Karen had to guess what all the standing people had in common.

Christoph’s sister told a couple stories and then did a cute karaoke-style duet with her brother to “Elephant Love Medley,” from Moulin Rouge, which he apparently really liked when he was younger. There were multiple video presentations – photos, video messages, etc. Some friends did a skit about Karen and Christoph being arrested for copyright infringement (they used Calvin Klein’s CK1 perfume logo on their invites and some other things, since it fits their initials). It was fun and cute to see people all do their own little performance, speech, or joke.

Around midnight, all of the performances were over, and people started dancing. Jeff and I stayed up – along with the whole crew from Homberg – well into the night. We didn’t get to our hotel until almost 5am (though from 3:30am onwards Jeff and I were a bit zombie-like, mostly just waiting for the shuttle.)

Honeymoon Day 11 – June 11 – Copenhagen, Denmark to Hamburg, Germany

2011-07-03T17:58:00.000-04:00

We arrived in Copenhagen early in the morning, as cruises always seem to do. We had breakfast, and were off the boat by about 10am.

We took the metro to the train station, but then found that it was $20 to lock our bags in the lockers there, so we decided to keep them with us. Luckily, there are a lot of major sites in the streets just adjacent to the train station. We walked in a big loop, seeing the main square, the main government building, and the statue of Hans Christian Anderson (my favorite fairytale author!). We stopped at the “Bagery” and bought a sandwhich, some bread, and some pastries – we didn’t know what they were, but they all looked pretty amazing.

We were on the train from about noon until 4pm. The most exciting part of the ride was when our train got on a boat. That’s right. Our train took a ferry to get from Denmark to Germany. The train pulled onto the ferry, everyone got off (leaving their things on the train) and went to the top decks where there were shops and seating areas), and after a 45 minute ride, we headed back to the train and continued our trip.

We needed to change trains in Hamburg, but we had a couple hours, so we left our luggage in lockers and went on a nice little walk. We walked along the water, bought some curry fries and a couple hefeweizens and sat in the sun for a bit.

When we got back about 30 minutes before our train, we were confused that we didn’t see it up on the schedule. When we asked for help, we found out that the train schedule had changed in the three months since we’d purchased our ticket, and we had actually missed it. Luckily, they were able to book us on another train. But now, instead of leavening Hamburg at 6pm and arriving at midnight, we were on a night train that left at 8:30pm and got in at 6am the next morning.

It was a new experience for Jeff, since he has never ridden in a sleeping car on a train. We were hoping we’d a have a romantic car all to ourselves, but unfortunately, all the cars on this train (as far as we could tell), had six beds. It was funny when the older Germany lady got on and told us she ‘lived upstairs.’ No so romantic, but it was kind of fun.

Honeymoon Day 10 – June 10 – Baltic Sea

2011-07-03T17:52:00.000-04:00

Friday was our last full day on the cruise, and it was a day at sea, so we really took things slow. We ate breakfast in bed and watched the second half of Kung Fu Panda (cute movie!).

Most of the day was spent either reading or eating – which is about as perfect as a relaxing day can get for Jeff and me. We read on our balcony, we read in a cute area on a high floor with some wicker chairs, and back on our balcony again. We put off packing for so long, that it was a bit touch-and-go to see whether we’d actually get out bags outside the door for the 1am deadline.

I did manage to finish my book, though. I was reading “The Hunger Games,” by Suzanne Collins. It’s a book more aimed at kids or teens, but fun for adults, too (maybe along the lines of Harry Potter in that way). My friend, Carey Ma, who teaches English too middle schoolers recommended it to me. It’s got a pretty intense premise – basically a fight-to-the-death scenario – but it’s mostly just a fun read. I guess since I finished it in one day, you could call it a page-turner – it definitely kept me entertained. In fact, I went almost directly into the second and then the third book (it’s a trilogy), finishing the whole series in less than a week.

The theme for the last dinner was “Romantic,” which was a cute theme for Jeff and me. We were having a very romantic dinner and a nice conversation, but it was interrupted by another loud (and kind of long) presentation by the dining staff. It’s funny and cute to see the performances once in a while, but every night got to be a lot by the end.

Thinking back on the cruise, overall, I think it was great! I think Jeff and I just like cruising in general – it’s really relaxing, since you have a significant amount of time on the boat (and since Jeff and I go to almost no scheduled activities on the boat other than dinner and an occasional dance class). So we get to do a lot of lounging and reading and chatting. And, you can move around the boat for a change of scenary if you want it. It’s also really easy and stress-free to get food anywhere you want it, and fun to do a sit-down dinner every night. And then you have fun ports where you can stop and explore or experience something new, to keep things exciting. Since pretty much all cruises have these things in common, I’d be surprised to find a cruise that Jeff and I didn’t love.

We also especially liked this itinerary, though. It’s really different to pull into major cities, where there are tons of sights to see and for which the cruise traffic is a very minor portion of its visitors, rather than into beach towns in the Caribbean, where the main thing to do is almost always just to lay on the beach. That said, it’s really fun to spend the day wandering around a new city each day – seeing new buildings, trying new food. We did a lot more walking than we ever have on Caribbean cruises. Our favorite port was Stockholm, though we both really liked Tallinn, too. I think Helsinki was cool, but we didn’t get as much time to see it, and Saint Petersburg was really nice, but we felt restricted by the fact that we had to take a guided tour, when Jeff and I generally prefer to see a city by just walking and wandering. Overall, though, all of the ports were exciting and new and easy to get around.

As far as Costa as a cruiseline, I’m definitely glad we did it – it was fun to see an Italian cruise, with everything repeated in seven languages and crazy activities every night. And we’ll always remember “Costa Luuuuminosa!” with an emphatic Italian accent. That said, I think since Jeff and I mostly like to just lay around and read and relax on cruises, my favorite cruise lines are the ones that have less crazy activities and more quiet spaces around the ship to lounge enjoy the view – I think Celebrity was particularly good. We also focus a lot on the food – our other main activity on the boat – and for that I think Norwegian’s free-style dining, where you can eat whenever you want, was probably the best. Still, like I said earlier, no matter what cruiseline you’re on, it’s still a cruise, so it’s always going to be pretty amazing. And this one was!

Honeymoon Day 9 – June 9 – Stockholm, Sweden

2011-07-03T17:48:00.001-04:00

We got into Sweden pretty early on Thursday morning, and Jeff and I were excited to see the city. (It’s silly, but we were excited that many of the neighborhood names are familiar from reading ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ books.)

Stockholm is full of water – it’s neighborhoods are kind of like a bunch of islands with lots of rivers and harbors around them. Our boat was at a pier in Sodermalm – the neighborhood in the south of the city. The old town neighborhood of the city is Gamla Stan, which is connected to Sodermalm by one bridge. It was about a mile or two walk, but it was a pretty one, along the harbor next to big rock cliffs.

Also, along the way, we saw another ship – the Mariella. I liked Stockholm already.

Gamla Stan is really cute – it has lots of cobblestone streets and alleys, old churches, quaint little squares with tea shops and cafes, and lots of tourist shops. I had to stop and buy a Pippi Longstocking postcard for my sister. She loved the movie growing up – we probably watched it a hundred times. Pippi Longstocking – the book and the movie – is from Sweden. I’m actually pretty sure the movie we watched must have just been dubbed into English, but I never noticed it when I was young.

Gamla Stan also houses the royal palace, which was really big and pretty. There are tours, which are supposed to be pretty good (says the guide book), but Jeff and I were excited to see more of the city, so other than stopping in a couple of churches, we mostly didn’t go inside buildings or museums.

As a side-note – we stopped to get water while we were walking around – just two normal bottles from a little convenience store – and they were about $2.50 or $3 each, and that’s probably one of the cheapest ways to buy them. It makes it kind of nice to be seeing this area on the cruise, when we don’t have to buy every little thing in the city!

Jeff and I were closed to finished with our tour of Gamla Stan and decided to start thinking about lunch. The tour book recommended a place called “Fredsgatan 12,” just over the bridge in Norrmalm, which is an award-winning restaurant serving “New Swedish” cuisine. It was a pretty fancy place, but the set lunch menu is half the price of the set dinner menu, which is an awesome deal. Also, it turned out to be some of the best food I’ve ever had.

The restaurant was trendy, with a modern, Ikea feel – sleek chairs with no corners, big lime green cone-shaped lighting fixtures over each table, hanging from the very tall ceiling. Many things – the menus, the bread, and the check – came in little black wooden boxes, which were also very cool.

For our first course, I had salmon tartar with capers and Jeff had foie gras with pistachios and peaches. Both were pretty good – and the bread served along with it was good, as well. The second course was when things really got good – it was called “Angling in the Fjord,” and included cod in browned butter with shrimp, eggs, and horseradish. It was served with “new potatoes.” Our waiter served the meal, re-listing the contents, and said something like, “Something every Scandinavian would love.” And we did love it. Jeff and I both think the fish may have been the best we’ve ever had – the texture was perfect and it tasted light and a bit buttery. The browned butter was delicious. The little baby shrimp with egg and horseradish was also great – just a hint of the horshradish was noticeable, so it was tasty, but not overpowering. And then we got our dessert – strawberry souflee with chocolate icecream. The icecream is served on a porcelain spoon, nad when they get to your table, they take the spoon with the icecream and put it down in the middle of the souflee. It was so good – hot and soft inside, a bit crispy on top – the hot strawberry souflee mixing with the cold chocolate icecream. And to make things even better (if that’s even possible), we had two cups of great French-press coffee.

Jeff and I were in a really good mood after the meal – it had really been a lucky find. We decided to do some sightseeing around Norrmalm, which is one of the northern neighborhoods of the city. It has all of the big, modern skyscrapers and tons of shopping. We walked down some of the major streets, around the square of the central subway station, and in a big glass mall. H&M started in Sweden, and they’re like Starbucks in Norrmalm – often when standing at one H&M, you can see another down the street a block or two away.

While we were in Norrmalm, near the central metro station, we kept seeing big flatbed trucks with banners hung on them packed with teenagers. The teenagers were singing, blasting music, and spraying beer everywhere. Jeff and I had no idea what was going on – it was fun to watch, as long as you could stay far enough back to avoid the shower of beer (which we did, luckily). We found out later that these were students who had just graduated high school – driving around the city like this is a tradition. “It’s fun!” the tourist office person told us.

Around 2pm, Jeff and I decided we’d leave Norrmalm and head back to see a bit of Sodermalm before getting on the ship (which departed at 5:30pm that day). Then we noticed that it was possible to buy a bike card at the tourist office. We’d seen the bike-sharing racks all over the city – they were the same clear-channel bikes that we used to have in DC. But those bikes don’t take credit cards directly – usually you have to order a year-long membership card online. The tourist office card was for three days – much more than the three hours that we needed – but still somewhat reasonably priced.

Jeff and I both really like biking (especially Jeff), and there was a bike rack right near the tourist info station and another right next to the ship, making it especially convenient for us. Also, we had seen while walking that Stockholm has tons of awesome bike paths – many streets had bike paths in both directions, often separated from the traffic in the road, sometimes with their own bike stoplights and traffic signs. So we decided to go for it, and signed up for the bike cards. It turned out great!

We whizzed back down through Norrmalm and back through Gamla Stan. This time we took a different, longer route along the water, which we could manage because the bikes are so much faster than walking. We crossed the bridge into Sodermalm and biked along one of the main shopping streets, stopping to buy water and take pictures. Sodermalm is more of the hipster-trendy area (rather than the modern-trendy Norrmalm), with cute coffee shops and boutiques. We along two main streets, making a big “L” through the neighborhood, and then made our way back to the boat by taking a beautiful trail along the water, circling about 2/3 of the island. The water is super clear, and clean enough that people were swimming in it – which is pretty amazing so close to a big city.

We dropped our bikes off a bit after 5pm, and made the short walk back to the cruise ship. Jeff and I were both feeling exhilarate from the bike ride – so happy we’d found the place to sign up for cards and decided to do it. We saw a lot more of the city than we would have otherwise, and saw a great variety of scenery – old town, modern buildings, trendy cafés, and scenic parks and water. And we’d gotten some great exercise (which is sometimes lacking on a cruise).

Back on the ship, we headed up to the top deck to watch the ship leave the port. To get into and out of Stockholm, you have to navigate the Fjords for about five hours. Jeff and I didn’t want to get up at 3am to watch as we came in, but we were excited to see it now. It’s amazing that cruise ships can make it through – there are big, rocky islands covered with pine trees and attractive cabins – sometimes just 50 feet away – if you were on a lower deck, it looked like you were just in the trees. A lot of things in Stockholm reminded me of Minnesota, and I like to imagine that just like everyone in Minnesota has their cabin on the lake to retreat to on summer weekends, all of the people in Stockholm have their cabin in the Fjords.

Jeff and I had dinner (the food on the cruise has been pretty good!), and then went back to our room to sit on the balcony and watch the last of the Fjords go by. When we were back in clear water, and it was starting to get dark (or at least dark-er – we’re still pretty far north), we decided to watch a movie. We saw “In Bruge,” which was an interesting black comedy, and the first half of “Kung Fu Panda,” which was much lighter, and better as a just-before-you-fall-asleep movie.

Honeymoon Day 8 – June 8 – Helsinki, Finland

2011-07-03T17:31:00.000-04:00

We didn’t dock at Helsinki until noon, so Jeff and I made up on sleep by staying in bed until lunch time. We made a quick stop by the buffet, and headed into town. Unlike Tallinn, there was a fair amount of walking that we needed to do to get into Helsinki – probably about a mile to get off the dock and then another mile or two through town to get to the historic center. But the exercise is good for us, and the market square area was really cool. We got pictures with famous buildings, made a quick detour to H&M, and then headed to the Upenski Cathedral, one of the iconic buildings in Helsinki, across a little bridge from the main area. It was really cool, but seemed kind of small. But I learned on this trip that in Russian Orthodox churches the congregation stands the whole time, and I guess you could fit a lot of people standing.

After that we headed back through the market and stopped for a meal of assorted Reindeer meat – a reindeer meatball, reindeer bratwurst, reindeer hotdog, and reindeer hamburger. They were all really pretty good.

After our snack, it was already time to start making our way back to the ship. We walked through a park in the middle of a divided street, called Esplanadi, which reminded me a lot of Commonwealth Street in Boston. Then we walked and a cute little tree-lined street with shops and some houses, which reminded me of Newbury Street. And then Jeff saw a Toscanini’s – I don’t think this one was an icecream shop like the one in Boston, but it was still pretty funny since we’d been talking about the similarities between the two cities.

Jeff and I got a bit worried about making it to the cruise ship on time, since it was a long walk, and we didn’t totally know where we’re going. I wonder how often they leave people at ports? It seems improbable that they’re always able to get 2300 people back onto the ship on time, with no one loosing track of time or getting lost, and you can’t wait forever. Then again, it seems like it’s a pretty big deal to abandon people (though less of a big deal than when you’re on a Caribbean cruise and you’re on a beach in the middle of nowhere). Luckily we made it with time to spare – it was another 20 minutes or so until the ship pulled away.

We had a bit of time to relax, and then we headed to the Honeymoon and Anniversary Cocktail Party with the Captain. The invitation to this party came with the gift that Brian and Emily had given us for the wedding. It was really cute. They took a picture of us in front of a wedding cake, champagne, and bowls of white Jordan almonds (an Italian wedding tradition).

They served champagne and hor d’eaurves, and sat everyone at little tables-for-two in the theater while musicans sang love songs and love quotes came up on the big screens. The people next to us were celebrating their 50th anniversary, and they wished us luck. The wife said that she hoped we’d be as happy as they’ve been, which I thought was really sweet.

The captain then had everyone renew their vows. First he had all of the Italian speakers stand up, and read their vows in Italian, then all of the Germans, English-speakers, etc. It was really cute.

Then it was off to dinner, which proved to be another exciting theme. It was Italian night, so all of the waiters were wearing big aprons with pictures of Italy. A guy with a big painted on mustache and a pizza on a platter walked around and took a picture with each person. Then they blasted Italian music and the waiters danced with each of the people in their section. Then they started another song and had long conga lines going all over the restaurant, headed by waiters with lots of people behind. It was all really fun.

On the way out of dinner, I got a tissue paper rose and Jeff got a tissue paper red-white-and-green bowtie in honor of Italian night. We watched people learn to dance an Italian dance, and then we headed back to our room for another night out on the balcony!

Honeymoon Day 7 – June 7 – St. Petersburg, Russia

2011-07-03T17:17:00.000-04:00

We started the day with breakfast in our room again (provided by Jeff), and we could see buildings off to the distance. Because of Russian immigration rules, no one is allowed to go on shore unless they are part of a official tour escursion. Jeff and I had read this on the department of State website, so we had booked a tour online quite a while ago (and Noelle had gotten part of it as a gift for our wedding)!

The tour started fairly early – there were about 40 people on the tour – 4 Americans, a couple of Greek people, and a big group of Indians – all taking the English-speaking tour. We started by taking the bus to the Peter and Paul Fortress. This is essentially the birthplace of the city. Peter the Great built it while Russia was still at war with Sweden over the area. When Russia eventually won the war, Peter decided that St. Petersburg should be the new capital, and forced everyone to re-locate from Moscow. St. Petersburg was essentially a swamp at that time, and Peter made them all bring their own stone with them to build houses. Apparently, people were not happy about it.

After a gift shop stop, our tour went to the Hermitage – a huge art museum with art that Catherine (not sure if it was the first or second) started collecting. The museum is so big that if you spent one minute looking at each piece of art every time the museum was open, it would take you 7 years to see the museum. (This is the same type of statistic that I’ve heard about the Vatican, though I heard that there it’s 9 years – I’m not sure whether they have more art or shorter opening hours…) The Hermitage was an incredible building – lots of the rooms were just amazing. We walked through the Winter Castle, too, which is connected, and saw throne rooms and other really cool spaces. And the art is really impressive, too – Leonardo Davinci, Michaelangeo, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Matisse, Van Gogh, and many more famous artists were displayed. You could take pictures of everything (generally without flash) except for the impressionist paintings. The paintings were all bought from the Hermitage by a couple of Jewish men before World War II, and then taken by the Nazi’s, then they were eventually given back to Russia by Germany as reparations after the war. But then some decendents of the original owners filed suit to get them back. Now the Hermitage has to keep them on house arrest until everything is decided – they can’t move the exhibit, they can’t advertise it or put it on their register – and that’s why we weren’t allowed to take any pictures of the paintings. Really interesting, I think.

We had lunch at a restaurant of the 18th floor of a hotel downtown. When we pulled up to the building, Jeff and I both thought the sign with the name of the hotel was backwards, but actually it was just in Russian. Lunch was good – mushroom soup, chicken and potatoes, and cake – and it came with a glass of champagne and a shot of vodka. A bit much for lunch, but it was fun to at least have a sip of vodka while in Russia.

In the afternoon we toured major sights in the city, including the main square where there is the parliament building and a major church. One of the highlights was definitely the Church of the Sacred Heart (also known as the Church of Spilled Blood because it’s built on the spot where Tsar Peter was assassinated). This is the really colorful church with the onion domes that you always see when you see pictures or postcards of Saint Petersburg. It was really fun to see it in person. It’s only a museum now, and no services are held there – we actually only managed to see the outside of it on our quick stop. I also bought a copy of “Pushkin’s Fairy Tales” at the tourist market across the street. When I was little, my mom had an old book called “Gypsy Fairy Tales,” which was full of all these fairy stories that to this day I’ve never found or read anywhere else, but that I absolutely loved. I thought it might be fun to see what kind of stories I’d find in Pushkin, and to give the book to Wally, so maybe he’ll have a similar fun memory of unique stories. (He’s growing fast - he just rolled over for the first time while Jeff and I were on the cruise, so I figured he’ll be reading any day now.)

We were back to the cruise in time for dinner, but Jeff and I were both exhausted since it had been a long day, so after we ate, we decided to just read on the balcony for a bit and then have an early night. In Saint Petersburg, they call this time of year the “White Nights,” because it only gets dark for about 40 minutes each night. Jeff and I ended up staying up until after midnight (when we pulled out of the port at Saint Petersburg) enjoying the white night. We didn’t need to turn on any lights at all to be able to see our books – even at midnight it was bright enough outside to read.

Honeymoon Day 6 – June 6 – Tallinn, Estonia

2011-07-03T16:55:00.009-04:00

Starting on the second full day of the cruise, Jeff decided to run upstairs and get us breakfast from the buffet, and then bring it back down to our room. We arrived in the port of Tallinn fairly early, and discovered that the port offers free wifi that we could access from our room. That was nice, because we could check our mail, post to facebook, and I could review Katie’s clothing guidance. (Katie bought be me a bunch of clothes and accessories for the honeymoon, but didn’t get a chance to explain to me what goes with what, so she sent me an email.)

The port is really close to downtown Tallinn, so it was a quick walk from the ship to the main tourist spots. The old town of Tallinn is pretty small – about one square kilometer (.25 square miles), so it was fairly easy to see in a day. It’s a really cute town – lots of really well-preserved medieval buildings, and an old city wall circling it all. One of our first stops was at St. Olaf Church. It was the tallest building in the world in 1500. And it certainly felt like it when Jeff and I decided to climb to the top of the tower, but it was worth it – the view of the city was great!

We wandered through the old cobblestone streets and bought some interesting sweet and flavored covered almonds that are sold all over the city (Rebekah had recommended we try them!). At one point we got to a part of the old town that connected to the more modern section of town, so we decided to tour that area, too. There are a number of skyscrapers and big glass-walled malls.

Making our way back, we wandered through a cool area that was all restored warehouses that were now filled with little shops and restaurants. We wandered by a restaurant called “Platz” and decided to stop for a drink. When we saw there was a “Taste of Estonia” menu, we decided to share that as a snack (which was more like a second lunch). We had fish and beets, porkbelly and potatoes, and a baked apple with liquor icecream. I wasn’t a fan of the fish, but the porkbelly was actually pretty good, and who doesn’t like baked apple? We also found out that our waitress lived in DC for two years – in Bethesda, specifically. We finished our meal with a cup of really great coffee, which was awesome, since I’m still staying away from the coffee onboard the ship.

Refueled and re-caffinated, Jeff and I decided to climb the big hill to the “Toompea” area, which is where the Estonian parliament is. It also has a really cool black “onion dome” church, and some great views of the city.

From there, we headed back to the cruise ship, and off to dinner. Katie had informed me (via email) that I could wear the shorts and tights with my sequin top if I also wore heals, so I figured that was an easy way to transition to evening-wear. Dinner was fun – on the ship they always seem to do something fun (or random) each night during dinner. The first night a clown came around and took a photo with each person. On this night, a pirate came around for a picture. All the waiters were dressed in Caribbean clothes, and they danced a conga line in the middle of dinner, followed by a semi-choreographed dance to the song “Sexy.” So random, but pretty funny.

Since the last night we’d spent most of the day in, we decided to have a night out on the ship. We got a drink in one of the bars with a big window near the water. Then we decided to go to an event listed in the “Today” schedule as this:
8:15 LOVE BOAT: FOR THE HONEYMOONERS
It was held in the disco, so my guess was that it was going to be a dance party where they played lots of love songs, or something like that. But I was wrong. Jeff and I got there to find a group of about 8-10 couples standing in a circle. We were the only English speakers (everyone else was Italian), and that they were just explaining the rules to the game we were going to play. It was kind of a mix between the “passing the orange” game and hot potato. Essentially, there were two long neon-colored poles, and you had to pass them from person using just your legs/knees while the music played. When the music stopped, whoever had the pole was out and had to sit down. It was so random. Jeff got out pretty early, and I got out fairly close to the end. The last three left at the end won a little prize (I think it was a Costa Luminosa keychain). The whole thing lasted about 15 or 20 minutes. It was fun or funny, but I think Jeff and I both left with a bit of “what just happened?” running through our minds – so random.

Neither Jeff nor I are generally big fans of the shows on cruise boats, but we decided we should check out just one. This was called “Dreams” by the Starlight Dancers. It was a bit better than the average cruise show, I think. The dancers seemed to be trained in some specific styles, like flamenco. Jeff thinks it seemed better because it had way less talking than normal, which is usually the cheesiest part. (It wasn't completely free of cheesiness, though. There was a fake dance competition among the dancers at one point, and after choosing a winner, the announcer said, "I think we're all winners here, because we got to see such GREAT DANCING!!!")

After the show, we decided to squeeze in one more event. There was a “Miss Valkyrie” event/ contest, and Jeff and I thought, given our interesting experience with the honeymoon event earlier, we’d see what it was all about. It started with all of the women on the dance floor, like a little dance competition, and I participated in that because pretty much everyone was (and it was a big group), and I thought ‘why not.’ They were putting leis on some people, and I got one. But then when the song ended, I realized that only four people (including me) had gotten leis. They asked our names and where we were from, and told us that the competition would now begin.

The person running the show would announce what the task was in all seven of the standard Costa Luminosa languages. It was kind of crazy, because he’s say it in Italian and all of the other women would react or burst out laughing, and I would still have no idea what was going on until he got to English. Also, one of the Italian ladies in the competition kept talking to me in Italian, and I mostly just nodded or said short phrases in English.

The first task was to read that day’s dinner menu in a sexy way. They let me go last, so at least I had a decent idea of what to do, and they went out and got me a copy of the English menu so I could read everything in English. This is not really the kind of competition I normally get involved in, but I figured ‘in for a penny, in for a pound,” and I did my best to make the salad and cheese plate selection sound sexy.

The next task involved popping balloons in three ways. They did a demonstration to show us what to do. The first involved running at one of the people running the show head on (he was running, too), and popping the balloon between the two of you. The second was running backwards (he was also running backwards) and popping it between your backs. And the third had that guy sitting in a chair with a balloon on top of him, and you ran from the far corner of the dance floor and jumped on top of it to break it. There was no getting out now, and the other (middle-aged) ladies in the competition did it, so I went ahead. I think it probably helped to have a semi-sharp sequin shirt on, because I did a pretty awesome job of popping balloons, if I do say so myself. ;) And in some ways, I had it easy – when the last lady went, they put about 8 balloons in the guys lap, and then two other guys lifted her up and down until they were all broken – so ridiculous.

The final challenge (it was down to just me and the one other lady now) focused on the importance of being a good mother. So two full-grown men (with lots of tattoos) came out dressed as babies and climbed into each of our laps. Then we had to sing them a lullabye (into the microphone). Singing is definitely not my strongpoint, but I went for “Hush little baby,” and only had to get a few verses in before the baby “fell asleep.” The second part of the task was to “put a diaper on the baby,” which essentially meant wrapping a sheet around the baby while he tried to crawl away. It was all super ridiculous, and pretty embarrassing, and Jeff was there video-ing the whole thing.

In the end, I won 2nd place in the Miss Costa Luminosa contest, and got a free Costa towel (and some pretty unique memories). Overall it was pretty hilarious, but I think I’ll be a lot more careful what kind of competitions I get myself into in the future…

Honeymoon Day 5 – June 5 – Baltic Sea

2011-07-03T16:32:00.004-04:00

We had breakfast delivered to the room at 9am, which was a bit too early, because the knock on the door ended up being our wake-up call. Jeff and I weren’t thrilled with the breakfast – the coffee is not very good (Jeff still drinks it, though I’ve given up on it completely) – though the espresso is alright. Luckily there is a huge breakfast buffet available also, so there are lots of other options.

We started unpacking, but at 10am, there was a safety drill, so we put on our lifejackets and headed out. Instead of having a particular area, everyone just went to the third floor and half the people stood on the left side of the boat and half on the right side of the boat. I must have forgotten when we left the room that we were on a Baltic cruise and not a Caribbean one, because I wore a little white dress, and was pretty cold out on the deck – oops! The safety drill was definitely more chaotic than others I’ve been on – people were blowing their safety whistles and joking around. They did read the safety information in 6 or 7 languages, though, so I suppose there’s a limit to how long you can expect to keep people’s attention. Towards the end of the last announcement, people began to wander back in.

We finished unpacking back in our room – it’s so nice to have everything laid out. Although, since we’re traveling for a month, we have quite a few things, and the 14 hangers available in the room doesn’t quite do it – even for just my dresses and shirts. But we have a little vanity area, and a desk and couch, and a second little desk, which is much more spreading-out room than you could usually expect on a cruise, which is really nice.

Our first real stop outside of our room was at the Luminosa Club for cocktails with the Captain of the ship. We went in, and they served champagne – which kept being refilled – not our usual pre-lunch plan. They also had really cute little hors d’oeuvres. The captain stop by our table and introduced himself and said hello, which was really nice. We also met Rebekah – one of the English hosts on the cruise. There are about 2300 people on the cruise, and 39 of them are American. Eighty people in total are native English speakers, though about half of the people on the ship probably speak English, Rebekah guessed. Also, the ship translates everything into seven languages or so, and if you’re not covered by one of these, you get lumped in with “English” also – so all-in-all, Rebekah is responsible for about 200 people. It’s kind of funny to be such a minority on the boat (part of the 2% American population), but have such personalized attention. Rebekah greeted us, told us about the ship, and gave us a map of Tallinn. She also offered to try to move us to a table for two at dinner, since we’re on our honeymoon, and we gladly accepted. Rebekah definitely knows and recognizes us now, and often says hi or brings us extra information in English. After the cocktail reception, which went from 11:30am until about 12:30pm, Jeff and I decided we should probably get some food in our stomachs, so we filled up at the buffet.

We spent all of the hours between lunch and dinner just reading and napping, which are two of our favorite activities on cruises. I’m now reading “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” which is about an African-American woman whose cells were used to create the first immortal cell line in the 1950’s – HeLa cells – her cells continue to be the most common used, and have been central to countless medical discoveries, but she never knew anything about it, and her children didn’t learn about it until almost 25 years after the fact. The book is about the science behind the cells as well as the personal story of Henrietta Lacks and her family, and it’s really interesting. Highly recommended!

We had our first “dinner for two,” and even though we do like our table-mates, it’s really nice to have that time to ourselves. Also, it was formal dinner night, so it was extra romantic, with candles burning on every table.

After dinner, we decided to continue our reading day. It’s a bit chilly, so we brought our blanket our on the balcony and stayed there reading until late, with the exception of one late-night pizza run.

Honeymoon Day 4 – June 4 – Copenhagen, Denmark and Baltic Sea

2011-07-03T16:26:00.002-04:00

For the first time on our honeymoon, we really slept in – which was definitely nice. We had breakfast in the hotel, and then took our time getting ready and making full use of the free internet. We weren’t out of the hotel until after noon.

We re-traced our steps to get back to the S-Train, and then took that all the way to the port area. We couldn’t find any information anywhere about exactly which cruise port to go to, so we just guessed one of the two (they aren’t that far from each other). We ended up being lucky, so we didn’t have all that far to walk after we got off the train. And we magically made every turn correctly, so we had no back-tracking, even though we had no idea where we were going. Our back-up would have been to find a cab and get there that way, but Copenhagen is incredibly expensive – even just taking the public transportation system was $8-$10 per person.

We dropped off our luggage, handed in our sign-in sheet (which had been emailed to us after we checked-in online months ago), and boarded the boat. We got priority boarding because we have a mini-suite (I’m not quite sure if we got upgraded, or if mini-suite is just what they call any room with a balcony, which is what we ordered.) It didn’t actually matter though, because there was no line. It was 2:30pm, which I thought would be prime boarding time (it’s open 1:30-5:30pm), so I’m not sure how it was so smooth.

Jeff and I were a bit confused once we got on the boat and had no sign-in sheet and no card (usually when you check-in, you get a card before you board the boat). Then we found out we could go straight to our room, and the cards would be there. It was pretty cool when we walked into our room. It’s really big, especially as cruise rooms go, and we had a table with two bottles of champagne, a bowl of fruit, a beautiful flower arrangement, and some hors d’oeuvres. On the bed they had laid out our cards and information about the cruise, but also a picture frame, a certificate of “Amore” signed by the captain, and two “Costa” bath robes.

Pretty much everything (other than the standard cards and information) were part of the Honeymoon Package that Brian and Emily got us for (part of) our wedding gift.

We were really excited, so we opened the champagne and headed out on our balcony. Our view was mostly of the Copenhagen shipping harbor, though, so when we poured our second glass of champagne, we decided to take it with us as we explore the ship.

We did some exploring, but then found an area on one of the upper decks with cute wicker furniture and a nice view, and we decided to camp out there to read and relax.

Kevin and Lori Peterson gave us a book called “The Five Love Languages” as part of their wedding gift to us, and my parents mentioned that they give that book to all of the engaged couples that they council (through our local church). Jeff finished reading it while we were leaving Iceland, so I started reading it. It talks about the different ways that people express and interpret love – words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, giving gifts, and touch - and the importance of being aware of your spouse’s primary “love language.” It’s an interesting book, and it was fun for Jeff and I to both read it and talk about what we thought about the ideas in the book and how we thought it might apply to us. We even both took the little quizzes in the back to identify our respective love languages. We both seem to have “quality time” as our primary type – though we have different secondary love languages, which is interesting.

I think a lot of the point of the book is to spend some time thinking about how you and your spouse express your love, and to be sure that you have a mutual understanding about the meaning of various activities and actions. And also to be sure that you are doing the things that really are meaningful to your spouse, rather than just things you think are meaningful (or things that would be meaningful to you if they did them).

At dinner, we were at a table of eight, though only three other people arrived. They were two sisters, and one of the sister’s daughters, and they were from different states around the U.S. They were very nice, and interesting to talk to, though Jeff and I would probably have liked to have a table for two. We had to make some effort to have conversations relevant to the rest o the table - Jeff and I still talk about the wedding all the time – how fun it was, how happy we were, little details we just remembered.

For example, we were talking the other day about how special it was to have the BBQ at my parents’ house rather than just at a park or at a place where we rented a room. Any of them would have been fun, but having everyone over to my parents’ felt like they were really welcoming everyone to Minnesota personally. Also, it’s so fun that so many of our friends and family from out of town have now experience that part of our lives – when we talk about heading back to Minnesota, they have an idea of exactly what it’s like for us. We also talk about how cool it was that so many people were helping out, and how well everything seemed to work. Pretty amazing for people that were in a brand new place and often meeting for the first time.

Another thing we talk about a lot is how fun the reception was and how great it was that so many people danced so late into the night. I remember being at our friends’ Mandy and Jess’s wedding, which was one of the first weddings we attended as adults. Their families were really fun – partying and dancing. I remember thinking that even though we barely knew anybody, it was just a really fun atmosphere, and we wanted to stay and dance all night. This was also the event when Jeff told me, “I think I really like weddings!” It was so amazing to have our wedding and see that our families were sooo much fun and know what a difference that makes for the whole event. I hope that there were younger people at our wedding who had the same reaction Jeff did as Jess and Mandy’s.

After dinner, Jeff and I decided to head back to our room again. We put on a movie – “How to Train Your Dragon” – which was really cute. Jeff made a trip out to get some midnight pizza to bring back to the room (we’re on an Italian cruiseline – gotta have pizza!), but otherwise we stayed in. I read a bunch of our tour book about Tallinn, which was going to be our first stop. Very exciting!

Honeymoon Day 3 – June 3 – Reykjavik, Iceland and Copenhagen, Denmark

2011-06-04T06:16:00.008-04:00

We were up at 6:30am again on our last day in Iceland. This time we got all packed up, and then caught a bus to the Blue Lagoon. This is another ‘must see’ spot in Iceland, according to the guidebooks. And there are buses set up to make it really easy to see it on the way to the airport.

The drive there takes you through mossy lava fields – Jeff thought it looked like we were driving on the moon. Then (after about an hour) you come across more dark lava rocks, and some milky-blue pools. You go into the actual complex, rent a towel and a bathrobe, and then head into the blue lagoon. It’s really, really pretty – the water is light blue, but almost entirely opaque, and its’ surrounded by black lava rocks. The water is naturally heated and really warm and comfortable.

Jeff and I soaked and floated around the pool for about an hour or an hour and a half, and then got back out to head to the airport. Not a bad way to end the trip in Iceland!

We arrived in Denmark at about 6pm local time, but it took until 7pm to get our luggage. We couldn’t find the hotel we’d booked on the map, so we went to ask for help at the info desk. Apparently, the hotel we booked is not technically in Copenhagen, which was a surprise to us. Not sure what went wrong, but our hotel was pre-paid, and the very cheapest hotel in Copenhagen (according to the info desk) was still going to be more than $200, and our hotel was accessible via public transportation (about 50 minutes on the above-ground train, and then a 10 minute walk – though we had no map and no idea which way to walk when we got off the train…) So we decided to go for it – a bit of Denmark adventure. It took us a while to get the train (there were some cancellations and track changes we didn’t understand), but we did eventually make it to the right stop. The stores were all closed (it was about 9:30pm at this point), but there was a family loading into the car, and we asked them for directions, and the guy took out a map and showed us where to go. After that, we had no problems. We checked in, and decided to get some much-needed sleep!

Also, the hotel – Herlov Kro – is actually pretty cute, and now we’ve had a chance to see some of greater Copenhagen!

Honeymoon Day 2 – June 2 – Reykjavik, South Shore, and Golden Circle, Iceland

2011-06-04T06:16:00.007-04:00

On the second day of the honeymoon, we got up at 6:30am – which is super early, except that our internal clocks were still way off anyway, and it was completely bright and day-time looking outside. We had breakfast in our now-favorite lounge (Jeff says the lounge is his favorite hotel space ever, because of the great view, quiet atmosphere, and, of course, the free food and drinks.)

At 8am, we met our tourguide downstairs for our 2-in-1 tour from Volcano Tours. The plan was to see the South Shore of Iceland and also the Golden Circle. We thought this would be perfect, because the Golden Circle is all of the really famous stuff that you can’t miss, but going to the South Shore would allow us to see things a bit more off the beaten track, even though we were only in Iceland for a short time. The tour was supposed to be with a small group in a small bus or jeep. We found out soon that it was actually a very small tour – just me and Jeff! So for the same price as a group bus trip, we were able to get a personal tour around Iceland!

The only catch is that our driver, who I think was honestly trying to be nice, was pretty creepy. He had kind of crazy hair and a lazy eye, which definitely shouldn’t lead to stereotypes about his personality, except that practically everything he said made me grate my teeth. Within the first hour of driving (it’s a ten hour tour), he had made a joke about domestic violence (a 70-year-old-man had recently been arrested for killing his wife, and Clint – the driver – joked that she had probably been nagging him for forty years.) He also talked about his recent divorce and told us (the newlyweds) that “sometimes people just grow apart.” His stories continued throughout the trip – about his friend getting bit on the tongue by his pet tarantula, about how new research had just come out proving that global warming wasn’t caused by humans (which he explained to us as we were touring a glacier and seeing the markers showing how much it had shrunk in the last 20 years), jokes about how Vikings killed people to steal their wives, and lots more I can’t (or don’t want to?) remember. Also, when either of us would fall asleep on the drive, when we’d woke up, he’d be like, ‘Oh, I saw you sleeping!’ which always made me feel like he was watching us sleep, which also seems creepy. I really do think he was trying to be friendly with all of his stories and jokes, but we were not on the same wavelength, so I tried to just stare out the window. Luckily, Jeff was less affected than I was, and he carried the conversation for basically the whole trip. Essentially, Jeff had no problem with the driver, so he just laughed at me (in a friendly way, of course) every time we'd walk on our own and I'd vent about my annoyance whatever Clint had said since the last stop.

The driver was not always bad – he sometimes did have interesting information to share about the landscape, Icelandic history, and things like that. Also, if he noticed me trying to get a picture of something out the window, he'd try to stop and pull over so that I could get out and get a good shot, which was really nice. And the one joke I did actually laugh about was about forests in Iceland. For some reason, Iceland doesn’t really have forests (they died off or got cut down), so they call any little group of trees a forest, and lots of them are young trees. So in Iceland, they have all these jokes that start:
If you get lost in a forest in Iceland…
…stand up. (Because you can see over the trees.)
…walk one meter in any direction.
And there were a few others. (Re-reading them, they don't seem that funny... maybe it was just in comparison to all of the other jokes that I thought they were funny?)

Anyway, driving around in Iceland is fun – the scenery changes all the time – sharp cliffs, mossy lava fields, black sands, mountains. It often looks like you’re on another world.

On the South Shore, we stopped and saw big waterfalls coming over sharp cliffs, we walked on a glacier (so cool!), saw some old fashioned Icelandic housing (made out of lava stone and grass, since there is no wood in Iceland – now houses are made of concrete), and took a little stroll on a black sand beach. While on the beach, we saw a seal in the water, which was also really cool!

We had lunch at a little Icelandic fast food grill – burgers and fries. It was not bad. Apparently Icelandic people really like fast food, but, when McDonalds and Burger King came to Iceland they did really poorly, and it’s apparently the only country where McDonalds has gone out of business. Now there are no McDonalds’ in Iceland!

The second half of the day we saw the Golden Circle, which is probably the most famous sites in Iceland. We saw a bunch of geysers, including “Geysir,” the one that every other geyser in the world is named after! It was the first time I’ve ever seen a geyser erupt – very cool!

We saw the most famous, two-tiered water fall, and got lucky, because a rainbow appeared while we were standing there.

Our last stop was at the location of Iceland’s historic parliament, which also happens to be the place where two tectonic plates are moving away from each other (at a rate of 2cm per year).

Everything was really beautiful! Usually, I would learn the names of the different places we went to, but it’s really tough to do in Icelandic!

The tour was over by about 5pm. Jeff and I were tired, so we decided to go to the lounge for snacks and drinks and to relax and collect our thoughts. After that, we decided to have a quiet night in. Jeff ran to a nearby store and got “Icelandic Chipotle,” which was not particularly good. But it was a nice relaxing end to a full day of sight-seeing!

Honeymoon Day 1 – June 1 – Reykjavik, Iceland

2011-06-04T06:15:00.004-04:00

Jeff and I arrived in Iceland at 6:30am local time. (I think it was about 1:30am Minnesota time.) We were tired, but excited. We got our bags, found the bus into town, and headed to the Hotel.

We had gotten a great deal (half price!) on the Hilton Reykjavik Nordica hotel. It’s about 10 minutes walk outside of downtown, but it’s a very nice hotel. Our guide book listed it under ‘Top End,’ and also chose the restaurant in the hotel – Vox – as its top pick for Icelandic Cuisine.

We got to the hotel at about 8:30am, and not surprisingly, they weren’t ready for us to check-in yet. However, somehow I am an HHonors Gold member, even though I can’t remember the last time I actually stayed at a Hilton. That meant we got access to the executive lounge, which was serving free breakfast at the time.

The executive lounge was beautiful – it’s on the 8th floor and has a great view of the ocean. Jeff and I hung out up there for a couple of hours and then went back down to get our room. They put us on the 9th floor – the executive area – which was also really cool! Great hotel luck for the first stop on the honeymoon!

The first order of business was to watch the episode of Doctor Who that had come on the Saturday before the wedding – it was the second half of a two-part episode! Then we took a nap for a bit.

Once we were refreshed, we headed out for a nice walk around downtown Reykjavik. It’s fairly cold in Iceland – probably in the 50’s – so I was glad I brought a jacket. The streets were cute and there were lots of little shops.

We stopped in Café Paris for a coffee and to warm up. They also had free wifi so we posted a little facebook update using my phone.

From there, we went to see Reykjavik’s famous church on the hill. It’s a huge concrete church – it looks really unique. The inside is really cool too – interesting architecture and very little color or detail. We rode the elevator to the top and got some views of the city from above.

After that, we headed back to the hotel for a (free!) aperitif in the executive lounge, and then we headed to dinner. We had an 8pm dinner reservation at Vox. We decided to go all out and try the 5-course seasonal menu. We were really excited, because Vox is Iceland’s first ever 5-star restaurant, and it’s supposed to have one of the world’s best chefs, and it just happened to be in our hotel! Also, Jeff got the wine pairing with the meal, which was great, and every time, they poured me some of the wine to taste as well. (Also, did I mention that Vox’s Sommelier won the Sommelier of the Year award in Iceland four times?)

We started our dinner with a glass of champagne, to toast to the first dinner of our honeymoon. The menu was five courses, but they also had amazing bread with some kind of herbed butter. There was also an amuse-bouche of lamb tartar, and another snack of bread, cheese, and jam that came between courses.

Here’s what was on the menu:

Lamb Tartar

Icelandic Langoustine
Slightly cooked langoustine with green strawberries, radishes, lumpfish roe and ramson

Scallops and Tomatoes
Panfried Norwegian scallops with horseradish cream, almonds and lots of tomatoes

Horse from Böðmóðsstaðir
Horse carpaccio and watercress with Bornholm mustard, beetroot, crispy walnuts and Gamle Ole

Beef and Angelica
Tenderloin of beef with green asparagus, morels, angelica glaze and smoked marrow

Strawberries and Flowers
Red and green strawberries from Silfurtún whith hazelnuts and rose sorbet

Every single dish was great! We ended up staying at the restaurant until almost midnight – it’s probably the longest dinner I’ve ever had. But it seemed to go by really quickly, and it still looked like it was just starting to get dark outside, so I was really surprised when I saw the clock!

Luckily for us, all we had to do to get home was ride the elevator up to our room!

Honeymoon Day 0 - May 31 – Minneapolis, MN

2011-06-04T06:14:00.003-04:00

Jeff and I left for our honeymoon on Tuesday evening – two days after the wedding. This was nice because we could see people off on Monday, get things organized and re-packed back at my parents’ house, and run a couple errands before heading out.

Jeff asked me if I thought the timing had been right, and I said I thought I could have used just a couple more hours… though I guess that’s always the case. But we basically had everything we needed – passports, clothes, electronics, reservations, and all of that.

We got to the airport and checked in, and even though we didn’t have much time, Jeff suggested that we each get a glass of champagne at the bar to celebrate the very beginning of our honeymoon. We did, and it was a very nice way to sit and relax for a second and take in the moment.

Before long, we were boarding our flight to Iceland. The flight was fine – we had a snack, watched “Black Swan” (good, but pretty creepy), read the Iceland travel book, and slept a bit.

Wedding Weekend - Monday, May 30

2011-06-02T21:05:00.001-04:00

The next morning, I was pretty tired, but still had a lot of excited energy, so I didn’t have much trouble waking up at 8am. Jeff and I got ready – our first morning together as a married couple! - and then called Liz, who had slept over in the after-party room. We picked up the rolling garment racks and other random stuff that had been left there and brought them down to breakfast.

Our plan for breakfast was that we were going to be down there and eating al-a-carte, and we figured at least some people would wander down to say goodbye, and some would eat and some might not. But then the restaurant had the buffet set up and it seemed like every single person staying at the hotel came down to join us for breakfast. Even people that didn’t come to the wedding were there. It was so fun! It was really nice to have another chance to say hi and bye to people, and to chat about the wedding a bit.

Pooja came back to Maple Grove with Jeff and me. We met up with Katie and Tom and my parents there. We unpacked all of the wedding stuff from the car and spent the next couple of hours organizing things. Brian and Emily came over with Wally, and Mamie and Grandpa Ray and Kiyoko came over too. We ordered pizza and had a big pizza party (my first since before Christmas!). We brought Pooja back to the airport at about 4:30pm (cutting it a little close for her 5:30pm flight). Then we picked up the wedding cake, which we had forgotten at Hotel Minneapolis, and picked up my iPod, which we had also forgotten, and Dick Whitbeck (from the band) had grabbed.

Then we went home for a night of organzing our things, opening gifts, and going to bed early!

It was really nice to have some time to go through all of the things and feel like stuff at home was all squared away before we left for the honeymoon.