Honeymooning.
“Which cities do you want to go to? We will each pick two!” Garrett and I knew we wanted to go to Europe for our honeymoon. Europe for two weeks in December during Christmas and New Years! To say I was excited was an understatement! We each got to pick two cities we wanted to go to. Garrett picked Venice and Edinburgh and I picked London and Paris. Flights got booked and we were ready to take off the day after the BEST day ever aka 12/17/16.
First up, London! London is one of the cheapest cities in Europe to fly into from this side of the world. We used the underground to get from the airport to our hotel. We stayed at a hotel called H10 London Waterloo. The room was tiny, well actually most hotel rooms in Europe are tiny! But no big deal, we only needed it to sleep. Day one of our honeymoon Garrett got a horrible cold and I got to test out that in sickness and in health vow. He’s my absolute favorite person to take care of. Anyway, he was a total trooper and we went out and explored. London is a beautiful city. It is a lot like the U.S. it felt like home, but with english accents, and who doesn’t love english accents? We went on the London Eye, froze as we took a ferry to the Tower of London, paid a visit to Buckingham Palace, and of course took pictures in a phonebooth in front of Big Ben. Uber was our go to for transportation throughout our whole trip, but we flew from city to city!
Venezia, Italia! We flew into the Venice airport and took a small boat from the airport to the island. We had lots of luggage and Venice is NOT the ideal place to be carrying suitcases for long distances! Finally we made it to our super cute Grand Canal Hotel. Now let me be honest, we loved Venice, but we stayed a full 3 days and Garrett and I felt like it was way too long. There’s some shopping, a big plaza, lots of tiny walkaways, restaurants, and gelato, but that’s pretty much it. In Venice we did lots of walking, eating, wine drinking, and relaxing. Just as I thought I was going to get away with not catching Garrett’s cold it hit me. We were both in bed for almost a full day!
It was Christmas Eve and we were boarding a flight to Paris and I was finally feeling better, especially because PARIS! I picked this city remember? Spending our first Christmas as a married couple in Paris was a dream, but it didn't feel like Christmas at all. Other than a Christmas market by the Eiffel Tower, there wasn't many Christmas decorations. Hotel Sezz was the only hotel on our trip I had Garrett book a couple weeks before our arrival. I was worried Hotel Tonight wouldn't have any rooms available for Christmas. We later found out I was wrong...big surprise. Our room was amazing, bed was in the middle of the room and the huge concrete bathtub. Anyway, moving on, Europe was cold! Throughout our whole trip it was about 30 degrees and that is cold for us California folk! But we layered up and the best part was not too many tourists!
I can’t lie to you all I teared up the moment I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time. So overwhelming in such a beautiful way! There is no other tall buildings around the tower and it is so majestic. It was cold and I got to snuggled up to my now husband and it was perfect. My mom got us tickets to the top of the Eiffel Tower on Christmas morning, it was spectacular. The Louvre was next on our list, but unfortunately the museum was closed on Christmas so we didn’t get to explore all the extraordinary art. About a year later, Garrett blessed my mom and I with a trip to Europe and her and I explored the massive museum then, but I'll tell you that story in another post.
Next stop was Edinburgh! We fell in love with Edinburgh, it actually ended up being our favorite city! All sorts of food, coffee shops, old buildings, castles, and the Scottish people were so nice! We were in Edinburgh for about 3 days so we got to settle down and not focus on sightseeing. We spent one of our days at a coffee shop. Garrett read a book on marketing/leading and I wrote thank you notes for the gifts we received at our wedding. At this point of our trip we did a lot of Netflix and chilling. We would have dinner around 4pm and get back to our hotel and binge watch the whole first season of Designated Survivor. We had one final stop to make so we headed to the airport and guess what!? The flight I had confirmation for, didn’t exist! Expedia had screwed up the winter and summer schedules of flights. We took an Uber to train station (on the other side of the city) and took a 3 hour train ride to Liverpool.
Neither of us picked Liverpool as one of the cities to visit, but Manchester City’s futbol team (Garrett’s team) was playing in Liverpool on New Year’s Eve and how could we miss that?! We got into Liverpool on December 30th, we stayed at an Ibis Styles Hotel. I recommend any Ibis hotel! Great prices and nice clean rooms, they are tiny rooms, but we already went over that. We found a restaurant and walked to dinner. We checked out the Cavern, this is the underground bar the Beatles played their first ever show at! They played hundreds of show there. There was live music and decked out in Beatles decor, super cool place! We woke up the next morning and it was game day! Garrett and I got to the Anfield pretty early. We hung out at a little pub where everyone was singing and prepping for the game. The energy at the stadium was unreal! The noise, the chants, the atmosphere. As soccer players, we both thought it was the coolest thing! What a stage to play on!
My original idea of taking the train back to London from Liverpool failed. Since it was New Year’s Eve a lot of the trains weren’t running and it was going to take A LOT longer than expected. Garrett decided to rent a car and conquer driving on the opposite side of the road. He did an amazing job and got us to our hotel with plenty of time to get some rest before our early flight home. What an amazing trip! Our honeymoon was everything I dreamed of and more.
