would be an understatement. And I don't mean perfect in the "everything went off without a hitch, flawless, total and complete bliss" kind of perfect. I mean in the Allen's kind of perfect. (It's similar to how perfect our wedding was...if you missed out on that spiel, check the first blog post). But I think both of us would agree that what made the trip even more special was once again seeing how many phenomenal people we are blessed to have in our lives.
The day after the wedding we drove to Dallas where a very dear friend had gotten us the hook up to stay at The Joule downtown. Such a cool hotel. We got up early Sunday morning to go exploring downtown and eat breakfast before we caught our flight.
Side note to all you future honeymooners :
Don't book the flight for your honeymoon the day after the wedding. We LOVED having a day in between to just rest, pack, and process the events of the wedding day. We still got out of town but gave ourselves time to recoup a little before embarking on the chaos of catching a flight. There was no stress or pressure, just good quality time. Also, Sunday flights are way cheaper than Friday or Saturday. Just FYI.
Need Title.
You should know that finding the sublime honeymoon spot for the two of us was a bit of a challenge. Not the worst, but we definitely had to think hard about where we would go that both of us would enjoy. You see, Josh is a bit of a playaholic. By this I mean the man LOVES to be active, whether it's playing basketball, climbing, hiking, running, surfing, long-boarding, playing soccer, playing water polo, jet skiing, wake boarding, snow boarding...it never ends. And the great thing is that I love doing the majority of these things as well (notice I didn't say "all". The day I shoot a basketball is the day you can expect the rapture), however none of those things are my definition of a vacation. To me, there is a difference between a "trip" and a "vacation". If we're going on a trip, we can be as active as we want and fill as many adventures into a small amount of time as possible. But if I'm going on a vacation, well that's a different story entirely. I want to do nothing but relax, and if that means laying next to a body of water reading a book in the sunshine for 3-6 hours a day then so be it. So you can see where our dilemma arrives. Josh wanted to go to Colorado or Washington and hike all over the dang mountains until our feet fell off. I wanted to go to Mexico and have a little man bring me Pina Coladas while I re-read the Hunger Games and come dangerously close to getting skin cancer. (Obviously joking...we all know I would have read Harry Potter.) So where do we find Compromise?
Florida.
The perfect blend of action and rest. We spent the first 4 days at a condo in Orlando and had the time of our lives. We did 3 theme parks in 2 days, being Sea World, Disney's Hollywood Studios, and Universal's Islands of Adventure (Harry Potter World, to be specific). We had an incredible time sharing so many hilarious and fun memories and really got to emphasize the whole "best friends" part of marriage. (Especially at Harry Potter World. Heaven on earth to a couple of nerds like us.) Two of our favorite things from the Orlando portion (besides Harry Potter), would be
1) the night we ate at The California Grille.
I had eaten there my senior year of high school on our choir trip and ever since had dreamed about how delicious the food was. I'm not exaggerating people, I have literally dreamed about this food. The steak literally melts in your mouth. Literally. Plus it's on the top floor of Disney's Contemporary Resort with a view right over Cinderella's Castle at Magic Kingdom. Towards the end of the night the whole restaurant goes out on the balcony to watch the Magic Kingdom's fireworks show and it's...well, it's just magical. (It's really the only word that fits.) Easily a highlight of the trip.
2) the night Josh surprised me with tickets to Cirque du Soleils' La Nouba. He had been telling me since about June when we were at Kamp that he was looking into a surprise for the honeymoon, and finally on our last day in Orlando he pulled out the tickets. I had never seen a Cirque show but had heard great things, and let me tell you people, they did not disappoint. It was easily the most mesmerizing, beautiful show I've ever seen, and I've seen Wicked on Broadway. But Cirque had it beat. At one point, a woman did a hand stand on a man's head while he walked 50 feet in the air across a tight rope. That's all I'm sayin. We were both awestruck by the whole show and count it as our favorite part of the whole honeymoon.
On Friday, we headed for New Smyrna. We were incredibly blessed to have friends with a condo on the beach (and we mean right on the beach) that they let us stay in for the weekend. We had an incredible view of the ocean and the condo itself was beautiful. When we first arrived we went on a long walk on the beach (how very honeymoon of us...) and just enjoyed each other's company. The next morning we went for a good run, but by the time we had cleaned up and were in our swimsuits Hurricane Isaac had decided to visit. Definitely not the real storm but enough rain to keep us inside for the rest of the weekend. Some of you may think that this was disappointing, but in actuality it was perfect. The rain was the only thing that could really force Josh to rest. Even if we'd been on the beach he would have been surfing or boogie boarding or running, but being inside gave him the chance to just take naps and watch movies and let his body have a little bit of a break after 3 months of hard work at kamp and a crazy wedding week. It was really a blessing and the perfect way to end our trip.
The flight back was nothing terribly interesting, with the exception of a delayed flight and some rain-soaked luggage, but we were glad to get back to College Station and start the real life part of marriage. We started classes the next day (not the most fun transition, but oh well) and Josh jumped straight into working while I started up the job search. We've been unpacking our sweet little house (more on that later...) and are loving our new life together. I haven't uploaded any honeymoon pictures yet, but here's another wedding picture just because they're beautiful and I love them.
Happy Monday!
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