Wedding and Honeymoon Adventures

So for those of you who follow my blog, you might have noticed that I've been a little absent the last month or so. But I have a good reason, I promise! Almost three weeks ago (October 18), I got married!!! Our day was absolutely perfect and I couldn't have asked for anything more! It was a perfect fall Saturday, a little chilly, but sunny and full of color. We got married near my hometown in Wisconsin at a cute little chapel. My father-in-law performed our ceremony and we had a very large wedding party -- 17 bridesmaids, groomsmen, and an usher. The day went by so incredibly fast, and I wish we could do it all over again (without all the planning and money, of course!). But at the same time, I'm very glad to have everything settle down a little bit and get back into our normal lives (:

(c) Brittany Geise Photography

Two days after our wedding, we started our amazing honeymoon by flying to Rome, Italy! We were there for 3 days, then took a train to Florence, where we stayed another 3 days. After that, we took another train to Venice, staying 2 days, and finally took a flight to Athens, Greece to finish up our trip! It was an amazing honeymoon, but it definitely wasn't very smooth and took quite a bit of patience...

On our way to Italy, we had a layover in Germany for a few hours. Well, when we got to the airport and went to find our new gate, we learned the airline was on strike and wouldn't be able to fly out. After freaking out for a few minutes (we were in a foreign country unable to understand their language at all!), we were able to speak with someone to change our flights. I was a little worried we'd have to fork over the additional money for new flights, but thankfully not. So, instead of flying directly to Rome after that, we flew from Frankfurt to Milan, and Milan to Rome. Because of the flight change, however, we knew we were going to miss our Segway tour that night. We were a little disappointed, but there wasn't anything we could do about it at that point. Unfortunately, we're not nearly close with begin done with the problems on our trip....

We may have landed in Rome.... but my luggage didn't.... I wasn't very happy because I didn't pack any clothes in my carry-on, nor did I pack any in my husband's bag (which did make it to Rome). After a long time with customer service, we finally left and went to our hotel. It was getting late, so we just hung out in the hotel and went to bed early. The next day we had our tour of Ancient Rome, which was absolutely amazing! I improvised with clothing and wore a pair of my husband's boxers as shorts, and one of his shirts! Not the prettiest I've ever looked, but it was still a lot of fun (: We were able to reschedule our Segway tour and things went smoothly the rest of our time in Rome.

Now moving on to Florence. It was a beautiful city and I really loved it! The first day and night my husband and I had some free time with nothing scheduled, so we just walked around on our own and found the beautiful Il Duomo. We had a really good dinner in front of the dome and enjoyed our relaxing night together. My husband loves the dome because its a main setting in one of his favorite video games, Assassin's Creed. We're definitely a nerdy couple! The next morning... disaster struck... my husband came down with the flu pretty bad. So we had to skip one of our tours and stayed in the hotel room all day. He couldn't move without getting sick. I felt so bad for him, and he felt awful because he didn't want us to miss tours. The next day, he was a little better, and we were able to go on the tour we missed the day before (Tuscany day tour, which included the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and it was beautiful!!). Because of my husband being sick the day before, we did end up missing one tour without begin able to reschedule it. Tuscany was gorgeous and I thought the troubles were going to be over. Needless to say, they weren't...

That night, I woke up with the flu.. Unfortunately for me, we were traveling the next day to Venice, so I couldn't really stay in bed and relax. When we got to Venice, I was still feeling pretty awful, so we again missed a tour - a gondola serenade. I felt pretty bad that we missed things, but again, there wasn't much we could do. The next morning I was feeling okay - at least well enough to make it to our tours. We rescheduled the gondola ride for that night and it was so beautiful and romantic. It was quite expensive, but I would certainly recommend everyone to take one with their significant other (: 

The good news is that was pretty much the last trouble we had! We finished Venice without any more problems, and made it to Greece. Athens was pretty fun, and we were able to see the ancient ruins, including Zeus' temple, the Parthenon, and Athena's temple. The next day we went on a day cruise to three islands - Hydra, Poros, and Aegina - which were very pretty and peaceful! The next morning we got up for our day full of flying! If I remember correctly, we were flying for a total of about 14 hours! Needless to say, we were both exhausted when we got home!

Despite the very bumpy road of our honeymoon, I wouldn't trade it for the world. Paul and I had an amazing time traveling together and really can't wait to do more in our life together! (I'm hoping Ireland will be next :))