Our Amazing Honeymoon!!

I am sad it has taken me so long to get to write about this, because I am worried about not remembering very much, but I will do my best!

The first thing I want to say about it is it was AMAZING! Whenever I think about my honeymoon, it seems like it was a totally different world, even a totally different life, from the one I have now. It was the most relaxing, wonderful time, and I absolutely loved it.

I put Dahl in charge of the honeymoon, because planning the wedding was stressful enough. He decided we would go to Miami, and kind of just do whatever we wanted while we were there. As a result, we had literally no commitments when we went, just to have fun and relax. I am SO GLAD we did it that way. I was so stressed from planning the wedding across the country, keeping up with my classes, and working that all I wanted to do was nothing. We did a lot of sleeping in, napping, going to the beach, eating out, and just being together. It was perfect.

We went to a Marriott right next to the airport the night before, and woke up early the next morning to catch our 8:00ish flight. We arrived in Miami around noon, and checked into our hotel. It looked like this:

We loved our hotel. The customer service was amazing, the front desk staff was incredibly friendly, and the price was decent. It also had a fridge and microwave, which allowed us to save our leftovers and not eat out for every single meal. It had breakfast in the mornings, and, although it wasn't the best, it was sufficient for our needs.

(Breakfast time! We forgot to take a picture at first so we didn't get any with food... haha)

It was literally a one minute walk from the beach which was AWESOME! They had recently changed their name to Red South Beach, and they took their red theme pretty far if you ask me. Even the lights were red in their elevators and in some hallways!

(Red, huh??)

Some highlights:

Sunday:

We arrived and relaxed and went to the beach. That's pretty much all we did all day. It was great :)

Monday:

We discovered the bus system!! It was such a blessing to us; it was something like 50 cents a person, so we saved a ton of money using that instead of the taxis.

(Sitting on the bus!)

(Waiting for the bus!)

We went to a cute little Cuban restaurant and tried some of their food. It was really good. This is where we discovered Miami's gratuity system: no matter where you eat or how small your group is, the gratuity is automatically added. This was annoying, mostly because the waiters and waitresses didn't seem to care that much how well they treated you, because they were going to get tipped anyway.

We also went to the beach! This was probably the coldest day there, so I ended up not tanning that much; I got so freezing that I made Dahl scoot over on his towel so I could fit, and put my towel on top of me!

Tuesday:

We went to the beach! Again :) This was the only time we actually played in the water. The ocean was cold at first, but we quickly warmed up to it. It really wasn't bad at all. We had a lot of fun playing together :)

Me and my hair after playing in the water :)

The beaches here were interesting, because there were a lot of topless women. Like tons. Like old women with saggy boobs shaking what their mamas gave them. We learned to ignore it, but it was still pretty weird.

We came to the conclusion that this was because we were some of the only Americans there, and I know that in other cultures they are not as strict about that. It was really very interesting to us. In our hotel, we were pretty much the only Americans. On our boat tour, which I'll talk about later, we were literally the only ones who said we were from America on the whole boat. It was crazy! We went out to this really yummy Chinese place for dinner that night.

Wednesday:

We rented a scooter for a day!! We had so much fun cruising around town in it :) Please enjoy our mini photo shoot:

We even went to a different beach!

The only downside was we got a parking ticket for being a minute late... we were super sad. But, it made Dahl feel right at home! (He gets more parking tickets than anyone I know... we're working on that.) We went to a fancy seafood restaurant that was really far away from our hotel that night, just because we could.

Thursday:

We watched the sunrise! It was so beautiful :)

We saved this for our last day, when we had to wake up pretty early for our tour of the city! It was a boat and land tour, that took us all over. We went to Little Havana, and saw lots of homes of the rich and famous. We also saw these amazing and huge trees that were imported from a jungle in Africa!

(Look how huge this is!!)

Right after our tour, we had to rush to get our flight, which was at 6PM! We still had to return our scooter, take the bus back to the hotel, check out of the hotel, catch the bus to the airport, and get through the airport and onto our flight. It was a super tight squeeze!! That night, we picked up our Sabie car (that's what her name is), and drove back to my parent's home. We got there probably a half hour before they came home from their fun Thanksgiving at the Pooles!

The next day was full of present sorting and list writing and bags packing (PS- I have written pretty much all my thank you cards, I'm just the worst mailer... it's coming, I promise!!). I was really glad I got to see my family before I went back home to Utah!

One funny story:

Me and Dahl were trying to remember to say prayers together, so one time we were sitting on the bed and I reminded him that we needed to remember to say prayers that night. It was kind of an "in passing" remark, just so we could remember when we were done talking. We continued to talk about our plans for the next day and so on, and Dahl kept randomly giving me kisses in the middle of me talking. A few minutes later he said, "I think it's your turn." So, I decided he must be talking about giving him a kiss, but he was kneeling and his face was buried in the bed, so I pried it up, gave him a kiss, and continued talking. He talked back a little, and then, once again, said, "I think it's your turn." I again pried his face up, kissed him, and went back to talking. This happened probably four or five times, and then I got slightly annoyed because he was making it so difficult to access his lips! I said, "This isn't fair! When you gave me kisses my lips were readily available, and when its 'my turn' to give you kisses, your face is buried in the bed!" He looked surprised: "You thought I was saying it was your turn to give me a kiss?!" he asked, starting to laugh. "I was saying it was your turn to pray!!" We laughed pretty hard about that one :) And then I prayed.

This is a pretty short entry compared to some of my other ones, but, in conclusion, it was a perfect honeymoon :)