Belated Honeymoon

Soooo I just got back from my belated honeymoon. My wife and I got married in April, but we made an unconventional choice to postpone our honeymoon. The reason was that some of her extended family had booked a Mediterranean cruise. Her grandma offered to pay for us to go, as her wedding present. So, a few days by ourselves in April, or 2 weeks in the Mediterranean? I think the choice was obvious.

Granted, that meant combining our honeymoon with a family trip. But we had our own room, and spent a lot of time by ourselves. We only really combined as a group for the offshore tours. The evenings were on the ship itself, and it was pretty amazing. People close to me will tell you that I've wanted to go on a cruise for a looonggg time. The problem has always been that A. My family couldn't afford it, and B. My brother has a phobia of boats/ships. I've also always been fascinated by Roman and Greek empires (love history). So it was kind of perfect.

In 2 weeks, we visited Venice, Athens, Istanbul (Constantinople), Mykonos, Naples, Rome, Florance, a beach town in France who's name I forget, and Barcelona. There is wayyyy too much to really discuss here, so I'll just hit a few highlights. Seeing the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul was incredible. It's a museum now, and you can go explore it. The Amalfi coast is utterly epic. Massive cliffs ... pictures don't do it justice. Leaning tower of Piza is way more impressive in person that pictures. And a lot more.

The ship was awesome, despite being old. I was disappointed a bit by the entertainment and food options, and several of our traveling companions who've been on more cruises confirmed that this wasn't the greatest ship in the world. But despite being 30 years old, it was in great condition, and it was really fun going to visit my grandmother-in-law's cabin to use her balcony (we had only a window, but she had the Presidential Suite) to watch the sunsets.

From my engineering perspective, besides the leaning tower I think the best part was Barcelona. The city is laid out on this angled grid, with very wide streets and very wide sidewalks. It's quite unique, and a great place for any transportation engineer to visit.

I feel like I'm leaving 90% out, but that's okay. I might make additional posts about specific things, but I just wanted to write up a little summary. I'll be putting up a few more pictures as well in the coming days. I've been super swamped at work the past 2 days, catching up from the past 2 weeks, so I haven't really had much time.