About honeymoons

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kevinsgirl

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Hi everyone!

My fiance and I have begun the search for our honeymoon hotels and it can be a bit daunting!

Soooo…

Tell me about your honeymoons…

Where did you go? Did you have too much sightseeing or too little? How long was it? What would you do again? :dancing: What do you tell everyone to avoid? :bigyikes:

Oh, and if any of you happened to go to Rome, did you get an audience with the Holy Father and receive his blessing?

We’ll be going to…Paris, Venice, and Rome…about two weeks…

Any ideas? :bounce:

God bless ya’ll,

kevinsgirl :love:
 
ummm…ok…you asked…
Planned to go to New Orleans for our honeymoon. Katrina came that weekend…changed plans at the last minute so we decided to go see our Cathedral in Peoria IL. Got there, planned to stay about a week and sightsee…lovely area but the Cathedral was closed for renovations as were all the main roads. Stayed and toured the waterfront area and drove all over the city. Last day of honeymoon we went to spend the night in the town where we were picking up his daughter for a visit. End of story… still married…planning New Orleans trip for 5 yr anniversary.
 
Well, we drove to Hilton Head Island (which is a ~15 hour drive for us), and spent the week in a condo by the beach. For us, even though we knew we were getting a good deal on a vacation (it was off season and cheaper than most honeymoons we had heard of), and we were not strapped for cash at the time, it seemed like an expensive week because we had never vacationed in a condo before (always pretty much camped). And we had a lovely time. Having been married now for eight years, and having taken 8 years of good deal’s of condo beach vacations, 5 of them with children in tow, I’d do it differently if I could do it over again. I would probably take a fancier trip that involved flying and a more exotic or romantic location. Only because now that we are in the throes of child-rearing, I am well aware that my dream trip to Europe or a carribean island or the one cruise I will ever take (I’m not that fascinated with cruises, but would like to try ONE) will probably have to wait at least another 20 years.

So my advice is 1st - don’t break the bank over a honeymoon. But if finances allow, go someplace that you wouldn’t otherwise go. Someplace that you won’t go to when you have a family.
 
kevinsgirl said:
Hi everyone!

My fiance and I have begun the search for our honeymoon hotels and it can be a bit daunting!

Soooo…

Tell me about your honeymoons…

Where did you go? Did you have too much sightseeing or too little? How long was it? What would you do again? :dancing: What do you tell everyone to avoid? :bigyikes:

Oh, and if any of you happened to go to Rome, did you get an audience with the Holy Father and receive his blessing?

We’ll be going to…Paris, Venice, and Rome…about two weeks…

Any ideas? :bounce:

God bless ya’ll,

kevinsgirl :love:
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what is your budget? ball park figure will make it easier to suggest hotels etc. to stay in while visiting these European cities.
 
We went to Paris for 10 days. We wanted to get away for 3 weeks and do other European countries but my husband couldn’t get that much time off from work. We had to take a lsmall oan out to afford the honeymood but we knew that once we started having children, we could forget Europe until our retirement years (although I enter any and every contest I come across where the prize is a trip overseas). We paid the loan off in about 3 years and I don’t regret having taken out a loan as it was a dream honeymoon and I had always wanted to see Paris. Now, even though we took out a loan, we still could not afford to stay at a upscale hotel. We stayed in the most charming little hotel on the Left Bank where the bed pretty much filled up the room. We had a private bathroom with bath but the two of us couldn’t fit in there at the same time. But that was okay as we spent all day everyday sightseeing. In Italy you should be able to find affordable pensionnes (I know I spelled that wrong). Also I have heard that many of the convents and monestaries take in tourists at a very affordable price. Enjoy your honeymoon, it sounds wonderful!
 
In Paris this is my favortie hotel to stay in…
Plaza Athénée

In Venice I like these…
Hotel Cipriani
Hotel Bauer
Hotel Dei Dogi

In Rome we enjoyed the following…
Grand Hotel Plaza
Hotel Bernini Bristol
 
ThyKingdomCome said:
Only because now that we are in the throes of child-rearing, I am well aware that my dream trip to Europe or a carribean island or the one cruise I will ever take (I’m not that fascinated with cruises, but would like to try ONE) will probably have to wait at least another 20 years.
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We’ve taken a Caribbean cruise WITH CHILDREN - they were 6,8, and 9 at the time. Absolutely LOVED it!! Highly recommend it.

We’ve taken our kids to Europe – they were 9, 11, and 12 at the time. LOVED IT!! Highly recommend it!!

With that said, our honeymoon was to Disney World. We had a fabulous time.
 
We went to Rome, Florence, Sienna, and Venice last year on our second honeymoon (5 yr anniversary). I don’t know about Paris, but get the book Rick Steve’s Italy for planning your time in Rome and Venice. He has recommendations for all budgets in there. We went with the lower budget recommendations and were not disappointed. I have also heard that Lonely Planet has good recommendations. I don’t remember the name of the hotel we stayed at in Rome, but it was cheap because we couldn’t be in the room between 9a and 7p which wasn’t a problem for us because we were out exploring and enjoying Rome. I can look it up for you later if you would be interested in that sort of place.

Just a note, my wife and I were not impressed with Venice other than St. Marks. People either love Venice or hate it. Personally if we make it back to Italy in the future we would only go there for a day trip. But St. Marks was by far one of the best Churches that we visited in Italy.
 
We went to Jamaica to one of the Sandals resorts. We waited til Monday to leave, although our flight left around 6 am, but it was nice to not have to leave on a Sunday. We stayed 5 days/4 nights and enjoyed it so much! We were definitely ready to come home though.

The honeymoon was planned by my husband and so I had very little to do with the planning, although there wasn’t a whole lot to plan. Because it was an all-inclusive resort, everything was pretty much taken care of, food and room-wise. Jamaica is beautiful but we’re encouraged not to go outside of the premises of the resort unless on one of their tours since it is dangerous. We didn’t bring a whole lot of money with us, which at first I was quite upset about because everything else, including excursions/sight-seeing was expensive, but in the end I was happy we didn’t spend much money while down there. I gained pretty much all the weight I lost for the wedding back again and we enjoyed just laying out in the pool and on the beach. Honestly, we waited for eachother so we spent majority of our time in our room 😉 and were so wrapped up in eachother that sightseeing wasn’t such a priority. We did go visit one place, Dunns River Falls, and climbed up the waterfall. It was SO much fun and we had a blast! Our flight home was delayed 12 hrs so we were stuck in an airport for about that length of time, and made it home at 8 am that next morning 🙂 (our flight was scheduled to land at 8:45 pm the night before).

As far as Rome, Paris, and Venice - I’ve only been to Rome out of those three. Places to see there - of course, Vatican - take the Scavi tour if you can, it’s AMAZING! The Sistine Chapel tour is really nice if you like art a lot. SO many churches! Sitting in cafes and just enjoying the scenery with a good friend was my favorite part, next to St. Peter’s. I hope you have a wonderful honeymoon! God bless!
 
I forgot to add that we spent 3 and half days in Rome.

Day 1 - Saw all of the Roman Ruins
Day 2 - Visited many of the musuems (Especially would recommend the Boughese Gallery which was by far the best musuem that we visited in all of Italy)
Day 3 - St. Peters, The Vatican Musuem
Day 4 - Visited the other 3 major basilcas in Rome. I don’t remember their names off the top of my head.

I would have liked to have made it to the Catacombs but that takes about a day.
 
Congratulations!! If you’re going to Europe, my advice is to take it slow. Don’t plan on trying to see everything that there is to see – leave empty space in your schedule to do anything interesting that pops up. Many people make the mistake of trying to see 8 museums in one day…relax…even if you don’t go everywhere you want to go, it will all (hopefully) be there for your next visit.
kevinsgirl said:
Hi everyone!

My fiance and I have begun the search for our honeymoon hotels and it can be a bit daunting!

Soooo…

Tell me about your honeymoons…

Where did you go? Did you have too much sightseeing or too little? How long was it? What would you do again? :dancing: What do you tell everyone to avoid? :bigyikes:

Oh, and if any of you happened to go to Rome, did you get an audience with the Holy Father and receive his blessing?

We’ll be going to…Paris, Venice, and Rome…about two weeks…

Any ideas? :bounce:

God bless ya’ll,

kevinsgirl :love:
Click to expand...
 
We went to Mexico for our honeymoon. It was nice, but full of American tourists 😛

ONLY KIDDING!!! ONLY KIDDING!!!

No it was nice, we did lots of excursions, Tulum, Mangroves swamps, Contoy etc.

I’ve been to Rome a few times and it’s now our favourite city in the whole world. If you want to see something special, try englishcollegerome.org/ the history dates back to the seventh century and is extraordinary! You can read some of it here englishcollegerome.org/pages/frame1.htm you can arrange a visit if you’re nice! 😉
If you want to stay in Rome, somewhere unusual, rather special, exclusive, English speaking and Holy you might like to try here- palazzola.it/

If you do Florence, you have to do Sienna, it’s fab! I would also recommend Volterra and San Gimigiano while you’re that way!

Venice is smelly, full of graffiti and a total con for tourists- forget cheap, nothing is even reasonable for tourists!!

That said, I loved it, and, once your wallet has recovered, you do dream of going again. A trip to the Lido is well worth while, escape the crowds and chill out in the sun a bit!

Hey-ho, happy memories! 🙂
 
OK, we’re bookworms. We went to DC and Colonial Williamsburg (before the surrounding area became a tourist trap). We stayed at the Howard Johnson’s that was across the street from the Watergate. We toured the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, took days in each. Still married.
 
The hotel we stayed in Rome was Hotel Sileo 👍 located 1 block away from the Main Train Station in Rome. Like I mentioned earlier, you only rent the room from 7p to the following morning at 9a. They do store your luggage during the day. Since they are located next to the train station they rent the room during the day to train personell who work the night shift. So the price is great. We didn’t have problem since we were interested in seeing Rome. You could always find some place to sit and watch if you wanted to take a rest.

Venice - Alloggi Henry :mad: We really didn’t like this hotel. It had small rooms and smelled very moldy. We actually left early and went back to Florence for a night. St. Marks in Venice is definately a must see, but the rest of Venice we didn’t care much for.

Just in case you are interested the following are the other hotels we stayed at in Italy.
Florence - Ilbargellino I would highly recommend this hotel. 👍 It is run by an American woman married to an Italian man. The last evening there we had a Wine Party out on the patio with all the guest bringing a bottle of wine and some local Italians teaching us how to dance to traditional Italian Music. It was like a scene out of a movie.

Siena - Poste Regie 👍 Again I would highly recommend this bed and breakfast. The only problem is it is kind of far out of town and it awkard if you don’t have a car. However they are really understanding and will pick you up from the nearest bus stop. It is a beautiful house.
 
first honeymoon spent stranded in a snowstorm in Clyde, Ohio.

2nd honeymoon, when 6 mos preg w/#2, also in the winter, Niagara Falls, cheap rates on the best hotels and restaurants, and the whole city is different, you have to see the Falls when a freeze is on, simply beautiful, spectacular.
 
Went to Shenandoah in Virginia and stayed at the Slyland lodge on Skyland drive. Sort of expensive, but if you want wilderness and quiet and lots of it, that’s the place to go. Didn’t see any bears, but my wife almost sat on a viper.:eek: Not good.
 
DH of 5 mos and I went to Aruba. Got lots of comments about Natalie Holloway, as we booked the trip during the hight of publicity. It was a great trip, nice balance of relaxation and exhausting touring.

I’m pretty tough to impress, and probably wouldn’t go back due to the cost of flights there. Would rather spend it to see more in Europe. I was too paranoid about burning my virgin-white skin:p and keep my waist-length hair from tangling horribly to truly enjoy the constant breeze (read GALE FORCE WINDS) and temperate 90 degree weather. I say that with humor and truthfulness. You don’t notice the heat so much with the water and wind.

The scenery was beautiful. We rented an ATV and drove through the desert to the undeveloped side of the island in their nat’l park, and the rough dusty ride was totally worth it.

The only thing I can say about hitting Paris, Venice, and Rome in two weeks is that the traveling will wear you out a lot faster than anything. A friend and I toured S. France, N. Italy, Barcelona, Fatima, and Santarem, Portugal in 3 weeks and were totally beat the entire time. It was certainly on par with my honeymoon, and I didn’t even spend that one with my dreamy husband.:o

We were able to plan our entire trip as we went with the exception of Cinqa Terras (sp?) where we never did find a hotel and ended up having to sleep on some rocks on the edge of a cliff, literally. This was a great way to do it since it allowed us to see things at our own pace, not when we were too exhausted to truly enjoy it.

Do your research ahead of time TOGETHER and plan out what you want to see and do. Plan a rough order, both chronological and prioritized, then see how you feel. You may want to “sleep in” some morning or “turn in early” some night;) . This worked for DH and I, only DH wasn’t in on the research and planning so it was a little more pressure on me to come up with things to do.

Also plan and stick to your budget. Don’t make too many visits to the ATM or you’ll be nickel and dimed in transfer fees.
 
We took a 7-day cruise of the Eastern Caribbean. It was marvelous, and not too pricey. 👍

One of my friends and her husband did go to Rome and have a private audience with Pope JPII. She said it was a lot of fun running through Rome all dressed up in her wedding finery.
 
We’ve been married a long time and love traveling. So we have been to Paris, Rome, and Venice several times. In all my trips to Rome, I have never had a private audience with the Pope. I have attended the Wednesday afternoon blessing in St. Peter’s Square many times. Our honeymoon was in Florence. We love to travel but prefer to stay extended periods in one city. The transportation from one city to another kills a lot of time between the packing, unpacking, getting to the train or plane. So we try to stay a minimum of 3 days in one hotel before moving on. Especially on your honeymoon, you might do better to stay in Italy–Rome, Florence, and Venice. You don’t say when you are taking your honeymoon. If you are getting married in the summer, you might consider a Mediterranean cruise. That is the ultimate in luxury and not as expensive as you might think.
 
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