You Guys, Being Married Is The Best

There’s nothing I use Microsoft Word 2010* – or this old but trusty Asus computer for – except for travel documentation. As a result, you can imagine my thrill when I popped this bad boy open .

Except, as you hopefully know, there are a couple key differences with this go-around. Mainly: I’M MARRIED!!!!! Huzzah!!!! Is there anything better? I submit that there is not.

This means that I expect quite a few other things to be different in this travel. Hostels probably won’t be making an appearance, because we’d rater opt for private married people time. There will be far less of the questions: “What do I want to do? Where do I want to go?” because I’m no longer just and “I”. I’m a “we”. Which, so far, is far more enjoyable.

It’s crazy to think I’m no longer an “I” during my travels. I’ve gone to 27(?) countries as an “I”. If people didn’t want to do what I wanted to do – who cared? I went and did it anyways. It was my money, my time, my choices, my independence, my travels. I remember even being distinctly protective of wanting to stay independent. When I was in Costa Rica, for example, a few days after the University for Peace program had ended, I was taking a bus to who knows where, and I saw one of my former classmates for the program in the back of the bus. He saw me, and started walking to the front of the bus. Not wanting to share my adventures with him, essentially as soon as he got to the front, I said, “Oh shoot, this is my stop – bye!”  and jumped off the bus. I had no idea where I was, but I was confident I’d have fun figuring it out new independently. Kinda crazy, right?

Fiercely independent. It’s a disease.

But I think it’s a disease that fades. I don’t know if it’s with time or exposure or something else, but I remember so distinctly at the end of my big (again, independent) Europe trip, feeling a sense of closure on the long-independent-trips chapter of my life. While I still think independent travel is a blast and everyone should do it at least once, theirs is a certain sadness and loneliness to it. You don’t have anyone to retell your stories with, you don’t have anyone to sleep on during long plane flights, you don’t come home with inside jokes or shared memories, and you constantly have to put up with the question, “You’re traveling alone? Aren’t you scared?”

Which is not to say that I won’t travel again by myself, but I seriously doubt that I’ll travel for by myself for multiple months. Why should I, now that I’ve met my favorite person and literally vowed to always be his adventure buddy.   

Which brings me to this AMAZING man I’m traveling with, and this wonderful adventure that we’re on. We got married on Saturday (1/23/2016), and had the most perfect wedding we could have asked for (large shout out to my mom and dad who made it happen!!!!). I wore a beautiful, fluffy dress and Ken wore a tux with Captain America cuff links, and we made vows, exchanged rings, and had a hell of a party. People continually told us that there was so much love and attention woven into the day – which almost made me want to cry. What I really wanted for the day is to marry Ken, have Christ represented, and have our guests feel loved and cared for. I think (hope) we accomplished those.

But I could go on and on about the wedding, so I should probably cut myself off early.

Cut to: us driving away in our crudely expertly painted get-away car.

Ken drove us off to an undisclosed location, which ended up being Seven Gables in Monterey. Holy moly – this place is beautiful. We got there late, so they had left the key for us. Angie and Jesse had already dropped off our suitcases, so they were all ready for us (thanks!!). Ken carried me over the threshold into a room with a giant bed (just one! ‘cause we’re married! and it’s awesome), old victorian-y furniture, and HUGE windows overlooking the Monterey bay.  

We took our time at Seven Gables (Sat night – Mon afternoon) for some much needed relaxation. We woke up and had breakfast, went for a walk along the bay, came back to couples massages in our room (they come to you!!!!) and then went down to the lobby for wine + cheese. I could get used to this honeymoon thing. From there, we went out to dinner at a fancy European-smorgasbord restaurant, where Ken ordered spaghetti and I ordered lamb, and we ended up trading dishes than taking most of both of them to go. Turns out, we had eaten a lot of the cheese and weren’t super hungry.

Then, that night, Ken revealed one of his wedding gifts to us: Pandemic Legacy!!!! Here’s something you should know about me and Ken: we both enjoy cooperative games and if you had asked either of us what our favorite time together had been up until this weekend, we probably both would have said my birthday weekend at the cabin. During that weekend, we relaxed and ate pizza and played Pandemic the whole weekend. So you can imagine my excitement when I heard about Pandemic Legacy. It sounded AWESOME! But Ken – for whatever reason – didn’t seem enthused. And I couldn’t figure out why. We’d have friends that talked about it, and he’d act like it didn’t sound like the coolest thing, and then changed the subject. We’d be in a game shop, and they’d be talking up Pandemic Legacy, and he’d say something like, “Ya, that sounds cool, I guess. . .” then ask a question about a different game. Meanwhile, I would have bought it in a heartbeat months ago if I had any inkling that Ken would play it with me, but his lack of enthusiasm just left me shouting internally, “What is wrong with you??!! How do you not realize that this sounds awesome!!!!”.

Little did I know that sometime around July, my sneaky husband had decided to get Pandemic Legacy for our honeymoon, and as a result, subtly discouraged me from getting it myself. Please note that this is crazy for two reasons. Primarily, 1) We weren’t engaged in July, and 2) This feat would be like using only subtlety to discourage a fat kid from eating cake for six months – and having it work. Well done, Kenny. The game is the coolest.

Okay, so climbing back from that rabbit trail. . .

Seven Gables was a weekend of much needed relaxation. On our way out, we did the 17-Mile drive in Monterey. Holy moly, that’s beautiful!!!!!!! Wow. Crazy. Like, really, really beautiful. I would highly recommend it if you have an interest in any of these things: pretty nature, pretty houses, pretty drives, pretty beaches, anything else pretty. Really, really beautiful. And such a great way to wrap up our Monterey chapter, that ended way to soon.

From there, we went back to our house (our house!!!!!) to drop off some stuff like my wedding dress and reorganize our suitcases a little bit.

(Mom: that reminds me, can you pick up the wedding dress and the box under it when you’re dropping off my car? Both are in the hall. Wedding dress goes to a well reviewed dry cleaner, box goes to Danyelle).

We also ordered pizza, a

---BREAK: I was writing the above on the plane to Sydney, until my computer ran out of batteries. This blog has been resumed on 1/28/16 at 8:54am from bed in Sydney ---

So, we ordered our pizza, at which time the pizza delivery guy told us that the address we had given him didn’t exist. So that was, obviously, a bit confusing. Turns out, our address is 883 not 833. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused you! Luckily, I think the only thing that will be impacted by this is it will take a little bit longer for us to get our marriage license, giving that it’s being mailed to a non-existent address.

Regardless, moving right along, pizza was followed by an Uber ride up to SFO, where we commenced “Operation Get Free Stuff on Our Honeymoon”. Which was marked, namely, by our “Just Married” t-shirts.

While we didn’t get as much free stuff as we may have hoped (first class, please?), we did benefit from this operation. Apparently, our seats weren’t together on the plane, and, after seeing our shirts, the person checking us in made some changes and got us seats together. Woohoo! Then, in security we were split into two different lines, and the woman overseeing everything looked at Ken, looked at me, and said, “Did you just marry him?” “Ya,” I said. “Do you want to be with him?” she asked. “Yes, please!” I said. And she let me cut across all the security lines to meet back up with Ken. Then someone bought us bourbon at the bar, so I’d say it’s been an overall success! I would recommend this operation to any newlyweds.

The flight was fairly painless. Ken watched a lot of movies, and I slept a lot. The food was great and plentiful. American airlines, take some notes.

Upon arriving in Sydney, we taxied to our AirBnB  - a sweet little studio loft in the Kings Cross area. We dumped our stuff, took some much needed showers, and headed out to seize the day (and lunch!).

Our day seizing consisted of primarily going to the zoo, which was awesome. It was really well laid out, so we were able to make and execute a pretty good plan of attack. Favorite animals include: sun bear, red panda, wallabies, koalas, and a cool red tailed bird. Least favorite animals: spiders. Disappointingly allusive animals: platypuses.

Ken + me taking the ferry to the zoo

Ken comparing himself to bears

After the zoo, we set off to find what became our white whale of the day: The Lord Nelson Brewery + Pub. We hadn’t yet purchased our Lonely Planet book for Sydney, and it turns out that the maps that we had were entirely unhelpful, but we somehow got it in our head that this is where we wanted to go for dinner and beer, and after 45 minutes of searching, we couldn’t be dissuaded from our quest.

We finally found it nowhere near where we expected it to be, and it was totally worth it.

I probably ate the equivalent of 10 potatoes, between the wedges and the mashed potatoes. Okay, probably not 10. But definitely 4. And a meat pie. Hey, have you ever had potato wedges with cream cheese and sweet and sour sauce? Me neither, but trust me. It’s delicious. Holy crap, it’s delicious. We also had great beer. I had a pint of Lord’s Blood, and Ken had a tasting flight.

A quest well worth it, if I do say so myself!

Then we tried to get back with public transportation, which ended up being harder than we expected and we eventually just caught a cab.

And now we’re up and about to go on a quest for some breke (breakfast) this morning.

Life is awesome.

I LOVED getting married, but BEING married is way better.

Cheers!

---1/29/16 at 10:45am---

It took longer than expected for “post blog” to make it to the top of the priority list, so I wanted to quickly catch you up to where we are now so we don’t fall too far behind.

Yesterday, we set off to seek the allusive “bills” restaurant for breakfast. If you know anything about me (actually, if you know weird breakfast facts about me), you know that my Bills is my favorite breakfast in the States. So I got excited when I read somewhere that Sydney has a good bills (not the same chain) of their own.

And. Oh. My. Gosh.

My breakfast at Bill's

It was AMAZING! Ken says: “best dining experience I’ve had in a long time. Food was delicious, but you still felt healthy after words. Also, they treated us really well.” We left with smiles,  happy tummies, and a cook book. Can’t wait to cook from it!

Then we went on our own Sydney scavenger hunt, choosing a task, walking around the city ‘till we accomplished it, then choosing the next one. It let us walk what seemed like the whole city, accomplishing tasks like getting me a new bathing suit, getting ken shorts, etc. Super fun!

Then, back to the house to dress up for THE OPERA at the Sydney Opera House. We saw Barber of Seville, and it was awesome and wonderful.  Ken says: “I was really impressed that they did it in the traditional style that there were no microphones or amplifiers for the singers. And it’s a beautiful building. And the performers were top notch. Really good!”

Classing it up at the opera

Now, we’re at an awesome breakfast café. Ken had The Big Breakfast, and I had a fig + deliciousness sandwich.

Then we’re off to our cruise!!!!!!

Bon Voyage!!!!

P.S. Mom, can you let the Noffsingers know this blog exists and help them subscribe if they're interested. 

P.P.S. A nice person at the cafe we're at is letting me use his phone as a hot spot, so I don't want to upload pics right now and destroy his data. I will do it later. :-) 

*I write my drafts in Microsoft Word 2010, then upload to my blog once I hit free wifi.