project: honeymoon !

we are not telling anyone our honeymoon destination until we return. part irish tradition (something about drinking mead in a hidey-hole for a month so our families can't find us and break us up), part paranoia about people telling us that our trip sounds weird. i can say, due to time constraints, we are staying in the continental united states, leaving the day after the wedding, and returning six days later. i would love to take a two week tropical or european or asian adventure, but when you run a small business or don't get paid time off that is virtually impossible.

the places we considered going, in order of consideration:

1. ireland. when we first started planning brodie wanted to go to ireland, ireland and only ireland. i finally talked him into one week of ireland followed by a week in italy, but this was before we realized we only had a week to honeymoon. we don't want to do any part of europe in only one week, especially since brodie has never traveled overseas.

2. costa rica. after the europe idea was thrown out, we decided tropical! and costa rica is not only tropical but super vegan friendly (a vegan resort! a tree house hotel!) and really inexpensive in september. but it's super cheap for a reason: green season- a fancy, friendly way of saying rain all day. and mudslides, and washed out roads, and many closed hotels. while normally i really wouldn't mind such things, we want to keep our honeymoon a bit more relaxed and easygoing. so we are saving this one for another september.

hawaii was out since we go there for thanksgiving. nyc was out because i have been there a hundred times. mexico and canada were out for the same reason. we decided to stay here in the continental u.s., but find somewhere we hadn't visited before. we looked for three main things: vegan friendly, good nightlife/good outdoorsy stuff, and to be as environmentally responsible as possible.

at midnight the day after the wedding we will be trekking to LAX (the horror! but burbank didn't have any flights to our destination). we will arrive in a state neither of us have set foot in before. two states, three different cities, one bed and breakfast, one farm, one hotel, a short road trip in between destinations. perfect!

while part of me still yearns for a month in thailand or two weeks in austria (ohhh dream vacations) i know we will get to all of those places eventually. for now, i would just like to find a rental car for less than $1000.00 a week.