April 10, 2010. One year later

This pretty much sums up our feelings about 4/10/10.

In summary, as you can tell, we had a wonderful trip.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience in fact.  We're pretty convinced that our honeymoon itinerary is probably in the top 5 list of best honeymoons of all time.  We visited places that we never want to return to.  But we visited many places that we look forward to visiting again.  I highly recommend taking a 21-day Canary Islands/Mediterranean cruise.  When we told people what we were doing on our trip, everyone's response was, "Oh my gosh.  Yall are gonna get so sick of each other."  Well, I'm here to tell you that not once in the 25 days we were out of the country did I get sick of David.  Not once did I wish our trip was over.  In fact, I wish we could have sailed for 25 more days.  And I'm pretty sure he would say the same thing.  There were only 2 times that I really contemplated pushing him overboard.  Twice in 25 days???  I'd say we had a pretty good time :)

April 9, 2010. One year later

Our cruise ship arrived back in Barcelona early that morning.  When we were still in the planning stages of our honeymoon, we knew we'd be too rushed to catch a flight that left out that same day so we decided to stay an extra night in Barcelona (after 24 days in Europe, what's one more day really???)

I had not booked a hotel in Barcelona for that night though.  This was VERY uncharacteristic of me since I am such a planner.  We ended up finding somewhere to stay that was right in the middle of the city.  It was probably the smallest hotel room I've ever been in but the view out the back window was great. 

We dropped off our bags and immediately went to Park Guell.  Park Guell is a city park designed by Gaudi (whom I mentioned in previous posts). 

(We thought it was neat that these were randomly on display.  We did not buy them - they were just samples placed together.)

We spent the morning at Park Guell and then headed back to Las Ramblas for some lunch.  We had a VERY authentic Spanish lunch (I wasn't too fond of it but David loved it) and then ran into some interesting street performers :)  You never know what you might see on Las Ramblas...

We kept hearing about an outdoor market that had fresh fish, vegetables, fruits and flowers and we were determined to find it.  Tucked away on a side street was this ENORMOUS market.  I saw some of the most brilliantly-colored fruit and vegetables I'd ever seen.  I smelled some of the foulest-smelling fresh fish I'd ever seen.  And I saw some animals frozen on ice I wished I'd never seen.  But it was very neat nonetheless.

The weather was really nice that day so after lunch, we decided to wander the coast line.  We had yet to spend any time on the beach in Barcelona so we figured we might want to stick our feet in the Mediterranean Sea just once while we were there.  We quickly realized that anything goes on their beaches.  You'll see what I mean below...

This was the same ship that we had just spent 21 days on going back out to sea.  Very sad.

We did a little more walking and suprisingly it was dinner time.  David had wanted paella the entire time we were in Spain but had yet to have any.  So we found a place that had it and he was beyond excited.

One more place we wanted to mark off our list was the Ice Bar.  An Ice Bar is a drinking establishment made primarily of ice.  It's so cold that you have to bundle up before you enter.  We met some pretty neat folks inside IceBarcelona but it was a quick conversation because we didn't last long :)

The one thing we hoped we'd never have to mark off our list while on our honeymoon was the final thing we experienced in Barcelona.  After leaving the Ice Bar, we began our trek back to the hotel.  It was a pretty good ways from where we'd ended up so we were prepared to walk for at least an hour.  And it was dark by this point.  We continually heard about how bad pickpocketing was.  We'd met a handful of people on our cruise who'd been pickpocketed and didn't realize it until it was too late.  But we had been lucky not to experience that thus far.  That is...up until our final night.

Long story short, 2 men came up to us on our walk back.  They started small talk with us but David quickly realized the small talk was just a distraction so they could get to his wallet.  Well David is smarter than the average bear and had his money concealed within hidden pockets in his pants.  The man reached in David's back pocket only to be disappointed when all he found was a receipt.  D called the guys out and they ran away.  We were extremely lucky they didn't try to harm us and left empty-handed.  But it was still a pretty scary moment.

We'd been in about 12 different countries over the last 3 and a half weeks and not until the 24th day did we run into a mugging situation.  Although I hated to end our honeymoon on that note, since the outcome was okay, it did make for a good story.

We made our way back to the hotel and began packing our bags.  We had to be at the airport bright and early that next morning so we needed to get our beauty rest and prepare for the LONG flight back home.

April 7, 2010. One year later

The last stop on our cruise was Valletta, Malta.  We decided this would be the only port we would not take an official shore excursion with Norwegian.  None of the tours really caught our attention so we figured we would just wander the town and take it easy.

Valletta is known for its awesome port called "Grand Harbour" that is home to incredible yachts and sailboats as well as its unique architecture and city streets.

The weather was fairly cold and windy that day, especially since we were near the water most of the time.  When we boarded the ship to leave, it had become increasingly overcast which caused the temperature to drop.  But we of course had to claim our seats on the back of the ship to wave goodbye to Malta and have our usual mixed drinks :)  Since we knew we were honeymooning in the Mediterranean, neither of us thought to bring gloves or earmuffs to wear on the ship so we had to come up with our own makeshift earmuffs...

One of the problems with being on our honeymoon is that we rarely got pictures that both of us were in.  So we had one of the ship's staff members take a picture of us as the boat was leaving the port. 

We had one more day at sea before the ship docked in Barcelona so we were determined to use that last day to rest and reminisce on the past 20 days.  We also wanted to soak up as many rays as we could so we'd have a nice golden glow when we arrived home.  Well, the weather didn't quite cooperate and we ended up sailing through some pretty big swells.  Not once did either of us get sea sick so we kind of enjoyed the storm :)

April 5, 2010. One year later.

First of all, I must mention that April 5th is David's birthday.  I'd say he had a pretty memorable birthday since he was able to spend it in Cairo, Egypt!

We first headed to Memphis, Egypt which was especially exciting for us considering we were probably the only people in all of Egypt from Memphis, Tennessee.

This place was highly secure and had guards with AK 47s on top of the buildings.

You just can't imagine how behind the times these people in Egypt are.  We saw this on our bus trip to Memphis...this is seriously how you transport your cows??

Our trek to Memphis was quite a haul.  We must've been on the bus for a good hour each way so it gave us a chance to see a lot of the scenery.  This "scenery" included a small river that we drove alongside the ENTIRE way that people were fishing in...and bathing in...and throwing their trash in...and dumping their dead animals in.  Keep in mind that I said they were FISHING IN THIS RIVER!  Fishing for their food in water that dead water buffalo were floating in.  In water that people threw their dirty diapers into.  I actually saw someone walk from their house carrying a trash can and dump it into that water.  I'm pretty sure that had the windows been down on our bus, we would have all contracted typhoid fever or dysentery.

But...funny story on our ride to the pyramids...we'd been riding for what seemed like half a day.  All of a sudden, our bus comes to a stop and our bus driver gets out.  He and our female tour guide start speaking Arabic and she seemed to get really ticked off.  We had no idea what was going on but lucky for us, we had a girl on our bus who was originally from Jordan so she could somewhat understand what was going on.  Apparently, some guy had hit our bus (we didn't feel it) so our bus driver decided to get out and beat up the guy who hit us!  We were informed that in Egypt, you resolve your traffic issues with physical violence because car insurance is basically non-existent.  Our tour guide was so mad at the driver bc he had left the door open when he went to go beat up the man.  Egypt is so dangerous and she was liable for all of us.  She didn't care that he got into a fight...just that he left the door open when he did.  She demanded a new driver for our bus after that :)

We drove back from Memphis to go to the pyramids and when I say that the pyramids are in the middle of the city, I am NOT exaggerating.  They are right in downtown Cairo.  It's not at ALL what I imagined.  I thought they were going to be in the middle of the desert.  Not so much.  The Sphinx is honestly right on a parking lot.

Now bare with us through all of the cheesy photos we just couldn't pass up :)

We met some great people on our cruise and hung out with them.  Sophy and Travis (aka "Team Trophy") got married on the exact same day as us so we were especially fond of them.  They are from the Philadelphia area and we still keep in touch with them!  Garrick and Bana were from D.C. and were crazy (but fun)!
This was all of us posing for a picture and the 2nd pic is of Team Trophy on their camels.

Speaking of camels...we decided to ride another one.  But this time, we rode together.  Riding a camel is not comfortable nor is it something I'd want to do all of the time but again, we can mark it off our list :)

I love the next 2 photos of David.  The first is an action shot that cracks me up.  I have no idea what he was doing but I snapped the picture at just the right time.  The 2nd one is just David being David.

We were honestly pretty happy to see the cruise ship back at the Alexandria port.  We'd spent a long 2 days in Egypt and were ready for some relaxation time on our day at sea.

Once we boarded the ship, I made reservations for the 6 of us at the Italian restaurant to celebrate David's birthday.  I had packed some decorations to decorate our room but was able to use them at the restaurant instead.  We had a great time drinking wine and eating awesome gnocchi!

You may or may not be able to tell that we were not very fond of Cairo or Egypt.  Most of this cruise was spent marking things off of our bucket lists.  Egypt was definitely one of those.  Everyone should see the pyramids, ride a camel and take a cruise on the Nile River.  But we plan to never go back.  We did go at the perfect time because one year later, there's too much political unrest for foreigners to visit Egypt.  Who knows??  The pyramids may be a thing of the past based on all of the current warfare in that country.  I know that many of the mummies and artifacts we saw at the Egyptian Museum were recently destroyed. 
So all that to say that I am SO glad we had the opportunity to experience Egypt when we did.