Okay, yes, I said this was going to be a Friday series called Flashback Fridays. But come on. We all know that I am not an Organized Blogger who does things on a schedule. Most likely these past travel recaps will make random appearances whenever I get to them! 🙂 Without further delay, please enjoy Installment #1:
Our Honeymoon: 2007!!!
Ivan and I took a slightly belated honeymoon; we got married over Labor Day weekend (September 2007), and we took this trip in mid-October. I don’t remember why exactly, but I think it had to do with my request off possibilities at the hospital at the time.
These pictures were fun to look back on! Actually, I will say- I was mildly appalled at the quality (and relatively low quantity) of photos I took. In fairness, 2007 was before I owned an iPhone. All photos were taken on an old digital camera, and I apparently did not have the luxury of taking essentially unlimited photos (as I currently tend to). LOL.
I have no written documentation of this trip…no Facebook posts….no journal entries….just some photos on my external hard drive. That to say, I had to think for a minute which beach we even went to! (It was St. Pete Beach.)
We planned this trip based on Ivan’s suggestion of going to Disney World. He had never been there, and it’s kind of a quintessential American Destination that often appeals to foreigners. 🙂 (I had been there twice but as a pretty young child, so I was happy to repeat the destination, too.) So that was our main focus, and we added in a few days at the beach first for some R&R.
St. Pete Beach
In hindsight, we probably should have done Disney & Universal first, and then the beach to relax at the end. But for whatever reason, we went to the beach first. We didn’t really do too much besides spend a lot of time at the pool, the beach, and we went out to dinner several times.
Disney World and Universal Studios
We had rented a car for our time in St. Pete Beach and then drove that to Orlando. We ended up turning it in on the Disney World grounds at a car rental office and using the shuttle services the rest of our trip.
We stayed at a Disney property… I think it was one of the budget ones?? Pretty sure it was the All Stars Pop Century resort. Remember I had only just turned 24 the week before this trip and was a very recent (2006) college grad, so a super expensive, luxury honeymoon was not in the cards for us. (Which was totally fine- we had a blast, and we spent literally NO time at the hotel, anyway.)
I do remember that we had exactly 4 full days to cover both the Disney and Universal Parks. Being young and crazy, we decided to get the Park Hopper passes and planned to cover all 4 Disney parks PLUS both Universal Parks… in 4 days. 🙂 We wanted to see it all!
And we did.
Haha. We were up early every day and out the door and didn’t drop until late at night. It was exhausting but SO MUCH FUN!! Totally our style, back then, anyway. (And, kind of still today. We both still lean toward wanting to do quite a lot on vacations.)
My photos are pretty spotty, unfortunately- I seemed to take a lot of pictures of “things” (think, random giraffes on the Animal Kingdom safari…), and not so many with us in them.
The details are fuzzy, too, but I know we hit as many rides as possible and skipped most of the Disney shows and extras like fireworks (which are things we actually loved when we later went back with the boys).
We did make it to all 6 parks though!!
In addition, we went to the Cirque du Soleil La Nouba show and out to dinner one night at Downtown Disney (now called Disney Springs).
At Universal, we went to some sort of upscale Mexican restaurant on the City Walk (I don’t remember the name or know if it’s still there) and to see the Blue Man Group.
And that was our honeymoon! For being a barely 24-year-old very novice trip planner back then, I think this all turned out really well! Foreshadowing, perhaps, for the many different trips and planning I’d do down the road in our marriage. 🙂 Granted, I don’t think Disney was quite the beast back then that it can be to plan nowadays, but I do not recall any major hiccups and we did a lot.
What fun to look back on. ❤️
Tell me where you went on your honeymoon!!
GRATEFUL KAE 
Love the pics of baby Kae and Ivan! We were older (early 30s–me–and early 40s–husband) when we got married and did our honeymoon in Peru! We hiked to Macchu Picchu (did the 3.5-day Salkantay Trek instead of the Inca Trail which was closed when we went) and also went to the Amazon. So definitely not a relaxing honeymoon but very active and to bucket list places we’d always wanted to go to. The Salkantay Trek is I think still the most epic hike I’ve ever done (37 miles over the main 3 days of hiking–but you don’t have to carry your own stuff which is nice) and it was perfect because we knew we’d be starting to try for kids soon and would not be doing hikes like that (or sitting in a small boat on the Amazon River) again for awhile. Now our kids are 9 and 10 and we do love family hiking, albeit not 37-mile 3-day hikes 🙂
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Oh WOW! That is soooo cool. Macchu Picchu is on my “someday/maybe” dreams list!! It looks amazing. What a great trip!! My kids are ok with hiking too, but might take some convincing to do a 37-mile, 3-day hike. 😉
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I love this post! Yes if you were planning this trip now you would pace yourselves through the park and end with beach time but doing it the way that you did it back then makes for so much of the fun.
We went to Siesta Key FL for our honeymoon and planted ourselves on the beach for a long weekend. We did ours a month after the wedding as well. I think the delay was because we’d just been on family vacation a few weeks earlier? Honestly I can’t remember.
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Yeah, I actually liked doing the delayed honeymoon! We did a little overnight at a fancy hotel downtown the day after our wedding, so we had a little mini-getaway, but it was nice to have something else to look forward to after all the wedding chaos settled down.
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We did our honeymoon (also to Florida…while I attended a research conference) almost 6 months after we were married. I really regret not taking a “real” honeymoon, actually. I think it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We’ve travelled together to incredible places since, but right after our wedding we slept in a tent in my parents backyard because there was a HUGE family reunion to coincide with our wedding and then I had to go right back to work.
This looks like so much fun and I’ve never been to Disney and never really wanted to go…but now I kinda do ❤
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Well, a “honeymoon” is just a name… as you’ve said, you’ve done other amazing trips together! So maybe it doesn’t matter that you didn’t do a trip specifically called a Honeymoon. 🙂 What’s in a name, anyway. 😉
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Oh how fun! You and Ivan are so cute! This sounds like an epic trip- did you say SIX parks in four days??? 24 years old is a good age for that.
My husband and I didn’t really have a honeymoon, because of work and school schedules. But we did go to Maui before we were married, so we kind of consider that an unofficial honeymoon.
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Haha, yep.. we covered a lot of ground, and fast! lol. Now I would much prefer to stay at one single park ((even if still all day) to just really soak it up and enjoy everything I could at that one park. But we had limited days, so I guess it made sense at the time. Fortunately, we have been back, so it wasn’t like a one and done kind of thing. It was like a Disney Taster! 🙂
And Maui…. mmm.. That sounds amazing.
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Look as baby Kae and Ivan! It is funny how much photos have changed. I was randomly thinking about my spring break trip to London during my sophomore year of college the other day. I have no idea where the photos are. I love google photos so much and can’t imagine my life without it!
We went to Maui for our honeymoon for 9 days. It was AMAZING. We stayed on a beautiful beach that had amazing snorkeling. We saw so many fish and lots of sea turtles! We would alternate quiet beach days with out-and-about kind of days (hiking, snorkeling excursion, etc). We were 36 years old so much older than you and Ivan were when you got married. 🙂 We went right after our honeymoon and I loved doing that. It was nice to have a solid block of time off of work and it fell over Memorial Day weekend which is a pretty quiet time in my line of work usually. So I didn’t come back to a total disaster at work like I would now if I took 2+ weeks off!
Phil is not a huge GO GO GO kind of person. I don’t know if he was in his 20s since I didn’t know him then, but he definitely needs some downtime built into his day to kind of decompress. So we’ve had active vacations pre-kids but we I can’t overly cram things into a schedule or he will not be happy… Honestly I’m kind of the same these days, though. I like to do as much as I can on a trip but I also really need time to decompress. But my work life is pretty stressful/hectic and Phil’s is, too, so we need some relaxation out of our vacations since we are old parents!
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I know- I have trip photos from even before this point that I wish I had easier access to!! I went to Paris and Ireland with my sister during college, studied abroad in Mexico, went to Guatemala also during college… I have no accessible photos of any of that. I probably have some mediocre albums somewhere buried in my storage room, but I’m not even sure!
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What a fun blast from the past! I also got married in September 2007! I was a little older than you (27) and we went to Croatia. It was amazing. Can’t wait to go back! You guys look pretty much the same. Must be all that travel that keeps you young 😉
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Ooh, Croatia! I knew someone else who went to Croatia on her honeymoon and I remember thinking the pictures she posted on FB were super cool!! I’d love to go there someday!!
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Fun to read! How did you and Ivan meet? I’m a newer reader so maybe you have a post on that I haven’t seen yet. I’m American and have been living in Mexico for 1.5 years and have met a wonderful Mexican man so I’m curious about your relationship
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Oh wow!!! Well now I’m curious about YOU! That’s awesome! Did you move there first, and then meet him? Or did you move there to be with him? Either way, super interesting! I’ve been to Mexico a zillion times now and it still always strikes me how very different it is. We’ll be heading there next week actually.
We met through Ivan’s cousin (and his cousin’s wife) who live here in the U.S. I had met them during my college days and became friends with them. Ivan then traveled up here several times over a several year period to visit them (while he was in college in Mexico, so like on his summer/ winter breaks he would come up for a week or two). I used to hang out with his cousin/the wife from time to time and got to know Ivan when he’d tag along on our outings during his visits! Feel free to email me if you ever want to connect more! I’d love to hear more about your story too! 🙂
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Yes, I’d love to connect! What’s your email address? I can’t find it posted on your site anywhere?
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Oh, sorry, I thought I had it somewhere! It’s: gratefulkae at gmail.com
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Thanks! I’m emailing you now!
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That was fun to read… and look at you and Ivan, you were babies (I also love that sundress btw!).
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What fun to read this. I love the reflection on the evolution of photos and vacations since smartphones became more ubiquitous. It’s also interesting to think about not documenting your trip in detail – somewhere! I imagine you thought you would always remember the details of such an important trip. 🙂
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