Hey, Let's Cross the Sea

A few years ago, JT and I made a pact that we would take one trip out of the country every year. It started with France. The next year, since France had been a pretty pricey trip, we played it a little closer to home and went to Canada. Last year, we went to Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles.

For our honeymoon, we're hitting up two countries in one trip: Spain and France. We'll be spending 4 days in Barcelona and 3 days in Cannes. The combination of cities basically came from indecision about what kind of honeymoon we wanted to have: did we want a cosmopolitan, urban honeymoon filled with shopping and fine dining, or did we want a relaxing beachside week? I'd never thought of myself as a beach vacation kind of girl, and I'm generally not the kind of person that can lie around doing nothing for very long, but Curacao changed my mind. We had a fantastic time, and I realized that I do enjoy beach vacations...just not the tequila fueled Cabo Spring-Breaky kind.

Usually, for our out of the country excursions, I like to come up with loose itineraries. I don't want every minute planned, but I like to come up with general outlines of what I'd like to see (and eat!). Barcelona obviously has no shortage of great food options. Since I don't speak any Spanish, I'm a little nervous about looking like a giant idiot trying to get around. Especially because I prefer to hit up the un-touristy restaurants where menus are unlikely to have English translations. And eating is one of the most important parts of the trip -- in case you didn't already know, I'm a major foodie.

While I'll probably have a good list of restaurants and attractions to hit while in Barcelona, I'm keeping the schedule for Cannes very unstructured. The Cannes half of the week is meant to be the decompression time. Just wandering wherever the day takes us, and sitting by the beach whenever it's not too cold.

Man, I am really looking forward to this. Time to get some new luggage.

After debating the honeymoon for several months, we've finally decided. Barcelona was a front runner, but after talking with someone who has recently been there, we thought that maybe we wouldn't want to spend the whole week just in Barcelona. So the winner is...

Barcelona and Cannes! We'll begin with 4 nights in Barcelona, soaking up lots of culture and sangria, and then we'll head over to Cannes for three nights of a more chill pace, relaxing seaside. It was surprisingly affordable -- the difference between the three-way ticket and the round-trip ticket to one of the cities was only about $100 more.

JT and I are not big on having a lot of "stuff." We'd much rather spend our money having great experiences traveling and dining than amassing lots of things that will take up space in our home. So when we got engaged, we talked about creating a honeymoon registry (where guests can contribute to your honeymoon through an online account) in addition to a regular registry. I've only known one other person who has done this -- a former coworker used The Big Day for hers, which I contributed to when I attending her wedding. It was a good system, but their fees seem a little high. Another one that seems to be popular is Travelers Joy. Have any of you used one (either as a guest or as a bride/groom)?

Let's Get Out of This Country

Where to go for our honeymoon has been the hot topic of conversation around the house for the past couple of weeks. We had pretty much settled on Barcelona, because we have been wanting to go there for several years but kept putting it off.

However, Barcelona has developed quite a reputation for street crime against tourists. Now, neither of us are the type of person to walk around with a giant map and a t-shirt that says "I Heart America," so I don't think that we'd be walking targets or anything, but having to constantly watch my purse for people sticking their hands in it while I'm on my honeymoon could be kind of a bummer.

On the plus side, Barcelona would be like heaven for two sangria-loving carnivores like JT and me.

But, being a little put off by the whole street crime thing, we looked at couple of other options and also fell in love with the idea of going to Dublin. Plus, with Ireland being so small, we could easily take little side trips out to the countryside.

Ireland has a safety-related catch too, and it has to do with driving. Obviously the whole left-side-of-the-road thing would be new (meaning our inexperience with it makes us somewhat of unsafe drivers). And it turns out the Ireland has the second highest rate of auto fatalities in the world (first is Greece!).

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not really scared for our safety in either of these places. My indecision as to where to go lies more in the fact that I really want to go to both places!! Both would be romantic, but in very different ways.

Have you been to either of these places? If so, what were your experiences there?