Honeymoon, Part III: How to choose a destination

If you've read the last two posts about our Patagonian honeymoon, in which rarely saw the sun, wore down jackets 24/7, and traveled with four other women, you might be thinking that we were a bit unclear on the concept.

Fact is, we had already slightly shortchanged ourselves on the most important purpose of a honeymoon: a time to relax and reconnect and revel in being married, after the stress and busyness of a wedding.

Though we took a few days to rest and revel on the California coast right after the wedding, our respective teaching obligations required us to be back at work after three days. It's very difficult to take time off in the middle of the semester.

By the time the end of the semester rolled around, and we were ready for a bigger trip, we had also been reveling in being married for three months, and felt less of a need for a lazy or romantic trip. We were eager for the activities that had been put on hold while I was writing my dissertation.

We also wanted a trip that was high on our Life Lists (funny, looking at it now, I don't see Patagonia, but I know it was there). Neither of us had beach vacations on our lists. Though Hawaii is relatively close and convenient, and has good hiking, Eric isn't keen on it. So... to the mountains we'd go.

Choosing a honeymoon destination is also another opportunity to practice the discussion, decision-making, and collaboration skills that prove so valuable during wedding planning.

As I mentioned earlier, we each made a list of places we'd like to visit, and then harmonized those lists, prioritizing places we both wanted to visit the most.

We also made lists of what we wanted to get out of the honeymoon. We realized that we'd be tired after hiking and trying to speak Spanish for a couple weeks, so it would be nice to have a place to relax before jumping into spring semester. The parameters for that place were that it should be:

• warm (no more down jackets!)
• sunny (no more rain and snow! rainy Hawaii was out)
• English-speaking (no more Spanish! Mexico was out)
• near water
• uncomplicated (Jamaica was out; all inclusive resorts were in)
  
• warm, no I mean really warm (I can get cold in 75 degree weather)
• require no more than two plane flights to get to
• not too expensive

We got a guidebook to the Caribbean, and realized that all our parameters pointed to the island of Antigua. So went went, uncharacteristically for us, to an all inclusive resort, and lay on the beach drinking daiquiris.

(We were so relaxed, I don't even have photos!)