Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Honeymoon Scrapbook - Pandemic Project Part 2

As I shared in my last post I've been making a scrapbook of our wedding and honeymoon. The last post covered the wedding. Now we are on to the honeymoon!

The first stage of our honeymoon was at St Botolph Inn, a beautiful Victorian style bed and breakfast in Weatherford, Texas, not far from Dallas. (Sadly, it is no longer in operation.) But when we were married 24 years ago it was very much there and owned and run by a sweet Christian couple.


We arrived around 10:30 that night. They kindly waited up for us. I finally got to eat something thanks to our friend Jodi who thoughtfully packed some food for us from the wedding.  (See this link for my Google album for higher res versions of all the photos if these are not clear enough.)

The first day there we were surprised and delighted by one of those perfect snows we rarely get in Dallas that is thick enough to make everything look like a wonderland but not too cold and no ice to cause trouble when you want to go somewhere. 

After two nights we headed back to Dallas. We quickly re-packed, picked up the snapshots of the wedding to show John's family that our good friend Tony got developed for us, packed the wedding dress and "hoop skirt" all by themselves in one large suitcase and headed to DFW for our trip "Down Under."

The first stop: Auckland, New Zealand. John wanted us to have a "proper honeymoon" before we went on to Melbourne, Australia to meet his family and friends.


We stayed at "The Garden Room" a bed and breakfast in the nearby suburb of Devonport. One of the highlights was being half a minute from the gorgeous, pristine Cheltenham beach. The first morning due to the time difference we woke up early enough to go for a 6:00 a.m. swim. I still remember the sensations of the deliciously warm water and the soft thick perfectly squidgy sand and the delight of having the place all to ourselves. Then we went back to our room for a shower and a breakfast feast. By the next morning jet lag had caught up with me and I couldn't get out of bed before 10:00 a.m. so I'm glad we made the most of the early wake-up that first morning.

Other highlights were eating dinner one evening at a Lebanese restaurant with a glorious view of the ocean. Their hummus was the best I have ever eaten. I could've made a meal of it.

Kayaking in Devonport harbour was another highlight. Unfortunately, walking around in damp clothes afterwards may be what triggered several months of terrible infections. (My IgA deficiency problem makes me more susceptible to infections. But we didn't know about that then. There were likely other factors too. If you want to know more send me your email address in the comments and I'll write you directly.)

One of the must-see sights near Auckland is the volcanic island of, Rangitoto (left page). We caught a ferry to it. I think we actually climbed to the summit up some stairs that I had a picture of but did not include here. John took this picture of me with the "summit train" because I thought it was cute.
The right page is of our visit to Waitomo caves. The one I remember best was the glowworm cave. We went through it in a boat. It was pitch dark except for the faint green lights emitted by all the tiny little glowworms. It was too dark for us to take any photos. In the above page if you zoom in there is a tiny picture of it in the center of the page that I cut out from a brochure.

After a few days in Devonport, we rented a car and drove south to Rotorua where we stayed for a couple of nights at a small sheep farm. I got to "make friends" with some cute and cuddly lambs. Another highlight there was visiting the fascinating and beautiful Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland. We took dozens of photos. It was a challenge to edit them down for the scrapbook.

Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland (left and top right). While in Rotorua we also went to a traditional Maori dinner and cultural show (bottom right).
Meeting the cute and cuddly sheep and lambs

Then it was on to Melbourne, Australia. I'll save that for the next blog post.

1 comment:

  1. I don't think it was JUST my idea to have some time to ourselves before diving into meeting family and friends in Australia :-)

    ReplyDelete