As we got off the plane in Sacramento I realized that it was all over. The planning, the stressing, the looking on pinterest for wedding ideas, the fun, the honeymoon...just like that, it was over. I was so thankful that we had such an amazing vacation to end it all.
In the beginning of our planning process I didn't see a honeymoon in our future. It was disappointing because I of course wanted the traditional "send off" to the honeymoon that would be spent somewhere tropical. Eric had just started at a company and hadn't received vacation time yet. I was just starting school which meant I had to cut back on work hours. The romantic week on a beach just didn't seem doable at that point. I was willing to settle with a little weekend getaway maybe to one of our favorite spots, Fort Ross. When Eric brought up the idea that he would probably be able to get the time off, it was his wedding after all, I was in full force planning mode...times two! Of course it was added stress but who would pass up the opportunity to spend a whole week with the person they love after 4 months of hardly seeing each other?! Of course I had to consider Hawaii but after looking up prices and considering the length of time we had, Hawaii didn't seem like the right choice. We thought about Fort Ross but I wanted somewhere different....and although we LOVE Fort Ross, there isn't a whole lot to do for an entire week. I wanted somewhere warm, sandy, and beautiful. Someone had suggested La Jolla...sounds tropical enough right?! I started researching and we decided this would be the spot where we spend our week of bliss.
When we arrived early Monday morning it had just finished raining. Everything was still wet and it was cloudy but still beautiful. Our room was on the 2nd floor and the balcony faced the beach which was only about 5 feet away from the hotel (only separated by a sidewalk). The next morning we woke up to the sound of kayaks being stacked on the beach right outside our room. At first I was annoyed, our peaceful relaxing honeymoon on the beach was going to be ruined by the noise of kayakers and many other beach goers, but after a couple days I actually enjoyed getting woken up by the sound. I think I may have even missed it when we got home.
While we were there we ate very good food at some great restaurants, all within walking distance of the hotel. We walked down the beach and collected MANY seashells. We got to a certain point on the beach where there were millions of shelled creatures...it was one of the coolest things to see. We spent a day laying on the beach and got some pretty wonderful sunburns...especially Eric who didn't evenly apply his sunscreen. On one of the days we were scheduled for a kayak-snorkel tour, but because the ocean was very rough that day we were told that the snorkeling wasn't going to be great and we were only going to be able to do half the tour. Even knowing this, we were very excited about doing this because all week we were very entertained by the people in the kayaks trying to get passed the surf. It took some people several tries and some even gave up. We were up for the challenge. Luckily we successfully made it out to the open ocean in just one try! Once we got out there I could feel the sea sickness kicking in which is very unlike me. I was pretty much miserable the entire trip. We did snorkel for a bit but only saw a couple of fish...the snorkeling seemed to make the nausea worse. We got back in our kayaks and made our way back to land since more than half of our group was sick. The best part of the tour which made everything worth it was seeing dolphins only about 30-40 feet away who lead us out to the buoy were we snorkeled.
A busy beach actually turned out to be very entertaining. Eric and I love to people watch and that's what we did for hours on some days. One evening a man was setting up to BBQ on the beach. He walked away leaving all the food on the table. It didn't take long for the seagulls to find his families dinner. The table was covered in seagulls! A friendly beach goer tried to shoo the birds away but was unsuccessful. The man came back with his family and cooked some dinner only to be flooded out by the tide. We found the whole thing hilarious.
We noticed that there were many active people at the beach which annoyed us. Every time you looked at the beach you would see someone running. It made us feel like we were very lazy. We don't think running or exercise should be allowed near vacation spots.
We weren't ready to leave at the end of the week but of course we couldn't have stayed there forever (we would've had to take up running). We hopped back on a plane and headed home and even though I was very sad that the whole experience was over, I couldn't wait to start the new chapter of our lives....marriage. :)
