Honeymoon!!

Ok so I know this is looong overdue but better late than never right? Here are some of the pictures from our honeymoon. For those of you who don't know we honeymooned in San Diego, CA. It was absolutely amazing! It was so clean and green and there was so much to do. I think we could have stayed there 2 weeks and still not have done everything we wanted.

So we ended up getting to CA earlier than we thought we would and had about 4 hours until we could check into the hotel so we decided to run around for a bit.

This is "Little Italy" and boy was it little and probably not a lot like Italy.... it looked the same as the rest of the city other than the little italy sign and the italians smoking outside the coffee shops...I thought it would be neat...not impressed, but hey now we can say we are one step closer to the real deal right?

Next we went to the Maritime Museum. I was kind of skeptical at first about this one but it was actually really fun! This museum is just a bunch of old submarines and ships some of which are still used today. We toured 2 subs one old Russian sub and the USS Dolphin which is the deepest diving submarine. We also toured about 4 ships including; The Medea built in 1904 (my favorite because it looked very victorian and had a lot of anitques aboard!), The Steam Ferry Berkely built in 1898, The Star of India the worlds oldest active sailing ship, and the HMS Surprise a replica of a 24-gun British frigate. The HMS surprise is pictured below you may recognize it as the ship used in the film Master and Commander. Yes, this is the actually ship they used in the film.

They also had a tour boat they take tourists on through the harbor to show them even more ships/boats. Of course we went! It was really neat, other than the fact our guide was B.O.R.I.N.G.

While on our boat tour they took us past this HUGE statue of the "famous kiss at Times Square". Notice how small those buildings look in comparison...we wanted to drive out there to get a better look while we were there but never got to it :(

We were finally able to check into our hotel after a long day of travel and touring. Our hotel was great and the grounds were beautiful. Our first night at the hotel we were surprised with wine and chocolates. Wahhhooooo! What more could we have asked for?! Well Eric had actually requested cider and strawberries in advance (i guess in san diego they don't believe that a couple on their honeymoon would REALLY prefer cider over wine) needless to say we traded the wine for cider but kept the chocolates even though we were supposed to get chocolate covered strawberries with our cider instead of wine and chocolates.
This is just outside our hotel it was fantastic! Look how amazing the grounds were. B E A utiful!

The next day we drove out to Cornado island to spend some time at the beach. Unfortunately it was a little to chilly to actually get in the water past your knees so we just walked on the beach and Eric attempted to catch crabs. The island was beautiful and the beach was just miles of white sand that meets the ocean that seemed to be never ending! This was my first time EVER seeing the ocean and I LOOOOVVEEED it! There is nothing better than the sound of the ocean waves, it was so peaceful.

Who can go to San Diego without visiting the zoo?!? We went thinking we would spend an hour or two there and head to our next destination but we didn't realize how HUGE that zoo really is. We were there FOREVER! It was fun but by the end we realized how out of shape we really are...how embarrassing. We also decided next time we will wear tennis shoes rather than flip flops. NOT SMART!

Our next destination was La Jolla Beach. It is amazing how each beach is different from the one before. This beach was very green and lush but smelled like poop, literally! It smelled horrible!!! But it was by far the most scenic. There were tons and tons of birds and a bunch of seals as well that very entertaining to watch. We stood with the rest of the tourist for probably close to an hour just mesmerized by the seals sunbathing on the rocks.

Our final day in San Diego was spent in "Old Town San Diego". This so much fun! There were lots of historic sites and lots and lots of hispanic type shops. We toured a haunted house, went to the "general store" and visited the Mormon Battalion site.

This is Eric panning for gold at the Mormon Battalion, he loved it.

This is my favorite picture from the trip.... I love him!

After visiting old town San Diego we headed to an old Catholic mission. It was pretty sweet. The architecture was amazing and so so old! There were some things that were kind of strange and a lot of pictures of christ that made us feel....well not great, they were pretty graphic. The history of the site was was very cool though!

After being at the Catholic Mission we decided to go visit a little piece of our church-the San Diego Temple. It is sooooo beautiful. For those of you who haven't seen it, you should! Unfortunately we forgot church clothes so we weren't able to go in but we did drive around and stare at it's beauty!Our final night we spent at the Paradise Hotel Resort. We pulled in and were amazed at the grounds and the amenities they had to offer. There were trees everywhere, a few duck ponds, 3 or 4 swimming pools, and it was surrounded by beach. We got to our room opened the door and noticed there was 1 bed to many...? Luckily they were queen beds so we would have been ok but Eric decided he would go talk to front desk and see if there was anything they could do to get us a room with 1 king bed instead. Well they upgraded us to a bay side room which usually costs twice as much as what we paid but since it was the last day of our honeymoon they had pity on us :) Apparently bay side doesn't just mean you have a great view of the bay, it means you can can walk out your back door onto the beach! It was soooooo amazing! There was a fire pit and chairs outside and it was seriously like 10 steps to the sand. We were in awe.

This is a picture just outside our room. We were blessed with a beautiful sunset our final night.

So, like I said earlier this trip was my first trip to the ocean and I have ALWAYS imagined walking along the beach picking up sea shells to bring home. I know it sounds lame but I have always wanted to do it. Eric being the amazing man he is bought a couple containers for us to store shells and was very supportive of my sea shell quest. We had been to 3 beaches by the end of our trip but sea shells were few and far between. I was disappointed that I didn't get to walk along the beach with my new husband collecting sea shells. Well we went outside our room that final night down to the bay to wade in the water and there were THOUSANDS of sea shells!!!! I was thrilled! We were out there from dusk till dark filling our pockets with sea shells! Like kids in a candy store :)

We couldn't have asked for a better honeymoon. We had so much fun together and we LOVED San Diego, we can't wait to go back!