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Published: October 7th 2009
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Airport
Waiting for the plane Ok, so it's taken us a MASSIVELY long time to get around to blogging anything about our honeymoon - which doesn't bode well for attempting to keep a blog going while we're on the road for six and a half months. But better late than never eh?
Well, following 18 months of planning, our wedding day came and went and I can honestly say that it was the most magical and perfect day for us both and hopefully everyone who shared it with us. I have never worn such an amazing, beautiful dress in my life nor have I ever felt so emotional about anything. Matt looked so handsome and we were able to make our vows to each other in front of nearly everyone that we love and care about. All of the lists and spreadsheet making paid off and the day went off pretty much without a hitch. It all seems like a bit of a dream now though! We set off for Heathrow airport on 17.08.09 as were staying in a hotel the night before taking an 8 hour flight with Virgin Atlantic over to JFK airport, New York! The Raddison Edwardian hotel at Heathrow was pretty impressive and kind of reminded me of Titanic with its extremely sparkly lighting, a chandelier the length and width of a small car. I was given my first opportunity to say “No I don’t need any help with my luggage, thankyou, my husband with be joining me shortly”. Yes. My husband. Sounds way too grown up!
Our honeymoon in New York was an amazing holiday, although in hindsight we probably could've done with a more relaxing honeymoon after the frantic last few weeks of preperation for the wedding. But after finally coming back down to earth after the wedding
and sadly leaving our Goddard’s Loveshack behind in Doveridge Road we set off for NYC. The eight hour flight wasn't too bad (good news, as we've got several 11 hour flights ahead of us!) ... i finally got to watch the new Star Trek film and Cate got to watch all but the last 5 minutes of Marley and Me,
they really should give you more warning before turning off the tv sets for landing!. The one worrying moment during the flight came when the stewardess piped up over the tanoy system "if anyone on
board is a doctor, please make yourself known to the cabin crew". Luckily Leslie Nielsen and the inflatable auto-pilot were nowhere to be seen.
Once we'd landed and collected all our baggage we set about finding the taxi rank, before being swiftly pounced upon by a chap insisting he was a taxi driver and he'd take us to our hotel, he grabbed hold of Cate's suitcase and proceeded to march up towards his car. The guidebooks clearly stated that a taxi to Manhattan was a flat fare of $50 but this guy was claiming it was $70 and that we shouldn't pay attention to the guide books. Spotting him as a shifty kind of character we wrestled our bags off him and headed to the official taxi rank, with him gobbing-off at us as we walked away. Now I was expected this kind of scam to happen on a daily basis in Thailand, Vietnam etc ... but wasn't expecting it in New York. Lesson learnt; people will try to scam tourists wherever you are in the world!
New York was baking hot, so we spent most of our time there ducking into nice air-conned buildings as we made
our way around the tourist attractions - a
few of these might have been establishments serving alcohol, but i spent at least half of the holiday sober. We got up to all the usual tourist shenangians including an open top bus tour (not as many times as we might've liked, as I foolishly managed to lose one of the tickets during the first day - $60 down the drain!). Statue of liberty, check. Rockerfeller Centre, check. Empire State Building, check. Central Park, check. And the list goes on, we didn't realise there'd be quite so much to see
or so far to walk, the five or so pairs of shoes I took with me didn't suffice and my feet were killing - gotta invest in a good pair of shoes with a thick sole for travelling that aren't really ugly! We didn't lead a very rock and roll lifestyle in the evenings, largely due to being absolutely shattered from the days walking around in the sunshine ... and partly through not knowing where to go. But we managed to make it out to see a show (
Mary Poppins, Matt's choice!, it was NOT my choice - although I
accept it was quite good), went for a mooch around Time Square at night
where a homeless man asked me if I was a model and when I said obviously not, he then asked if I was a dancer. Again, no. He just wanted to sell us The Onion and had a fair few meals out (one of which culminated in Cate bursting into tears during her pizza, nothing to do with my company
hmmmm but the fact they were playing our last dance song from the wedding. (Of course to all the assorted diners and waitresses it just looked like the tears were my fault).
For our final day in New York we treated ourselves to a very honeymoony day, went for lunchtime cocktails at the Plaza Hotel before heading for afternoon tea at the Ritz - the best scones I have ever experienced in my life, and I’m a man who’s eaten a LOT of cake! After that we went for a horse-drawn carriage ride around central park, and then got our portrait sketched by a Korean chap outside central park. An excellent day. And we even managed to survive the crazy Russian taxi driver’s
best attempts to drive off the side of every road on the way to the airport, including a really high bridge with a view of New York (not the Brooklyn), his wild gesticulations whilst pointing out interesting places on the route somewhat distracting his attention from the road!
New York was an amazing place and there is still so much that we didn’t get to see or do there so hopefully we’ll get a chance to go back there one day … although there’s a lot more of the world to experience first! It’s not long until we’re off into the great wide world (six weeks today in fact) and whilst Cate’s mood swings wildly from excitement to fear I’m still managing to keep a relatively calm head - although I’m sure I’ll be an absolutely nightmare in the car on the way to the airport, asking lots of questions that Cate really won’t want to hear like “we will be ok won’t we?” and “are you sure you can cope with seeing me all day every day for 196 days in a row?”.
Oh god, how am I going to cope?!?! There’s going to be
so much we’ll miss about being in the UK; all of our friends and family of course - particularly little Noah and Finley, as they’ll grow up so much while we’re away
are you trying to talk me out of going Matthew? but this is a brilliant opportunity and we’re determined to have the time of our lives for six months before returning back home to normality and contending with sorting out moving to Birmingham
yay!!!! M & C x
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