Weddingbee Blog

This is the story of our engagement and the trip that went with it. Given time and travel constraints, we thought of it as a pre honeymoon (the honeymoon we can’t take right after the wedding). I began thinking of it as a before-honeymoon, or bunnymoon—a term that makes Mr. Macarons cringe a little. I like it. Mr. Mac will live.

Mr. Mac’s job requires him to travel a lot. We’ve been lucky in the past, but in ‘09 he was needed outside the country for an extended period of time (we’re talking a year and then some), and I wasn’t able to go. We were handed a huge bucket of lemons, lemons that we decided to turn into lemonade that we’d drink in the cafés of Europe. While he could have spent a ridiculous amount of time and money traveling back home, a vacation sounded slightly better.

There were several places both of us wanted to go in that short amount of time. It didn’t help that they happened to be in opposite directions. Mr. Mac is German and it had been years since he had visited his early childhood home. I wanted to see where he grew up after all the stories about running through the Odenwald with his grandfather and what real Knodel tastes like. We both wanted to visit Normandy and pay our respects to those who served in WWII (my grandfather being one of them), and despite all the mister’s travels, he had never been to Paris. I really wanted to revisit as an adult and finally climb to the very top of the Eiffel Tower, as it was closed for renovations when I was there before.

So with that in mind, we decided to spend the first part of our trip driving and end with a relaxing week-long stay in Paris. Six months later it was finally time to go! Check-in and security were a breeze; the tough part was the flight. You see, I’m one of those people who can never manage to fall asleep for extended periods on a plane. Psychologically it probably doesn’t help that I ALWAYS end up across from that passenger. You know who I’m talking about—the one in a cherub-like state well before takeoff with a row to themselves, complete with a stockpile of airline pillows and blankets.

Meanwhile, I’m looking like this:

And feeling like this:

(Accurately evaluating space isn’t one of Miss Kitty’s strong suits.)

After several hours of intermittent sleep, we began our descent. I did manage to capture a few cool photos.

(Massachusetts according to the captain)

(Farmland North of CDG)

Mr. Mac’s flight landed two hours before mine, so I assumed I’d just meet him at the hotel in the airport. I was on a mission to make it to our room as quickly as possible, and in doing so I almost walked right past him at the gate.

After a long, teary-eyed embrace with a few kisses that probably even made the French uncomfortable, we made our way to our hotel and ordered our first “dinner” of the trip:

We scarfed it down and tried our best to make it through Monsters vs. Aliens before conking out at 10 AM (thank God for blackout curtains) and sleeping longer than you’d think is humanly possible. The next morning we awoke bright and early, gathered our belongings, and picked up our set of wheels.

And with that we were off to Germany!