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Roll the tape...

The next morning we were up quite early, as we were still adjusting to the time change. We grabbed breakfast at the hotel, which was rather impressive. A huge buffet with fruits and meats, eggs, sausage, veggies, potatoes, and items made to order as well.

I wandered around the resort and snapped some pictures, as we were leaving that morning for Moorea. There were two beautiful pools on the resort. This is the first--it was above or below the lagoon, depending on your vantage point. In this case, above.

And the second, which was just picture perfect.



As well as some beautiful scenery...and bungalows!


Once we got all packed up, we headed to the lobby to wait for our transportation to the airport. We had seen one of the hotel workers wandering around taking care of all the baggage, and he was such an interesting man I just had to get a photo with him.

We were sitting in the lobby chatting when out of the blue a local journalist and cameraman came up to us and asked if they could interview us regarding American's traveling to their country. As I tried to blend into the couch we were sitting on, Nate agreed to do the interview and just like that he was on camera:

The lady journalist asked him questions about why he believed American's traveled to Tahiti and why he believed the amount of American travel to Tahiti was decreasing. Nate was very eloquent and gave great answers and it was quickly over. We were joking about wondering which channel he would be on and how he would probably be dubbed over in French. The funny part is that after we arrived at Moorea the ladies at the reception desk actually recognized him from TV! He HAD been on TV and we missed it!! I'd love to have a tape of that.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Once we arrived back at our hotel, we changed into swimwear and hung out at the bar for happy hour. We tried a couple of tropical drinks and quickly realized they weren't that great, In fact, we never really found one we loved the whole trip. Beer was the safest (and cheapest!) bet. While we were relaxing, we saw our first Tahiti sunset and it was superb. I wandered back to our room and got these shots as the sun was going down...

And this was our view from our perch at the bar, overlooking the pool.

While in Papetee earlier that day, we had thought we'd taxi back into town that evening for dinner. However, as we were sitting at the bar we both decided we were really tired and had no desire to go anywhere. We ended up ordering room service that evening, the most expensive room service ever and hitting the hay at 9 p.m. We did have a little fun with the tiki man first, though.

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Papeete

Papetee was about a 10 minute drive from our hotel. Our driver dropped us off at a boat dock area, where we immediately snapped some photos.

The Vaima shopping center, which we later checked out, was home to the islands more "upscale" shopping. In my travel book, it mentioned that a lot of the French vacationers shop here. The most popular item for purchase on all the islands of French Polynesia were black pearls. Throughout the trip, we overheard people talking about scoping out the best deals and spending thousands of dollars on them. Fortunately, I am not a big fan of pearls, so this was not at all tempting for me. Although it was still fun to look.

As were were out and about walking, we came upon this beautiful church, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

The inside has gorgeous stained glass and was very big and open. From the church, we made our way to the municipal market, Tahiti's open air shopping market. One can buy many different things there: flowers, fish, fruit, jewelry, clothing, many handmade items, and lucky for us...lunch! An early one, in our case."Snacks" are what many Polynesians feast on for lunch and there were snack bars all throughout the municipal market. What kind of snacks do they eat? Well, mostly sandwiches. They make sandwiches out of crusty french baguettes and put a variety of different meats on them. You see people just walking around munching on a big, long, crusty sandwich. Nate and I chose a poisson cru sandwich, which simply means "fish". Our sandwich was filled with rich crab meat. Yum!

After lunch we browsed around in the market for quite awhile. We were on the hunt for some "fun" wedding rings, as we had leftour real, valuable rings at home. Mine wasn't so hard to come by, but finding a ring to fit a man's finger was another thing entirely. I think we looked in every little shop selling jewelry twice before we found something that would work. In addition to a ring, Nate bought a shark's tooth necklace...very islandy.

The shopping took it out of us, so we stopped in at a snack bar along the street to have a nice, cold beer. We decided to try Hinano, Tahiti's local beer. I'm no beer conoseur, but it tasted good to me! :) While we were hanging out, we got the inspiration to take a picture of our newly purchased wedding rings atop our cold beers.

We also did a walking tour of the city, as outlined by our Frommer's book. All in all, it wasn't that impressive. By that point my feet hurt and I was really tired, so maybe that had a bit to do with my opinion, but the destinations it took us to were just okay. We were trying to burn some time, as our shuttle wasn't picking us up until later in the afternoon. We decided to grab another bite to eat, as our shared sandwich had worn off. We stopped at a little restaurant and split a very tasty salad. Honestly, most of the things we ate on the honeymoon were relatively fresh and healthy. Well, besides the desserts. :) But more on that later...

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Bungalow 496, Revisited

Upon arriving at the hotel, we were a little concerned as check-in began at 3 p.m and we had arrived at oh, 6 a.m.! Luckily, they had a room ready and were willing to give it to us, since we were honeymooners and all. Apparently getting married comes with special privileges. When we checked in, we were treated to a nice tropical juice drink. Very refreshing after a long flight. We were taxied to our room, along with our luggage, in a mini truck.

It was so early, we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We of course snapped the standard room pictures. Bungalow #496!





Our overwater bungalow was really half on land, half overwater, but the view off our balcony was beautiful. I especially liked the name of the boat that was anchored out in the water. You think it's trying to tell us something?


We freshened up a bit and changed clothes and decided to venture out and find something to do. No sleeping for us! We found out from the conceirge that a shuttle ran into Papetee every morning at 9:30, so we signed up to take the shuttle and check out the big city. As we were waiting, I was checking out the view from the balcony in the lobby of the hotel. Not bad, eh?

Next up, our shopping adventure...

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Honeymoon (The Beginning)

Well, I'm on a plane to Vegas for a work conference and I thought...what better time to FINALLY start writing about our honeymoon. As you can probably imagine, it was the trip of a lifetime. Expensive, yes. Worth it, oh yeah. We left for the honeymoon the Monday evening after the wedding, so we had a good night's sleep on Sunday and were pretty well rested before we left. We were both very excited, of course. I think me more than Nate because he knows what long flights are like. We started out by flying to Los Angeles. On that flight we partook in our first game of Scrabble for the trip. Travel Scrabble = totally awesome. Typically when flying you're stuck doing individual activities: reading, watching a move, computer work, etc. So it was nice to do something together that actually took a little brain power.

Here's how the game turned out:



Scrabble really involves a bit of strategy, as well as making impressive words. It's all about playing on the bonus squares and racking up the extra points. That and a little luck regarding the letters drawn. I won this round, but there were plenty more games to play throughout the honeymoon.

Once we arrived in L.A. we had about a 4-hour layover. We checked in for our flight with all the other honeymooners (seriously, the entire line of people besides one or two couples were newlyweds) and then grabbed some drinks and dinner at one of the airport restaurants. We were sitting at the bar and ended up chatting with a guy who had been to Tahiti 20 years ago. He had nothing but good things to say about it and he ensured us we were going to have a fantastic time.

Once we finally boarded the plane in L.A. it was about 2 a.m. our time. Tired! We had bought some over the counter sleeping pills and I immediately took one in hopes of getting at least a little sleep. I was in and out of sleep for several hours and I think Nate got a little sleep. I just have one piece of advice for long 8-hour flights. If you can afford business class, DO IT! They cram so many people into coach on those flights and the minute the person in front of you leans their seat back, it's all over. Your knees are crunched...your abdomen has a permanent indention from the tray table being shoved in it...you get my point. And sleeping SUCKS. It's just impossible to get comfortable, so I'm glad I had a little help from the drugs.

When we arrived in Tahiti, there was a local welcoming committee that was playing music and handing out flowers. And we got leid after checking in at the Tahiti Legends booth (the group from whom we purchased our honeymoon package).

We snapped this picture as we were waiting for our transportation to the hotel. As you can see, we're pretty tired and groggy. C'mon, it was 5 a.m. local time! But we were determined to motor through the day and stay awake, so that we could get on the Polynesian time schedule as soon as possible.

Up next, our hotel room...

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A Sneak Peek...

EEK! Stephen has posted a slideshow of a few of our wedding pictures on his site. I was itching to see some, so I'm sure he did this to get me off his back for a little while. I think they turned out incredibly well, but I am a little biased. I did pick the photographer! The slideshow gives some nice highlights of the events of the day... Now I just can't wait to see some MORE!

Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think:

Go to www.stephenseward.net
Click on Weddings
Click on Proofing
In the password box, type kliethermes

I'm planning on sending out an email when all of the pictures are ready...

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