Our honeymoon...

Due to the drama that has been involved with wedding planning to date, we've been having a lot of fun cheering ourselves up with honeymoon plans. Now that it is pretty much all booked and sorted, I thought I'd give you the rundown of our itinerary. Note that some of the tours may change, but apart from that everything else is locked in.

Monday June 13 2011

Wake up as Mr and Mrs, breakfast and to the airport. We'll be flying with Lufthansa, which is actually just Qantas out of Australia. We leave at 1.55pm.

This may or may not be the actual plane we fly in.

We stop in Singapore for 3 hours and then board a Lufthansa plane.

We then fly to Frankfurt and stop there for almost 2 hours.

We finally board a 3rd plane to Paris, where we arrive at 8.30am on 14 June 2011. I don't even know if we'll be tired, but I daresay I will be because there's no way I'm giving up aeroplane food and movies - neither of us have been overseas before and I want to make the most of it!

We will fight our way through customs (I've heard Charles De Gaulle airport takes ages to get through) and then we'll find a train to the city where we wait to check in to our apartment at 2pm. We are staying in Pompidou, a studio near the Louvre. We booked it through The French Experience, an Australian company who has been lovely to deal with so far.

Right of map (A) - Pompidou, Left of map - the Louvre

We will stay here for 4 nights. In that time we may do any or all of the following:

Visit the Louvre

Seine river cruise, Paris Illuminations tour and dinner on the Champs Elysees - I'm thinking this would be lovely on my birthday - 15 June

Guided tour of Versailles

See the Eiffel Tower

Day trip to Normandy battlefields

While we are in Paris (and France in general) I intend on eating a lot of these:

Saturday 18 June 2011

After a wonderful time in Paris, we will get the TGV to Marseilles, and then another train to Nice.

We stay in Nice for two nights, and on one of these nights we are going to be picked up from our hotel and taken for dinner in Monte Carlo.

We will even get to go into the Casino.

We will be staying at Le Royal in Nice which has its own private beach.

Monday 20 June 2011

We will start early in the morning by picking up our lease car - a Citroen C4.

We will then drive to the Cinque Terre region in Italy - this will take about 4 hours - more because we will no doubt stop along the way.

We will stay for the night at Residence Le Terrazze in Trieste, which is slightly off the Cinque Terre, but that's fine. We will have time to do a bit of walking, but not too much.

Tuesday 21 June 2011

This will be the day that we drive to Rome. We will be staying in the Aurelia Vatican Apartments for three nights.

We will do any or all of the following:

Tiber River dinner cruise

Vatican Museum walking tour, including Sistine Chapel, St Peter's Basilica and Raphael's Room

Ancient Rome and Colosseum walking tour

While we are in Rome, and Italy in general, I will eat a lot of this:

and this:

and this:

Friday 24 June 2011

After Rome, we will drive to Florence and stay at the First of Florence apartments for three nights. The apartment is only a 5 minute walk from the cathedral.

We will spend one day walking around Florence, and the second day we have booked this Tuscany in One Day sightseeing tour, where we will see Siena, Pisa and San Gimignano as well as having lunch at a Chianti wine estate.

Monday 27 June 2011

We leave Florence and drive to Lake Como via the Lamborghini factory and museum.

We will be staying in the Grand Hotel Britannia Excelsior for two nights, in a room with a balcony and view of the lake.

This is about the time in the honeymoon that I will have to request an annulment because I'll be invited to live forever and ever with this handsome man in his Lake Como villa. I'll probably become besties with Brad and Ange as well.

Wednesday 29 June

After leaving Lake Como (bye, George), we will travel over the Stevio Pass to Switzerland. Or maybe it's already in Switzerland. I don't really know. This is what the road looks like:

If we make it out alive, we'll stay at the Arabella Sheraton in Davos. A ski resort in summer, how fun.

Thursday 30 June

To celebrate the end of the 2011 Financial Year (accountant humour) we will drive to Zurich and stay for two nights. We will be staying in the Hotel Continental, just off the Bahnhofstrasse.

I can't wait to see Lake Zurich.

We will probably go on the Great Tour of Zurich to see as much as we can and also see a small town outside of Zurich. I'm looking forward to the cruise on the lake with lunch.


Saturday 2 July 2011

After Zurich we travel back into France - to Reims. This is where EA will be planning a driving tour of the World War 1 battlefields. At this point I don't know the details so that will have to wait. In Reims we will be staying in the Holiday Inn.


Sunday 3 July 2011

Almost the end of the honeymoon now - so sad. From Reims we travel to Lille and stay at the Hotel Carlton. This is apparently a very big place, so hopefully we get some time to look around. Luckily for these last few days there is only about 2 hours of driving a day.


Monday 4 July

After Lille we travel to Amiens and stay at the Mercure.




Tuesday 5 July

From Amiens we drive back to Paris and stay in Amarante Arc de Triomphe. It's our last night of the honeymoon, so we'll go out for a lovely dinner before travelling to the airport the next morning.

As you can probably tell, I am so very, very excited. I wonder how many of you actually read down to here - I suspect probably about 3. EA, AA and JW if she actually reads this post at all (which is unlikely).