Serenity NOW!

The first week of our honeymoon took a nice, slow approach. So slow in fact, that I actually had enough time to explore every menu on a camera I owned for a year. Hey - don't knock it. What do you do in your spare time? Read books? Better yourself? Bah - fiddlesticks.

My results speak for themselves - Voila! This new feature I uncovered was by far the best way of catching the true feeling of the Maldives:

And We're Back....

I hope our noticeable absence from our blog has been a forgiveable one, as Matt and I finally decided to go ahead with that whole marriage thing! :) We've returned from our "Surf and Turf" Honeymoon (read: Maldives and Kenyan Safari) and we have so much to share!

First things first, we can't wait to share photos from wedding but alas we don't have these yet, so we'll have to go a little out of order...

The Maldives were absolutely beautiful! Our over-water bungalow was just wonderful, and I must admit a bathtub that you can feed fish from is a pretty cool feature! There was atleast one massive thunderstorm everyday (which left a nice little time were the only place to keep dry was the spa - thank YOU Mother Nature!). The water was warm and the snorkeling was phenomonal. Our only scare was Matt swimming with about a 2 foot clearance over a reef and looking down to see a Moray Eel staring up at him and getting curious! Of course, the first this Matt does is yell over to me "Whoa, Katie come quick and look at this huge eel!" and then secondly "oh wait, umm, actually keep your distance I think he is swimming towards me..."

Upon futher inspection from a few feet away I can confrim that not only was this eel huge, but yes it was swiming out from its little cave to get aggressive towards Matt - what happened to 'they are more afraid of you than you are of them'? Luckily he had a short attention span and we received no eel retribution. As with all vacations the pictures always do a better job than we can, so I'll leave you with our highlights from the Maldives!

Our fabulous over-water bungalow

This sign is great - don't consider your children to be "drown proof" - wow, some things get lost in translation.

The entire Honeymoon was a walking ad for the Kindle! Great wedding present!

Whooo! It only took 2 hours but we finally caught some fish! They turned into.....

...lunch the next day!

I think this picture looks like it's raining fish!

Scuba Matt...

Great underwater shot courtesy of Matt. There are some "Nemos" hiding in there.

A dolphin comes to say hello.

Oh my god, it's like my screen saver came to life!

An incredible sunset on our last evening.

Matt planned for a dinner for two on our private deck for the last night - what a keeper!

I Just Flew 14,374km, and Boy Are My Arms Tired

And my face, and my legs, and my back, and I'm stuffed up, and...woa, I need to lie down. Here's how NOT to de-stress after a big wedding:

1. Drive from Washington DC to Philadelphia PA
2. Drop off wedding gifts that are too heavy for our arms to carry
3. Take the train to New York's Penn Station
4. Sit in rush hour NYC traffic to JFK Airport
5. Fly to Dubai
6. Rush from Dubai Airport, back to the apartment, find out that your cleaning lady took all of the carefully packed "honeymoon bags", and since she was bored (we were gone), took everything out of the bags and put it back in our closets, then puts the bags themselves in storage (thanks, Evelyn - good initiative on that one!)
7. Go back to the airport, tell immigration that, "Yes, I know I was just here, I'm getting back on a plane", and fly to the Maldives
8. Take a speedboat ride to the hotel.

Yup - so please pardon us for not getting on the blog posting all that quick. Here's how we started out (notice the "go get 'em" attitude!): And here's what that same Katie looked like on Minute One of the honeymoon:

But believe me, I was no better! I barely made it to the villa, and had to crawl back under a tree somewhere to beat out the jet lag: So, don't worry - we've got a backlog of pictures, and yes, even some from the wedding! We'll get all that out to you in our spare time, as long as we don't get eaten by sharks or our house on stilts doesn't get washed away (that's another post!).

Success - Technology Wins!

In an outfit that looks straight out of Vogue, and sporting hardware straight out of Wired, Katie is looking ravishing while devouring the third book in Twilight series under the Maldivian sun. Designers of Amazon's Kindle should note that of all the gadgets I've given to Katie, this is only one of two that she hasn't thrown against a wall in disgust (the iPhone is the other). Now if they could just make a laptop shaped like that hat...

Wow, I've Never Been Able to Take 6 Shots Before!

When was the last time your vacation destination was described like this?

The following are disease risks that might affect travelers to this area: Dengue, filariasis, leishmaniasis, and onchocerciasis (river blindness), and African trypanosomiasis.Plague occurs sporadically or in outbreaks. Schistosomiasis, a parasitic infection, can be contracted in fresh water in this region. Do not swim in fresh water (except in well-chlorinated swimming pools).

Polio outbreaks were reported recently.

Many countries in this region have high incidence rates of tuberculosis and high HIV prevalence rates.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) has been found in poultry populations in several countries in Africa. Malaria is present in all areas (including game parks) at altitudes <2,500>

Doesn't this write up just scream romantic honeymoon?In our first pre-honeymoon activity together Matt and I spend some quality time together - sitting in an abandoned government clinic being poked with needles. We've decided to take a trip that we've been saving and planning for a number of years now and the honeymoon was the perfect time to do it! After a quick stop off at the Maldives post wedding (because we felt obliged to do the 'honeymoon beach thing' for at least a few days) we are off to Kenya for a two week safari!

This of course means that we need to under a whole cocktail of immunizations before we go. In the past week we've received: Hept A, Hept B, Meningococcal, Yellow Fever, Tetanus, Typhoid, and Polio. Now I feel like I can leap small buildings in a single bound! Contaminated water sources, and infected mosquitoes? Bring it on! I forgot to mention that we need to begin a 4 week anti-malarial drugs as well. Matt and I both like that on the packing it reads “the side effects of this drug might be indistinguishable from the disease itself”. What? Isn’t the point not to feel like you have malaria?

Last but not least we have to wear a bug spray with 50% DEET. Great, so if nothing else kills me I’ll at least go crazy and my tongue will go numb.But it’s no matter. Not only will this trip test that whole “I love you without makeup” theory, but I am willing to get plenty of these. To see this!!! (At least this is what it will be like in my head.)

This Is The Dawning of the Age of Aquariums

It's the dead of summer here in Dubai, and that means everything has moved indoors. And what better place to move it than the worlds largest refridgerator, er, mall?

One of the best things to move out of the hot, hot Gulf sun is diving - now you can swim with the sharks and shop for shoes at the same time! After shopping at Aldo (see the reflection), my brother Chris and I decided to try not being lunch:

It was pretty surreal being on the floor of the huge tank, looking through the glass from the other side and waving all of the kids and families. You get this really, really weird feeling of what it would feel like to be a fish for a little bit. You know, breathing under water, having people stare at you, trying to not get eaten by sharks......Or groupers the size of small cars....

After the half-hour tour of the aquarium, we wandered into the cave where all of the sharks were sleeping (sorry, not pictures allowed in the cave!) and then on to one to a little corner with water filters, where we found a school of rays hiding and swimming in place through the current:

There were a couple of times that an over zealous shark would swim beneath us, and I'm frantically trying to keep myself from falling on top of it. Overall, I highly recommend the dive - you get near-collision exposure to more than a dozen sharks, and your fair share of freak outs. All that, and right next to the food court!

Istanbul or Constantinople?

Who cares what you call it, just go! Matt and I made the impulsive decision to travel to Istanbul for an impromptu long weekend. (And by last minute I mean we booked the flights and hotel at 2am and were at the airport at 9:30am!) This past Sunday was an Islamic holiday which serves to celebrate the Prophet Mohammad’s ascend into heaven. The religion follows a lunar calendar and therefore holidays and celebrations are not announced until about 24 hours in advance based on the sighting of the moon. Well be got lucky this time and Sunday was declared a National Holiday – remember we work a Sunday – Thursday week.

So we found a last minute combination of hotel points and airline miles that landed us in Istanbul 12 hours later!

It was a great weekend. I had no idea what to expect but was astonished to see how very Mediterranean the culture and climate was. Blue skies, crystal water, puffy clouds and trees, it was a winning combination from the start! The secular state was a stark (and welcome) contrast to living in the Gulf and the people really couldn't have been nicer.

We spend our days being the consummate tourists with visits to the old Topaki Palace where the sultans used to live, the Ayasofya which is the world’s largest cathedral, the famous Blue Mosque, and even haggling in the Grand Bazaar where Matt made a very special purchase – his wedding ring!

I would recommend a visit to this city to anyone. If fact we are already planning our next round as the 2 days went by too quickly. But don’t let me convince you, let the pictures do the boasting!

At the top of the Galata Tower built in 1348

At the park outside of the Ayasophia, the Blue Mosque is in the background

Inside the Blue MosqueOn the terrace at the Topaki Palace, it's the stuff of Arabian nights!Cruising down the BosphorusYeah, I'm the nerd that actually does the audio tours...The beautiful interior of the Blue MosqueWe had a suprise friend join us for lunch at the cafe!The Ayasofya, she is a beauty. The largest cathedral in the world. It was first a church and then a mosque. Ataturk got tired of the squabbing between the groups and made it a national monument for all to enjoy.

The cistern, now that is a beautiful plumbing system!