A Honeymoon Wednesday

I promise. One day we'll be done with the honeymoon - but I really really really wanted to tell you about the rest of our trip!!

Wednesday morning, we got up early {like before sunrise} and fixed coffee {of course} and went for a sunrise walk on the beach:

We looked down the beach...looked at each other...and said, "Yeah, that looks like about a mile...why don't we walk to the farthest point and back? We can do that and then get some breakfast."

Sounds good, doesn't it? And it was such a lovely walk. We saw dolphins:

We had our Baywatch moments:

We walked in the water:

We visited snowmen....

....and something like 2 hours later when we got back, limping from water-logged sandals, we discovered it had actually been three miles out to the far point. So rather than walking 2 miles, we'd walked six. In water shoes. Before breakfast. Obviously we were in love. :)

So we spent a few hours lounging by the pool to recover from that. {Read: we both took our computers to the pool and spent time blogging and paying bills. HA!}

And then that night, we had the chance to do something I've LONG wanted to do. Take a sunset dinner cruise.

My friend Christi recommended it to us, and we decided to treat ourselves and do it. We got all dressed up and headed out, mid-afternoon, to the marina in Sarasota:

We went early on purpose, so we could walk around the waterfront and look at the skyline, the bridge, and the boats in the marina:

We walked for quite a while and then we got in line for our cruise on the Marina Jack II!

When we got on board, we asked if it mattered where we sat. {One other couple got on board ahead of us.} The crew told us only 8 guests would be on board that night, so we could sit wherever. The other couple found a table downstairs right at the front of the boat, so we went upstairs. Here's our little table!

Shortly after we found our table, the remaining four people got on board.  Two couples...one couple was made up of the parents of the wife in the second couple. They had a table across the way from us, and obviously they were very important, because they had a reserved sign on it. {That just straight up cracked me up since there were EIGHT PEOPLE on board.} Someone came on board to greet them, further proving their obvious importance, and I heard the younger wife say to the person greeting her, "Now will they serve us up here, or do we need to go to the boo-fay?"

1. Boo-fay? This is Florida. It's just a regular buffet.
2. There are EIGHT PEOPLE on board. Really, how much is it going to tax you to walk down the stairs and stand in the boo-fay line?

I managed to not snort out loud and instead, turned my attention to the boat we considered purchasing:

Both boats, actually. {Insert big fat HA!!! here.}

The cruise took us by some magnificent homes and the sunset was {again} uh.ma.zing.

And speaking of uh.ma.zing....the boo-fay was so good. My first time ever to have prime rib. Spoiled now. Wow.

{That would be the boo-fay lady's mom coming up the stairs behind me.}

After dinner, we decided to really enjoy the views of the homes with their gorgeous Christmas lights, so we went out on the open-air deck and watched as we sailed past the huge, huge houses. It was so lovely out there...

We even drank some coffee out there...

They were playing Christmas music over the speakers, so Ryan held out his hand and asked me to dance. The boo-fay party stared at us, but we didn't care. Dancing after dark on the deck of a sunset cruise - surrounded by Christmas lights - YES PLEASE!!

I was walking away from the boo-fay party and I heard one of the husbands say, "Well, SHE got to take pictures and dance and make out." Well...you could have too, sir!! I had much fun with it! Too bad they didn't join in!

And before we left the boat...a quick kiss at the very front of the thing...

After we left the boat, we walked over to a little park we'd not seen earlier in the day. There was this really cool dolphin waterfall, so we stood there for a while, just soaking in the gorgeous evening. The main Marina Jack restaurant was right there, and they were having live entertainment. The music was such fun so we danced, right there in the dark in the middle of a park. Perfect end to a perfect day.

It's a Tuesday Kind of Honeymoon

Before I hit another honeymoon post...want to pause to wish my niece, Cassie, a very happy birthday!!! :)

Okay. Tuesday. We were VERY BUSY on the Tuesday of our honeymoon!!!

Started out by going to another local joint for breakfast. It was called Dutch Valley. You know. The place where they put the germ-x next to the ketchup:

 Hard to see me in this picture, but Ryan took it from inside the restaurant while I was standing out on the sidewalk talking on the phone to Lynne...on the air. Yep, I'm the one who called in to Mid-Morning from my honeymoon to talk about the wedding!!

 After breakfast, we got ready for a little adventure. Here were my thoughts as we were en route....

 Because I was about to get in one of THESE for the first time in my life.

 That's right. My sweet husband talked me into kayaking. It was on our bucket list. (We have a collective bucket list that we each contribute to. Guess who suggested this one??) I was most nervous about flipping the kayak and losing my camera.

The kayak place was so nice - gave us this nice map to get us around the little island.

 And off we went. He worked hard to row. (Do you row a kayak? Whatever.) I worked hard taking pictures. And I rocked it, I don't mind saying. (The picture taking. NOT the kayak.)

 Part of the way through our little tour, we stopped on a beach to see the coastline from another view.

 There he is! My handsome husband!!

 Trying out our new tripod. All that messed up sand in front of us was from our frantic climbing to get up the tiny dune before our 10 second timer went off!!

 Back in the kayak and we um...hit some shallow water. Yep. Pretty much got STUCK.

 I was freaking out but Ryan stayed perfectly calm, got out of the boat, and pushed us back into the water. He's a genius.

 The kayaking really was fun. We were out for a couple of hours and the day was really nice for it. Not windy, mostly sunny - and a great time together. And don't tell him I said so, but I really enjoyed doing something new that was out of my comfort zone.

We came back to our hotel and got cleaned up in time for sunset. We got some lawn chairs and coffee from the hotel office and headed to the beach to watch the sun go down.

 And do sand art. :)

 Not disappointed!!

 And since we were there...some beach weed pics.

 One of our wedding guests was my college roommate, and she lives right there near where we were married. She texted us some suggestions of places to visit, and one of them was this restaurant.

 The Old Salty Dog was featured on Man vs. Food and she said it was good! So we tried it out! It was dark out but such a lovely evening that we asked to eat outside again. Ryan wanted to try the same thing the guy on Man vs. Food ate: the foot long beer battered hot dog loaded with multiple kinds of cheese, mushrooms, onions, and many other things.

 I went for the "dog bites" version. Just beer battered hot dog. "JUST" - because that is lower in calories. LOL!!

 After dinner, we drove to St. Armands Circle and walked around looking at the shops and restaurants there.

 Funny story from there...as we tried to drive through the roundabout that makes the circle, we encountered a car parked in the road, and the driver was out talking to people parked in the angle-parking off the road. We were trying to squeeze through and the driver of the car in the road waved us on, saying we had "plenty of room." She went on to say, "Oh we're just exchanging toys." Once we got through, I said to Ryan, "Is this some rule of Florida roadways? It's okay to block a road if you're exchanging toys AND you explain that to those trying to get through?"

After we walked off dinner, we had dessert at Big Olaf's. We shared a waffle cup....

 Which was MOST yummy.

 We were STUFFED, so we left and went back to the resort, where we took this little photo-into-the-future.

And once done, we saw the sign that said to stay off the shuffleboard...

WOOPSIE!!!