Our first flight was at 6 AM!!! So, we decided to stay up all night and pack. For some reason, the 2 days we planned between the wedding and departing for the honeymoon was completely insufficient to finish everything we needed to do! But we did it! We packed; we cleaned; we organized; and we even wrote our Thank You cards (but couldn't mail them all out b/c we ran out of stamps). YAY (and boo)!!!!!
After all that work, we were definitely ready for our honeymoon, but we first had to get to Kusadasi, Turkey. This required a 5-hour flight to JFK, a 3 hour lay-over, a 12-hour flight to Istanbul, a 2 hour lay-over, an hour flight to Izmir, and an hour long rental car ride to Kusadasi. The entire trip there was about 24 hours!!! I should have walked around the plane more b/c by the time we arrived in Kusadasi, my feet were soooo swollen! :(
Anyway, when we arrived at JFK, we decided to celebrate our newlywed status by getting some Bloody Marys (we also thought it would help us sleep on the flight)! ;)
We arrived in Istanbul with enough time to catch our flight to Izmir. When we got to Izmir, we had to try to find our hotel in Kusadasi in our rental car. It was a bit confusing driving in a completely different country with a different language on the highway signs, but we made! We just followed the signs that said "Kusadasi" and we also stopped at numerous gas stations to ask for directions! =) heehee.
Here's Russ driving and some pics of the countryside around Izmir:
After an hour on the road, we made it to our hotel!! This is our hotel room in Kusadasi!
How cute is that heart-towel thingy they gave us! We also got 2 free bottles of wine and a bowl of fresh fruit! =) We were loving the honeymoon perks!
Below is a pic of the hair-dryer! It was so weird b/c it was like holding a vacuum cleaner while I was trying to blow-dry my hair!
After we cleaned up (from the 24 hour plane ride), we headed out to explore our hotel. It turns out it was a resort-type hotel. There was a beautiful pool deck w/ an infinity pool that seemed to flow right into the Aegean Sea! It was beautiful there! Check it out:
You can tell the difference b/t the pool and the Sea based on the color. The pool is the lighter blue one and the Sea is the darker blue one. But it looks like it goes on forever!
One day, we tried jumping into the Aegean Sea and it was soooooo cold! We saw other ppl swimming in the Sea and were just amazed at how wimpy we were! We were in the Sea for about 5 minutes before we climbed out! hahaha. Russ said that those ppl must be from colder areas b/c they seemed to enjoy the Sea!
Amazingly, there were a ton of retired Europeans at the resort who looked like they had been there for weeks already! They were DARK BROWN compared to how pale we were! But not to worry, after one day by the pool, getting sun burned, we were almost the same color! ;)
Here's us exploring the town and at dinner:
Here's a sunset we saw on one of our nights there:
On our last day in Kusadasi, we finally recovered from traveling and lack of pre-wedding sleep and we went exploring at Ephesus (where the Virgin Mary is said to have 'retired' to years after Jesus). After parking, we were inundated w/ a bunch of crazy vendors that had signs like the one below:
"Genuine Fake Watches"? Does that make much sense? Not to us, but for some reason, that's what all the signs said!
Anyway, Ephesus is an ancient Greek city and the 2nd largest city of the Roman Empire! You can read about it here. But here's some pics of the old city:
In the pic above, you can see how the old columns are now destroyed, but check out the giant amphitheater in the background!
This is a pic of the stairs leading into the amphitheater.
Here's a pic of the old library!
In the below pic, we overheard a tour guide tell a tour that this is where Nike got their "swoosh" symbol...see the little "swoosh" in the marble statue:
Here's one last pic of our hotel, right on the Aegean Sea:
Kusadasi was the perfect start to our honeymoon! We got to relax and do a little bit of exploring! And our hotel was AWESOME!!! Stay tuned for Part 2 of our honeymoon - Cappadocia / Goreme!
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