The Huguet House: September 2014

For our honeymoon, we took a cruise through the Greek Islands. We stopped in 4 ports, for only a few hours each, but that's all it took for us to know that the Greek Isles were worth a repeat visit. It was a destination that had been high on my list for a while, but kept getting put off due to various reasons (but mostly because of JR). I was determined to make it happen this year, and our 3rd wedding anniversary seemed like the the perfect opportunity.

I knew I wanted to see some great beaches, and the direct flight from Marseille to Chania (pronounced "Ha-nya") made Crete the obvious choice. Crete has some of the very best beaches in all of Europe. We chose to stay in Platanias, a beach front resort town about 20 minutes west of Chania, and within driving distance of some the islands finest displays of sand, sun, and waves. Before we left for Greece, I was a little anxious about the fact that I had very little planned for the trip, no real sight-seeing destinations or major tourist attractions on the agenda. I was worried we would tire of the beach and get bored - so silly... I think I could spend months in the Greek Islands and still not want to leave. It's paradise on earth! It helps that the Greek people are as nice as can be, and all seem to be fantastic cooks. We spent four short days playing in the water, exploring souvenir shops interspersed with a few surprisingly interesting art galleries, and chowing down on delicious Greek food (tzatziki sauce on everything!!!).

The beach outside our hotel. It is considered "pretty good".

Enjoying our private pool - free upgrade compliments of Minoa Palace Resort!

The five star beaches more or less require day trips. We only made the trek once; the roads are long and curvy, and JR gets fed up with the car pretty quickly. But Falassarna was only about an hour away, and worth every minute of the drive.

It might be the prettiest beach I have ever seen. The water was clear light turquoise, and just cool enough to be refreshing, but still warm enough for the baby - perfect! The Caribbean beaches are pretty spectacular as well, but what puts this one at the top for me is the view from the water. Wade out a few yards into the sea, turn around, and gaze at the mountains rising up in the not so far away distance. 5:00 P.M. came and none of us were ready to leave, except for JR. One day he will love the beach, but he's not quite there yet.

That evening, back at the hotel, the sea outside treated us to an incredible show of giant waves. Some of them were taller than us! We had never seen anything like it; I think we stayed out for nearly an hour watching them roll in.

Playing in the waves

Sunset in Crete

Now let me tell you about vacationing with a baby. We have taken JR to Spain, London, Paris, Greece, and America. So we've learned a few things. There is only ONE way to travel with a tiny tot - bring a babysitter! We were fortunate enough to have two helpers come along for our journey: JR's Grand-mere (my momma) and Auntie Karla (family friend). Kerry and I actually got to enjoy ourselves a little bit! We relaxed on the beach, went to dinner, and even took a turn at the water sofa.
This is how Mommy and Daddy eat lunch:

Playing pass the baby while we lunched on gryos.

We took turns riding on the water sofa - Kerry thought it was a lot of fun, I was terrified. There was a photographer on the boat and of the 60 pictures he took, these were the only two where I looked remotely happy about being flung over the wake into the air. In the end, it was pretty fun, but I also wasn't sad when our time was up.

I think I'm smiling because it's almost over.

We also celebrated three years of marriage while in Greece. Everyone is always talking about how quickly time flies, and "can you believe it's already been x number of years?!?" and what not. But I don't feel that way. For me it's the opposite. I can't believe we have only been married for 3 years; it feels like so much longer! But before you start worrying about us, let me tell you why this is a good thing. In three (short) years, Kerry and I got married, moved to Europe, I quit my job, he started a new one, we visited a dozen new countries, learned a new language (kind of), survived pregnancy, and now we have seven month old baby. We have been through so much together already, and while it hasn't flown by, probably because a lot of it has been so difficult, I think it has tested and matured our marriage in ways we would not have encountered if we had never moved here. While we now feel that we do have a support network in Montpellier, for a long time we didn't, and we had no choice but to rely on each other for everything. When I look back at all that we have done in the last three years, I can't believe we have crammed so many memories into such a short period of time. It's been jam-packed, stressful, exciting, exhausting, and transformative for us both as individuals and as a couple.

Moving to France has allowed us to keep life busy and interesting; we certainly feel like we are living life to the fullest. That said, I hope sometime in the next three years we can slow it down a bit, we just can't keep this pace up forever!

We left our apartment on July 26th for London. Between that day, and our grand return on September 15th, we spent a total of 15 (non-consecutive) nights in our apartment. Which means we were living out of suitcases 37 out of 52 days. I was so shocked by that number I went back and re-counted on my calendar. No wonder we came back feeling like zombies!

So, here's a big giant recap, jumping all the way back to London.

Every now and then Kerry gets sent to London for work, and when possible, I like to go with him. We went last year for a long weekend, but London is a big and wonderful city, so we happily jumped at the opportunity to go back. Being primarily a work trip, time was short, but we squeezed in a few fun activities.

We started with a ride on the London Eye - JR's first Ferris Wheel!

It was a neat ride, but we had a little trouble enjoying it because we were nervous the baby was going to scream and ruin it for everyone else. Perhaps a 30 minute ride with a 5 month old and no escape plan wasn't the greatest idea. He was exhausted, but he held it together and did great!

Doing anything we can to keep the baby happy!

We made a stop at the British Museum, a collection of artifacts and displays so interesting and vast, I actually wanted to stay longer! Which is really saying something, because I normally spend my museum time calculating how long I have to stay to make the ticket purchase worth it. Turns out, JR does even worse at museums than I do, and after only an hour he insisted on leaving (meaning he screamed so much that the security staff was worried he hurt himself). But we did get a glimpse of some actual mummies and The Rosetta Stone.

And of course, we made a couple of obligatory pub stops.

Nooooo......

While Kerry was working JR and I took advantage of the beautiful, sunny, July morning and enjoyed a nice long walk around Regent's Park. Montpellier is not known for it's superb green space, so having a fantastic park within walking distance of our hotel was a nice change for us. We spent hours strolling around the greenery, marveling at the potent scent and variety of colors of roses (85 different types!) at Queen Mary's Rose Garden, and watching the ducks with their ducklings swimming in the lake.