Falling In Love With Travel

Perhaps Waikiki Beach in Hawaii is your idea of a honeymoon destination?

Perhaps Waikiki Beach in Hawaii is your idea of a honeymoon destination?

by Hilary Larson
Travel Writer

It’s officially fall, and if you’re spending weekends anywhere remotely picturesque, chances are you’re sharing the scenery with a set of professional flashbulbs and a frothy white specimen known as the autumn bride.

Mid-August through early October has lately displaced June as the most popular season for Northeast nuptials. It makes sense, given the vagaries of New York’s climate: a Sunday in September seems like a drier, warmer bet than a weekend in late spring.

I vividly recall one early October weekend in Seville a few years back when my mother and I traipsed from cathedral to palace to park, trailed at every turn by wedding parties in lavish array. Our photos from that particular trip are full of smiling Spanish brides

whose names we don’t even know.

Which brings me to the topic of a most delightful kind of travel: the honeymoon. It’s a subject I’ve given a lot of thought; the marriages of my friends have been occurring with ever-greater frequency over the past decade. I was married recently, and I’m here to tell you a honeymoon has objectives and requirements that set it apart from other modes of travel. Considering the high emotional stakes, it’s worth learning from the wisdom of others.

Honeymoons are no longer reserved for newlyweds spirited straight from the reception. Increasingly, I hear about couples taking trips they call honeymoons six months, a year or even longer after the actual knot-tying. Modern work and school schedules, family circumstances, legal issues and finances all conspire to make many couples wait. In my case, the wait for my husband’s residency paperwork kept us home for a year after the wedding, but like so many others, we were determined not to miss out on this ritual of romance.

The main considerations for a honeymoon are destination, weather and travel style. Why not money, you ask? Because financial planning, while obviously necessary, runs contrary to the festive honeymoon spirit.

Choose an itinerary you will enjoy reminiscing over in 30 years, and figure out a way to make it affordable. A week on the South African coast, a tour of Italian cities or a Miami nightlife excursion can cost less than a long weekend in Disney World, if you plan carefully. And this is the only vacation of your life whose extravagance or impracticality you can justify with three simple words: “It’s our honeymoon.”
If you’re on a budget like most people these days, determine your priorities: Will you want to eat in lovely candlelit restaurants every night of your Provence getaway? Then consider staying in tidy but modest rented rooms, in an antique building with a bath down the hall. Will you spend all your time in the hotel, lounging till noon and sipping drinks by the pool? Splurge on a nice resort, but choose an off-season destination with competitive airfare (or one close to home). Remember that the fewer places you go, the more money you can spend in any one destination, since you’ll save on gas, airfare or train tickets.
Romance is critical, but it can also be hard to maintain. When choosing a destination, think hard about your energy level at the time of the honeymoon and what kinds of activities you both enjoy.

Tuscany is not romantic if you hate crowds of tourists or Renaissance art. If you love lolling on soft, sandy beaches, skip the glamorous-sounding but uncomfortably rocky Riviera coast. Hawaii has fabulous scenery, but if nature leaves you cold, head elsewhere for great art and posh shopping. Glatt kosher travelers are stressed out in Spain, where most of the cuisine is centered on pigs and shellfish; save Barcelona for a kosher tour on another occasion.

Above all, don’t be overly ambitious. Even if you’re a high-energy person, if you have a demanding job or a major wedding, you may be too tired to schlep through museums or multiple airports.

A close friend of mine — a lover of art and culture — had always adored Paris, where she spent part of her childhood. But it turned out to be a terrible choice for her honeymoon. Exhausted from the activity leading up to a 250-guest wedding, “we spent the whole week just sitting in cafés and drinking wine,” she told me dolefully, like she’d just failed a test. While a week idling in Parisian cafés sounds great to me, my friend felt that a comprehensive survey of museums and monuments was de rigeur in such a culturally rich environment — especially since it was her husband’s first trip to Paris.

Better choices would have been Budapest or the Amalfi Coast, which offer the feeling of being surrounded by European culture without the daunting internationally famous museums.
Then there’s the reality that even the most romantic couples frequently have differing travel styles. She may love concerts in old cathedrals and traveling by train; he may love lounging by the pool and the comfort of a car. On no other occasion do such differences loom solarge as on a honeymoon, when there’s great pressure to spend every moment as a twosome.

Consider compromises that work for both people: Rent a car and do the Trans-Siberian Railroad with a friend another time. Try a wine-tasting at the enoteca or a night at the circus instead of the flamenco show; you’ll both enjoy it more. On a honeymoon, the shared experience matters more than any individual activity, for which you (after all) have the rest of your life.

Finally, weather is a consideration. While it’s great to save money, I wouldn’t risk my once-in-a-lifetime honeymoon on the Caribbean in September. In the fall, many European hotels are unheated; 45-degree nights can be mighty unromantic, so plan carefully.

If you want a classic beach vacation, you have options besides the Caribbean or high season in Europe. Just get creative: Spain’s Canary Islands, the Brazilian coast and much of Australia are all ideal for a beach getaway when New York is snowed under. As with marriage overall, a willingness to be flexible can be the most romantic asset of all.

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