Our Honeymoon Part 1

Week 1

Our life as a married couple started with a more solemn goodbye to our friends and family, knowing that we would be separated by more than 5,000 miles for at least the next two year span. We spent the first day of our honeymoon then with our families.

So after a second night in Odessa, we boarded the short flight to Dallas and then flew on to LAX. Getting to the taxi was no easy chore, as we had brought with us about a third of our total worldly possessions. They began to load us into a cab, and then realized that our luggage wasn’t going to fit. Out came the oversize rolling garment bag, the matching 26” upright and the 20” upright that we’d received from the hostesses at one of our wedding showers.

This time in a minivan we set out to the Luxe Summit Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. This hotel had a lot of names and most of our cab drivers informed us of several more that it has had through the years. Despite the changes in management, we liked the hotel. It was set off from everything else with lots of foliage, and a tower separate from the main lobby made it seem much more quiet and private in our room. We had a view of the pool, which we never got around to using.

Room service was a great blessing several times on our honeymoon and the first night in LA was one of them. The hotel apparently had an award winning restaurant and the room service was reflective of that fact.

Bree had salmon and we also shared alfredo with shrimp and crab meat. We definitely had more seafood than anything else on the honeymoon. The next day, a sports theme began to take over our honeymoon when we watched Friday Night Lights in the room. The sporting theme was not necessarily something that Matt was trying to force, but it was a welcomed occurrence. Of course, Bree’s love and/or tolerance is just one of the bonus features that make her a phenomenal wife and a dream partner.

That day we went to Ocean Pier on Santa Monica beach. We sat and ate more seafood – crab cakes, blackened yellowfish, and Pacific sole – overlooking the incoming tide. It was a beautiful day – I think it reached 90 – and Bree kept commenting that she couldn’t believe it was January. After eating, we watched the rest of the sunset from the beach.

Ocean Pier really is a great spot to visit in LA. There’s a ferris wheel and a roller coaster and putt putt that weren’t open while we were there but looked like fun. There’s several restaurants, a beautiful view, and a movie-like atmosphere.

In fact, it was the setting for part of the movie “First Daughter” which we watched on the plane a few days later. And one of our friends was proposed to there.

We observed one man’s hefty catch of crabs with a small net and several others were trying their luck with a rod. There were quite a few people, but it still seemed peaceful. We couldn’t imagine what it must be like in March or June. We walked a couple blocks down to the outdoor shopping center that we think is known as Third Street Promenade. We bought a ticket to the movie Coach Carter and then sat and visited for a while.

(I would have posted the rest of the honeymoon, but it's still hand-written on the hotel pad, so I have to type it up!)