February 2023

Q. Did you already have a clear idea of what and where you wanted for your honeymoon when you got in touch with Amy?
KATHY We got married a couple months before we went on our actual honeymoon. We thought about a couple different places, we weren’t really sure where we wanted to go yet and I think initially we were planning someplace warmer, but I had never been to Europe before, although Jon has been quite a number of times, so we thought why not do Europe? there’s a lot of places we haven’t visited together, so ultimately Europe was the place to go. 

JON  I’d been to Europe several times for vacation and, more recently, for work. I thought we could try someplace that Kathy wanted to go. I initially reached out to Amy and let her know the timeframe and here are some destinations, and she came back with the river cruise suggestion. I had never even thought about that before. In fact, I’d never been on a cruise before, it sounded like a fun idea. The more I looked into a river cruise, the more interesting it sounded. Just to add to that, I was looking for places to go to celebrate the holidays, like in Hungary or some little towns in France, and enjoy their Christmas markets. This cruise was called Festive Time on the Romantic Rhine. Everywhere we went was very festive. Amy really hit it spot on, she said, if you do this cruise, it hits a lot of the destinations and sights you want. We wouldn’t have wanted to spend our entire honeymoon on a cruise, this was only 7 days or so, which allowed us to roam around other places in Europe and spend more time and roam around where we wanted.

KATHY I had been on an Ocean cruise prior, down to Mexico, for 4 or 5 days. That was a much bigger ship. You don’t see the same people again after the first day. This was a much smaller ship for the river cruise. It was a really good experience, you see the same people every day, you make friends with the people on board and hang out with them when everyone goes on excursions. With the river cruise, we were stopping at a new town every day, were out and about in each destination at least half the day.

Q. What was the most romantic place you visited/experience you had?
KATHY Out of everywhere we went, France in general, not so much Paris… just a romantic way to spend a holiday as newlyweds, just walking through these Christmas markets, all crowded. Colmar, Strasbourg...just a romantic way to spend the holidays as newlyweds. France is so romantic in general. Just sightseeing and spending time together in a new place. 

JON For me it had to be the cruise itself, all the Christmas markets were so festive, but for me just spending time with my new wife, just being there in our cabin with a huge window, you’re not out on the ocean, you’re seeing all the towns you pass by, castles and forts, all covered in snow. You’re in these charming smaller towns in Europe, not big cities. Being there, out on the water on a boat, hanging out and spending time with my wife. 

Q. What was the funniest thing that happened on your trip?
JON Every city has a market, every market has Glühwein, it is everywhere. And we were out having fun, eating crepes, and didn’t really even think about it. It was really great, really sweet, we had a few cups. I’m really thirsty, I want something else to drink, something hot that’s not alcoholic. We found an apple cider stand, we ordered it and that also had alcohol and I was “I’m so thirsty right now!” and we ended up finding hot chocolate to drink...I wish we were bigger wine drinkers. Once we were back on board, we were talking about it, and someone suggested we order “Kinderpunsch” which is basically the same thing as Glühwein, only non-alcoholic. So every time we'd go out to explore and sample local foods, we’d ask for Kinderpunsch if we wanted something warm to drink. 

Q. What surprised you the most?
JON It was more than I expected it to be honestly, I had never really traveled anywhere during the winter. We live in California, the coldest it gets here is like 50 degrees and we don’t see snow unless we go to Lake Tahoe. It was way more than I imagined, everything was about Christmas and the holidays. And Europe does it so well, every place celebrated Christmas in a big way. Every town is literally out of a storybook. When you see these buildings that have been around for hundreds of years, and they’re all capped in snow. There are Christmas trees with ornaments hung and there’s nothing like it, it’s very magical.

I had a lot of friends who’d gone to Paris and you know the reputation cities like Paris have. I was really surprised how delightful everyone in Paris was, from retail and restaurant service members to locals. Might possibly be because we told everyone we were on our honeymoon (laughs).

KATHY Yes, like Jon had mentioned, that surprised me, but also I expected Paris to be more crowded, I mean there were a lot of people, but I expected there to be more, say, versus London, which was way crowded. I also expected London to be more British (laughs).

JON I told her London is just like New York. It’s so international, there’s food from everywhere, people are everywhere, and I thought it would be more British, too. And it was just so busy! Harrods is huge, we spent a lot of time swimming through people. Kathy loves Louis Vuitton, and, in Paris, they had a pop-up store, LV Dream, which is everything LV, and usually you would have to spend hours waiting for tickets, but we spent time talking to the workers, and we got invites and they treated us very well, like very good customers, it was a very pleasant experience. 

KATHY We did spend a lot of time shopping in Paris, a little bit in London as well, but they were having their Boxing Day shopping sales, and were crowded. In Paris, the shops are clean, workers are very helpful, and we did buy a lot.

JON But also one of the biggest highlights for me in London was the Harry Potter studio tour. I’m not a huge Harry Potter fan. Even if you only have just seen a few movies, they kept nearly everything intact from the movies, the costumes, the sets. When we went, they had a special winter theme, we were there for almost 4 hours. It was just “wow.”

KATHY Being on the actual set was very much more magical than, say, going to a theme park. The costumes were just lovely. It was great to experience.

Q. Where do you think you’ll visit next?
KATHY I want to go to Asia next or do an ocean cruise, someplace much warmer. I think I’m done with cold weather for a bit (laughs).

JON Yes, (laughs) Someplace hot and tropical. It was definitely magical, but we’re Californians, and I think we are used to shorts and t-shirts, and not being bundled up and having to over-pack. Definitely Southeast Asia.

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