"The Perfect Honeymoon" Italy by fdrich29

When my wife and I sat down shortly after I proposed and were in the very early stages of planning the wedding we almost immediately agreed upon where we would go on our honeymoon. I remember asking her where she wanted to go, hoping she would answer Italy, and when she did it was almost too good to be true. She had been on a trip to Europe years ago to see the Deaf Olympics in Rome, but unfortunately her trip was cut short due to an injury and she had to come home, without ever seeing Italy. For that reason she chose this country for our honeymoon. I am mostly of Sicilian (mother) and Scottish (father) descent and it was always a goal of mine to visit Italy and Sicily. Now it was looking like that dream would come true.

The Tower

Even though I'm fairly comfortable booking trips online I decided I wanted to use the professionals to book this trip. We decided to use our local AAA office to help us plan the trip. After several meetings with Rachael, our AAA travel agent we pretty much nailed down a group tour with Trafalgar that would essentially be the best of Italy and Sicily. We paid for the tour in full and not two days later we got the call from Rachael that the tour had been cancelled. We got our money back with no issues, but had purchased non-refundable flight tickets. We briefly entertained the idea of scrapping Italy and going to Florida instead. That really only lasted for 10 minutes or so before we decided to see Italy one way or another.

Capo di Milazzo, Milazzo, Sicily

So we started out knowing we were flying out Sunday night July 9th, the day after our wedding, landing July 10th in the morning and flying back Tuesday July 25th. What we didn't know was where we wanted to visit exactly or where we would stay. Rome, Venice, Lake Como, Florence, Sorrento and Sicily quickly came up as places we wanted to see. Rachael booked us in all four star hotels, noting on the itinary that we were honeymooners (we had a great view from every hotel, and were upgraded at one, so I think it helped). When it was all said and done our trip looked like this... Rome, Venice, Murano, Burano, Como, La Spezia, Riomaggiore, Vernazza, Pisa, Florence, Vesuvio, Pompeii, Napoli, Sorrento, Capri, Palermo, Milazzo, Messina, Catania, Masala, Terresini, back to Palermo, back to Napoli, then back to Rome for our flight home. It was better than we could have ever dreamt possible.

• Pros:Being there
• Cons:Coming home
• In a nutshell:Everything under the sun