Our honeymoon cruise itinerary so far:

• Day One: Cannes / Monte Carlo / Nice
• Day Two: Livorno / Florence / Pisa

And now onto day three, we’ll be making a stop in Civitavecchia, Italy, which I’ve since learned is really just the port town for Rome. Obviously, we won’t be wasting any time and will be making the trip to Rome as quickly as possible. I’ve found online that it is pretty simple to take the train between the two, all you have to do is grab a shuttle to the port entrance and then it’s a quick ten minute walk to the train station.

We’ve also been emailing with a tour guide in Rome that was recommended to Kim. This isn’t something through the cruise company, rather a single guy that gives tours on his own to people when he has the time. I think whether we use him or not will really boil down to the price. There is so much to see in Rome that it would be cool to have a guide. Otherwise I’ll be spending lots of time mapping out a path. Feel free to leave recommendations for your favorite spots though, as I will definitely want to see all that I can. Kim has already been to Rome in the past, so hopefully that will help with the planning. I’m sure this will be one of the busier stops on our wonderful trip.

As I mentioned earlier, the first stop of our honeymoon is in Cannes where we are also planning to see Monte Carlo and Nice. The second stop of our trip takes us to port town on the western coast of Italy called Livorno. Just like with Cannes, I don’t think there is much to see or do in Livorno so I am planning some self exploration of a couple other cities.

First we will take the train out to Florence, the capital of Italian Renaissance. I think it would be easy to fill multiple days with the number of things there are to do in this city, so we’ll have to pick and choose what we do. I definitely want to see the Santa Maria del Fiore, known as the Duomo, which is the domed cathedral. There are also a few other sites nearby that are likely worth seeing.

Florence also has many museums, of which the most popular are the Uffizi Gallery and the Accademia dell’Arte del Disegno. The Uffizi is said to be one of the most famous galleries in the world, likely just behind the Louvre in Paris. I’ve heard that lines can be terrible here, but I’ve found a site to reserve tickets online. However, I’m not sure Kim and I are artsy enough to enjoy it. Has anyone been before? The Accademia houses Michelangelo’s David sculpture and can also been swarmed with crowds. Tickets can also be bought in advance, so these are still up in the air.

Once we’ve seen as much of Florence as we can squeeze into an afternoon, we’ll take the train back towards Livorno with a stop in Pisa along the way. Just from the name of the city it should be obvious that the goal here is to see the Leaning Tower, and hopefully climb to the top of it. There are also a few other surrounding structures that I’ve read are worth visiting. However this stop will not be nearly as long as the time spent in Florence, and once were done here it is back to the ship and onto the next destination…

It just occurred to me that I’ve yet to talk about our planned honeymoon after the wedding. Well, this will likely be the first of many posts about it as I work on planning each stop of the twelve night Mediterranean cruise on Royal Caribbean. We start and end in Barcelona including one night there before the cruise, but I’ve yet to plan anything for that stop.

So our first stop once we actually get on the ship is Cannes, which is famous for the international film festival. However, there doesn’t appear to be much else to offer us, besides the beaches we’ll find in surrounding cities, so my initial plans have us taking a train ride out to Monte Carlo. Obviously there’s a famous casino in this tiny country, but there is much more to see including the Prince’s Palace and Cathedral. I doubt we’ll make it inside the Grand Casino since a jacket and tie are required, but I’ve heard that the outside is worth seeing anyway.

From there, I’m planning to stop in Nice on our way back toward Cannes. This city is the center of the French Riviera, and I’m sure we’ll take a stroll down the Promenade des Anglais which runs right along the beaches. There also appears to be many other historical sites to see along the way. And once we spend some time in Nice, we’ll take the train back to Cannes to finish the day by exploring the city before getting back on the boat.

Are there any other must sees in or around the cities mentioned? Also, I’m up for considering other nearby cities/towns if there is something high on the list. I’m sure we’ll take a couple of the excursions offered by the cruise line later in the trip, but I’m thinking that we should explore any cities that we can easily sightsee on our own.

Kim and I have officially finished our marriage prep classes as required by the Catholic Church. Fortunately, we were able to take all of the classes on our time using online forms and email. Most of the work was done with Catholic Marriage Prep Online over the past couple of months. Basically, we worked on our own to answer questions in various lesson web forms, and after submitting our answers we would get an answer key and response from our instructors. This process worked pretty well, especially since it would be nearly impossible for us to commit to a single day for a series of weeks as often required by the live classes. Though this particular program is only good for the Denver and Colorado Springs Archdioceses, there may be other similar programs throughout the country or possibly the world.

If you didn’t already know, we are going to have a band at our wedding reception. We first saw them at the wedding of one of Kim’s friends, and somehow hung onto their business card for years until it became our turn. They were highly entertaining then and I’m sure that everyone will enjoy them.

But the real reason for this entry is that they take a few fifteen minute breaks throughout the night, and instead of having downtime I’m thinking that we should have some music going via CD player. So here’s your chance to help us out, since everyone has been offering anyway. Put together a 15+ minute playlist of songs that you think will be good for our reception and that everyone will enjoy. The mix can definitely go over 15 minutes but it may not all get played, so plan accordingly. Once your mix is done you can either send it to us in the mail or get in touch with me to transfer it electronically. May the best mix tapes win…

Yesterday we attended mass at the church we are going to be married in later this summer. Both Kim’s parents and my parents made the trip as well. Though I had been here before, it had been awhile since I last attended. St. Francis Seraph is a Catholic church in downtown Cincinnati, which is dedicated to serving with and among the people of Over-the-Rhine, one of the poorest regions of the city, if not the most. It is very refreshing to find a church that not only does so many wonderful things in the community, but also has a strong sense of belonging together, and a different take on the standard Catholic mass. The sign of peace is much longer than I’ve ever seen before, and is a time for walking around the church and greeting the fellow parishioners, guests, and clergy. For me this was great, since there was a guy I went to both grade school and high school in attendance as well, and it was very nice to catch up with him. Beyond that there are many things that make this church stand out from any other I have ever attended before. It is an amazing place and something that you have to experience to truly understand.

I’m going to create a new blog category for wedding planning. Since this is going to consume so much of our time, as we are finding out, I may not have much else to write about for awhile. Monday night we went to a church in Denver to meet with the deacon who then told us all about the classes and such that we have to do in preparation for marriage. We also took a focus test, which was like 100+ questions that you either answered with agree, disagree, or uncertain. Kim and I both took the test, separately, and they will score our tests and compare the results. We requested to receive the results as soon as possible, so it shouldn’t be much longer.

Another thing we’ve been busy with is registering for gifts. This is quite a process, and what really stinks is that we already have so many of the standard things that people typically register for. We’ve been finding a couple of creative options that we are hoping to use, but we’ll still have some standard gift registries as well. Feel free to add any suggestions in the comments for something that we may not have thought about that would be a nice wedding gift. We could use a little extra help.

It’s official, Kim and I are getting married!! I know, it’s about time, right? We actually started doing some planning for a wedding a few weeks ago. We decided that this year would be the year, so we had to start getting busy, and will continue to be busy up until August 30. I would have posted something earlier, but I wanted to wait until it was more “official.” So, last night I gave Kim a huge cubic zirconium engagement ring and fortunately she said yes. Her uncle owns a jewelry store back in Cincinnati, so we are going to get the real thing in a couple of weeks when we are back in town. That is unless I can convince her that cz is the way to go…