Honeymoon Adventures III: South America!

Finally, after a flight that left Miami at 1:30 a.m., Lynne and Matt arrived in Peru!

The flight landed at 6:30 a.m. in the Lima International Airport, where a guide from Overseas Adventure Travel met them at the baggage claim. (It should be noted that Lynne and Matt highly, highly recommend OAT. Through the entire trip, neither Lynne nor Matt ever had to lift of bag, hail a cab, or hunt down a hotel. Top notch, all the way.)
Peru has 28 million residents. Nine million live in Lima. And you can tell. Lima is crowded and overcast (they only get 2 inches of rain per year). The driving in Lima...well, it was interesting. There did not appear to be any speed limits...or turn signals. Drivers just gave a light honk if they want to turn, change lanes, roll through a stop sign, or run over a small dog. It made for a noisy, hazy city. (Do you get the feeling that Lima was not their favorite place? One visit was enough.)
But even in hectic a city, there was real beauty.
Lynne and Matt checked in at the San Agustin Hotel in Lima. Very nice. After a two-hour nap and sending a few emails, the group headed over to the National Museum of Anthropology in the former home of former Peruvian president and liberator (from the Spanish) Simon Bolivar.

A quick note about the travel group. There were 14 total people in the group, plus a guide. There was a teenager traveling with her grandparents, but otherwise everyone besides Lynne and Matt was 55 or older. Some of the people in the group were in their late 60s - and this trip included a lot of walking - but they were up for everything. There was a USC architecture professor (who made sketches of all the places they visited), a psychiatrist (who psychoanalyzed everyone), a retired criminologist, a retired Encyclopedia Britannica documentary maker, doctors, a journalism professor...and then Lynne and Matt, the newlyweds. And everyone couldn't have been nicer.

Meanwhile, on the walk to the center of the city, the group passed Lima's "White House", surrounded by tanks and men with machine guns. It was actually pretty small but conveniently located across the street from a lovely Peruvian 7-11. (No joke.)
The city was preparing for Independence Day (July 27) so the town square was being cleaned. In the center, was a large fountain they fill with pisco so people can come and drink from it. (Chicago should try filling Buckingham Fountain with beer if the Sox and Cubs make the Series). And although Peru supposedly has free speech - every home was required to fly the Peruvian flag, no matter how small or humble the house. Even in remote shacks in the Amazon, the red and white was flying.
Anyhow, the museum was a great start. It walked you through Peruvian art over thousands of years. This was the first glimpse of the wealth and brilliance of the Incan cultures. When you see how much time and effort they put into their pottery, you understand the wealth of a nation, where they had time to put such effort into the beauty of artistic details.
The works of art - particularly the pottery - were amazing. The faces had wonderful expressions, very playful. They also had scenes of doctors performing surgery, fisherman at work, high priests...
And then there was This Guy. Um, we here at the Lynne and Matt American Internet Experience, do not specifically endorse these kind of images but, well, This Guy was everywhere in Peru. Gift shops. T-shirts. Packs of cards. And the more you saw him, well, the more you wondered about This Guy's life. It had to be difficult to find pants. Riding a bike: out. And how does he put his tray down on an airplane? All right, moving on.

Next, the group headed over to the Church de San Francisco, also in downtown Lima. The Spanish-style exterior was a spectacular yellow. Inside, the walls were covered in murals and tapestries which -surprisingly - were completely exposed to the elements. Peru is interesting because it is a country still coming out of years of political corruption and widespread terrorism. It is just starting to grasp the economic possibilities of tourism.

So, while the country has many beautiful treasures to offer, the historic displays are of varying quality and accessibility. Sometimes, this is to the tourist's advantage because - as Lynne and Matt later found out - you can get up close, and even touch, relics hundreds of years old.
Back at the church, the basement had been used as a catacomb for hundreds of years. The only problem: at some point, someone decided the place needed a little cleaning up. So, rather than just dust off the skeletons, they decided to group all the bones by type: skulls with the skulls, humerus with the humerus, toes with toes. That's either very insulting or quite efficient, depending on your point of view. In one pit, they had made a very artistic circle of skulls and arm bones. Tourists aren't supposed to take pictures, but you can find a view here.

Finally, Lynne and Matt headed over to - figure this one out - an Italian restaurant for some pasta. The food was excellent; Lynne and Matt wrote their names on the wall; and they were subsequently arrested for vandalism. (No, not really.) And the food was cheap. That's another good point: money went a long, long way in Peru. One dollar was approximately 2.80 soles, the Peruvian currency. A very good meal for two was 60 soles, about $20. You got a lot for your dollar. Except for the souvenirs. If you got a souvenir from Lynne and Matt, it cost millions upon millions.
After dinner, it was time for bed, so Lynne and Matt could catch yet another flight, this one that left at 3 a.m. for an Amazon adventure.

Day Three summary: one museum , one yellow church, two Americans eating Italian in Peru, one flight Miami to Lima (two total)

Mustache status: Shady

Honeymoon Adventures II: Miami Twice

So, here's one thing that can be said about Miami: there's not much to say about Miami. OK, sure it very well may be a party in the city when the heat is on (all night and day, 'til the break of dawn) but when it's overcast and the Marlins are out of town, there's not much going.

Matt had been to Miami once before and it was great. That was when, as a college senior, the Illini went to the prestigious MicronPC.com Bowl. After the 63-21 drubbing of the University of Virginia, everyone spent New Year's 1999/2000 on the beach. Some guy took his girlfriend's clothes off then threw her in the Atlantic Ocean; then Shalin stepped on a syringe and had to go to the emergency room. It was interesting, for sure. Matt was looking forward to going back.

But the city is much different in hurricane season.

So on Aug. 16 - the second day in Miami - Lynne and Matt's second day in Miami, they decided to grab a 10-minute cab ride ($30!) to the local mall where they wandered around. The highlight was when they found a machine that looked the one in Big. Matt wished he was married to a great girl. And then...he was! Magic.

After wandering through the mall for a while, a guy noticed Matt's Illini hat. The guy was on his way to the bathroom, but he stopped for a chat.

Random dude: "Hey, you from Chicago? I'm from Chicago!"

Matt: "Yep. Cool."

Random dude: "How's Juice Williams going to be this year?"

Matt: "Pretty good, I think."

Random dude: "All right. Go Cubs!"

Odd.

Finally, Lynne and Matt took a boat tour of the Miami Harbor. As boat tours go, it was fairly shallow (the substance, not the water). But as with everything else in Miami, it was bilingual - Spanish and English. It was kind of fun to hear them say (to Matt): "Blah blah blah Rosie O'Donnell blah blah blah." Matt never did learn that Spanish.

The boat drove around the harbor, peaking at the back of rich people's mansions and then into even richer people's summer homes.

Later, when Matt looked at the pictures - and he took a lot of them - he couldn't remember whose house was whose. Was that Sylvester Stallone's old home or Paula Abdul's current digs? The only one they knew for sure was Shaaaaaquuuuile Oooooo'Neal's mansion. As you can see from the picture, it was pretty easy to tell which $40 million pier was his. They also saw Al Capone's hideout, but Al did not appear to be home.

After the boat tour was over, Lynne and Matt didn't have much to do. They had checked out of their hotel room, but the flight wasn't until 1:30 a.m. the next morning. So, they wandered over to a museum (is there anyone else who'd go to a museum when they're in Miami?), which turned out not to be a museum at all. Odd.

Eventually, Lynne and Matt wandered back to the hotel and Lynne promptly fell asleep in a lobby chair, while Matt took picture No. 1 in a series he calls, "Sleeping Beauty Snores."

With even more time to kill, they eventually wandered over to see Hancock starring Will Smith. At the time, Matt thought it was pretty good, although when he gave it some thought, there were some fairly big logic holes in the script. But, hey, it was either that or the Chipmunks movie.

Finally, finally, finally, at 1:30 a.m., they boarded the 5-hour flight bound for Lima, Peru, South America. You know what that means: There will finally be something interesting in this travel diary.

One final note before we venture south of the Equator. Those of you studying the photos closely will notice the caterpillar that climbed onto Matt's upper lip. Matt decided before the honeymoon that he would spend this romantic time growing a mustache. It has long been his dream to have his picture taken with a mustache that he did not buy from a magic shop. Needless to say, Lynne was very excited.

Day Two summary: one museum that was not a museum, countless outrageous rich people mansions, two Will Smith references, one Chicago shout-out, one flight that was really the next day

Mustache status: hazy

Honeymoon Adventures I: Miami Not-So-Nice

At long, long last Lynne and Matt will start posting some pictures from the honeymoon.

Here's Day One of what is tentatively being called...Honeymoon on Monkey Island! (Spooky, isn't it?)

Lynne and Matt left O'Hare early Tuesday morning, July 15, for a two-day layover in Miami. They built the stop in so they'd have time to relax and - in case the flight from Chicago got delayed - they wouldn't miss the LAN Peru flight to South America.

They arrived at the Embassy Suites hotel in Miami, about 15 minutes from the airport. The hotel was pretty cool (that's the inside on the right), but - like much of Miami - it was pink on the outside. Odd.

The weather was not so good. It was hurricane season in Miami, so it was cloudy and overcast with sporadic downpours. The streets were pretty empty because - I don't think I'm telling any tales out school here - there's nothing to do in Miami besides go to the beach.

Faced with a wet beach (who wants that?), Lynne and Matt decided to walk (since, as they would soon learn, a Miami cab ride cost $25 to cross the street foreshadowing, ooooh) to get something to eat. They ended up at Bennigan's which turned out to be a blessing. It's one of Lynne and Matt's favorite restaurants. Of course, at the time, there was no way they could have known all the Bennigan's everywhere in the world were going to close. As Matt had a Turkey O'Toole and Lynne ate some other meal now lost to history, they had no idea that impending doom was on the restaurant's menu. If they had, Lynne and Matt might have ordered a milkshake. Milkshakes are good. In retrospect it was nice were able to spend that time together.

After a fulfilling last meal, Lynne and Matt went back to the hotel, fell asleep for three hours, then went downstairs to watch the All-Star game at the hotel bar. It was a pretty cool game because they brought out a bunch of old Hall of Famers. The game didn't end until 2 a.m., when the American League finally scored. Lynne ended up going to bed before the game was over, but Matt was transfixed. He kept watching, wondering if Benito Santiago would somehow get the last at-bat. (If you get that joke, you're a huge nerd.)
After all was done and said, Lynne won the $1 they bet on the game. Of course, it was meaningless because what's hers is now Matt's, so Matt also won. Even though he kind of lost.

Day One summary: One flight Chicago to Miami, two unintentional last meals, one 15-inning All-Star game, one picture of Lynne looking like a turtle

Even more pictures!

Apparently, they don't really do proof books anymore, it seems. Just like the newspaper industry has discovered: it's all online now, baby.
So, Craig and Sebastian have finished the online proofs and they're all online for everyone to look at. There's probably 1,000 pictures in there and every one is fantastic, even the photo of Matt at the urinal. Lynne and Matt spent their one-month anniversary looking at each one, for two hours.

OK, so here's how you can see them:
1. Click here.
2. Click on "wedding."
3. Click on "Lynne + Matt"
4. Put in the password: BeaconNews
5. The photos are separated into preparation, ceremony, portraits and the party.
6. Use either the slide show (set it on the fastest speed) or "View all the party."

There's one last category: “photographers picks” which are basically the best pictures, as determined by Craig and Sebastian. Those photos are not in the other categories. They have also been cropped and color corrected. Most of those are the same pictures in the slide show.

It seems there are photos of everyone in there. If you are planning to order a print, please talk to Lynne or Matt first. There are some good reasons to order through the website and some very good reasons to wait.
So, enjoy!

In the meantime, Peru pictures are coming soon. Honestly.

Picture that!

So, you're looking for pictures, right? Well, Lynne and Matt are still sorting through the 10 million Peru photos Matt took. And the wedding pictures aren't back yet, although Craig, the very excellent photographer, has posted two quick hits here.

For more fun, go here and watch a slide show of the wedding that Craig put together. (The pictures move pretty fast - you can pause by clicking on the down arrow in the bottom right corner, then using the controls.) It was great to see all these memories again. And, also, to see that we're all such awkward dancers. Yes, that includes you.

As far as the honeymoon, here's two favorites as an appetizer: a scenic shot of the unbelievable Macchu Picchu and a close-up of a woman who was weaving at a llama/alpaca farm Lynne and Matt visited. More to follow...

And home again in one month!

Got married, traveled the Southern continent and made it home in one month.
Lynne and Matt are back and had a great time. And, thanks to Matt's parents, they've already eaten warm American pizza. Ahhhh, sweet relief. Over the next few weeks, they'll post some of the honeymoon pictures as they have a chance to sort through them.
They'll also be posting some pictures that Matt likes to call: Awkward Wedding Dancers. (Don't worry, he's the first recipient of the award.)

Macchu Picchu or bust

Hello from the mountains of Peru. We just stopped in an internet cafe - three soles for one hour - and thought we'd add a quick post. Our three days in Cuzco were fun. We did some shopping, went to museums - then petted, fed and ate alpaca. Yum. Tomorrow or the next day we try guinea pig. (Yum?) People have hordes of the cute, tasty little guys running around their houses.
Today we hiked up to Machu Piccu. We'd seen many, many pictures of the place before we got there because it's everywhere here. In person, 10 million times better. You should all go there. Seriously, put it on your life list. It even beat having the monkeys hang off our arms and sit on Matt's head. It's almost incomprehensibly large and well preserved. Tomorrow morning we're going back at 5:30 a.m. for more hiking.

We're having a blast, taking tons of pictures and making plenty of memories. Can´t wait to see you guys and tell you all about it.