TV has thrown a wrench into the honeymoon Euro-trip plan

When we first started plotting, figuring, dreaming, and whatnot about how long our honeymoon in Europe could be, how much money we could save during our last year in Korea, and where we wanted to go, we thought "hey, we could make this a three month thing, live cheap, and visit lots of places." We could probably still do that but I think both of us have come to the point where after spending 2 years overseas we might want to get home, find jobs, and get settled a little bit sooner than that.

Our first draft of this plan was to get married in New York, fly to Paris, and start the honeymoon there. The first draft didn't get very far though, mainly just a list of cities and places we wanted to visit. Paris, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, München, Rome, Prague, and so on and so forth. We watched lots of TV shows about traveling in France and Germany and the Czech Republic, and got pretty excited about the whole prospect.

Of course, right now we have the great opportunity to live in Asia and have cheap flights to lots of places in Asia that we want to visit, so it's pretty important to mention that we don't want to save so aggressively that we have regrets about not visiting places here. Our trip to Japan got booked first, and we understand it's going to be somewhat expensive, but I think we'd really kick ourselves if we lived next door to one of the most iconic countries in Asia for two years and never made a proper visit. Our trip to Thailand for summer vacation will probably end up costing less than the shorter trip to Japan in the end, but after a winter in Korea we both want to be somewhere nice and hot with a beach, and Thailand is yet another of the most iconic countries in Asia. We're also kicking around ideas for our winter vacation, because there's a few other "must-see" places on our list and we have a bit more time to work with this winter.

Anyhow, the point of the previous tangent of a paragraph is that we are planning on a somewhat shorter honeymoon, perhaps 6 weeks or so. Where do we start our travel planning then? Well, for one, we like guidebooks. Although it's cool among travel circles to berate guidebooks and the people that use them, I think scoffing at the idea of carrying some information about places you might want to see or visit, things you might want to eat, and a few useful phrases is short-sighted. In fact, I've gotten to the point where I think that disliking things just because other people like them is kinda crazy.

Anyhow, our Lonely Planet or Rough Guide Europe guides, one of them, had an interesting looking itinerary that started in Rome and ended in Scotland. We both thought "hey, that sounds awesome." It even started to look like we might start the process of figuring out how to make it work. We usually do travel and wedding planning at a cafe near our little apartment, but this weekend we didn't make it due to disruption from my kidney.

Last night, as we laid down to go to sleep I put on an epsiode of No Reservations in which Anthony Bourdain (another person some people hate, some people love) traveled through Istanbul. All of the sudden Turkey just turned into a wrench that has lodged itself right in the middle of my mind's "where do I want to go" engine. I think it got stuck in Carolyn's too. I mean, it looked so foreign, yet clean and familiar, and the food looked amazing. How could we not want to go there, right?

That's just how it is I guess, there's always going to be more places that we want to go...but maybe, just maybe we can plan Turkey into our honeymoon.