Cora Blouch & Dan Oldejans

Dear Cora and Dan,

We wanted to thank you for helping make our honeymoon the adventure of a lifetime. Because we wanted to share photos of your gifts, we decided against sending more traditional thank-you cards; instead, below is a picture gallery of what your contributions made possible!

<nerdy statement> A decade's worth of psychological research suggests that experiences make us happier than material possessions. </nerdy statement> Because we're fortunate enough to share a home with the appliances and furniture we need (IKEA furniture, but hey), we opted for a less traditional spin on wedding registries. It was our hope that a Honeyfund would offer a month's worth of incredible experiences—from dinners to sightseeing, from train tickets to hotel rooms—that we could directly attribute to the loved ones who made those experiences possible. We even carried a spreadsheet with us everywhere we went that indicated who had sponsored each activity, which helped guide us through each day.

Please enjoy the photos and captions below! If you'd like to see more pictures of our honeymoon travels, you can view the full gallery here.

Thank you again for your generosity and friendship, and for making this first chapter of our marriage possible.

Love from,

What you sponsored: Eating in Rome

Thanks to you, we ate very well in Rome--well enough that we probably doubled our lifetime intake of cured pork in the space of only four days. (No regrets.) Below are some examples of the meals we enjoyed during our time in the Ancient City.

Our first culinary stop in Rome: La Prosciutteria, known for its cured meats.

We sat down in the meat cellars, which were built in 1925. The entrance to the cellars was almost impossible to find, which created a cool ambiance once we were downstairs.

Our charcuterie board, which was massive (and delicious).

One last shot of La Prosciutteria as we were heading back out into the (very, very hot) sunshine.

Ombre Rosse, a hip little restaurant just around the corner from our bed and breakfast in Trastevere. We used TripAdvisor to guide us to more locally loved restaurants (like this one) whenever possible.

When Ryan was in Rome almost a decade ago, he went to a bookstore and wine shop not far from Ombre Rosse. We went back to visit again, only to find that it's now a bookstore and...a bar that only serves suggestive shots with inappropriate names, which you have to down in a single gulp without touching them. It was messy and absolutely ridiculous. I can't remember what this particular shot was called, but I probably wouldn't share the name even if I did.

La Focaccia, a focaccia-based pizzeria in Trastevere.

Our first gelato of the honeymoon!

This is the life: Gelato while wandering aimlessly around one of Rome's hip, artsy districts.

One of our favorite meals in Rome was at the rooftop café at the Musei Capitolini, the ancient art museums that sit atop Capitoline Hill. (This hill overlooks the ancient Roman Forum.) We had paninis, fruit, and mimosas while looking out at this view.

The rooftop café at Musei Capitolini.

Another view from the Capitoline Museums.

Ryan is borderline obsessed with these grattacheccas. They're cups of shaved ice, filled with fruit syrups and freshly cut fruit.

I got some form of kiwi-lime. This particular grattachecca stall was right across the street from our bed and breakfast.

We stumbled across a really cool wine bar run by a Santa Barbara-based sommelier and her partner, who was training to be a sommelier.

They served each wine with a dish that was supposed to compliment the wine's primary notes. The two cheeses you see here were made that morning, and brought in from the Italian countryside. We ended up going home with three bottles of wine from this place!

We couldn't survive a single day without at least three espressos each, which we'd space throughout the day. Here's a photo from one of our afternoon pick-me-ups. In Italy, you stand at the bar while drinking your espresso/latte/cappuccino. Sitting down costs extra, and sitting down outside costs even more.

The ever-delicious Italian latte.