Jill David

Dear Jill,

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: Beer tasting in Switzerland

Thanks to you, we got to try some cool beers in Bern and Interlaken! Our stories from Interlaken were particularly neat, because thanks to sheer dumb luck, we ended up meeting the friend of one of the head brewers of Interlaken's famous craft brewery...a brewery that isn't open to the public and doesn't run tours. See below for more about this story, as well as photos of some of the beers we tried around the country!

We spent our first day in Bern exploring the historic part of the city on foot. We were so lucky to have great weather; the skies were blue and temperatures were perfect, unlike what we were promised in weather forecasts (which only predicted rain). So we took advantage of the great visibility and crossed the Nydegg Bridge (visible to the righthand side of this photo), passed around Bärenpark (which is exactly what its German name would suggest: a 15,000-square-foot park with bears roaming around), and had lunch at the Altes Tramdepot. Not only does the Tramdepot offer fantastic views of the city, but it's also a craft brewery, so Ryan was particularly happy.

The Altes Tramdepot had probably 10 different brews to offer while we were there, so we each tried a flight of their bestsellers.

Once we got to Interlaken, we quickly found an artisan beer and wine shop with fantastic salads and antipasti plates. The owner, who was from New Zealand, was passionate about bringing new types of beer to the otherwise lager-dominated Switzerland. Ryan thought this "Jess" beer was a particularly funny one.

While we were at the Artisan Barrel Café, Ryan was especially excited to see a few offerings from the local craft brewery Haarige Kuh (Hairy Cow), but was disappointed to find out from the café owner that they don't offer tours; the brewery is run by two guys who work two days a week on these brews.

The next morning was a slow one (it was raining, so we took it easy), but we eventually found our way to Barracuda—a grill just up the street that offered free wifi and great chorizo paninis. Ryan found another Haarige Kuh offering. Hoping for a different response from Barracuda's owner than from Barrel the night before, he asked if they had a tasting room. The owner shrugged, said Glynn (one of the head brewers) was a friend of hers, and called him on his cell right then and there. A few minutes later, we had a scheduled visit down in our calendar to swing by their brewing warehouse and meet both head brewers.

So in a nutshell, we ended up getting a personal tour of a microbrewery that isn't even open to the public, and tasting beers that had only just been bottled (they hadn't even entered the market). Andy and Glynn were excellent hosts and walked us through the brewing process from a more scientific perspective, which I (as less of a beer person than Ryan) really appreciated, and we left an hour later with a few bottles clinking in our backpacks.

Two of the bottles Andy and Glynn let us have for a few francs each, plus they gave me an apricot amber fresh of its first batch and not yet on the market. (It was amazing.)