Leia Wasbotten

Dear Leia,

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: Sightseeing and eating in Florence; train tickets to Bern

Thanks to you, we were able to visit Florence's museums, palaces, gardens, and Médici residences, and also ate wonderfully throughout the city! From lattes to wine and pizzas to pastas to fresh caprese, we had some of our favorite meals of our honeymoon throughout the streets and cafés of the City of Lilies.

Also thanks to you, we were able to get from Venice to Bern less than a week later! It was one of the most beautiful train rides of our trip: We passed through Italy's piedmont region, where we started to see the foothills of the Alps. And then, after just a few tunnels, the Alps appeared out of nowhere. Ryan was particularly smitten with them; he'd never seen such a stark contrast between flat ground (at about 1,500 feet of elevation) to peak (often above 10,000 feet). As we got closer to Bern, there was still snow on most peaks!

Sightseeing

The inside of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, which reminded us strongly of the inside courtyard of Castle Black in Game of Thrones, but that's fine. The Bargello was a barracks and prison, but is now used as an art museum featuring Donatello's original David.

Jess really liked this guy on the right because his sideburns are a great testament to why curly sideburns are a terrible idea.

Looking toward Palazzo Vecchio, Florence's town hall, which was briefly a Médici residence (to remind citizens that this banking family had now assumed political power).

Looking across the Arno at Florence's center.

Taken inside Boboli Gardens, looking toward the back of Pitti Palace (yes...yet another Médici residence at one point).

A view of Florence from Boboli Gardens.

The gardens stretch up a large hill that overlooks the city.

Looking out at the Tuscan countryside from the top of the gardens.

A view of the dome (the Duomo) and the campanile, with Pitti Palace in the foreground.

Mandatory selfie as we left the gardens.

Florence Cathedral's bell tower, or campanile. All the marble you see is taken from local quarries. This façade is one of the best examples of Gothic Revival architecture in Europe.

Looking up at Florence Cathedral, the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore.

The inside of the Duomo's inner dome. This was taken from a balcony far above the church below, which gives you an idea of the scale of the place.

The trek up to the top of the dome was less than pleasant (think very narrow spiral staircases with no A/C on a pretty hot day, and along with a pack of 100 other tourists).

Made it to the top of the Duomo!

A view of the Duomo, taken from the campanile. This particular dome is one of the greatest architectural marvels of Europe; Brunelleschi had to work from an octagonal base into a rounded dome using brick, which was so heavy that the bricklayers staggered their orientation in diagonal "V" shapes to offset the weight (otherwise, it would have collapsed on itself). Inside the dome sits an inner dome, and the space between is what tourists (and renovators) now use to get to the top of the dome.

Looking down from one of the top levels of the campanile.

Using Google Translate's camera feature to automatically translate plaques. (This saved us several times, especially in Hungary.)

Walking around the perimeter of the bell tower. The Duomo is visible to the left.

The inside of Palazzo Vecchio, Florence's town hall. The Médici turned it into another family residence as a statement to the public that they, as a banking family, had assumed political power.

One of the columns up to the top of the Palazzo.

Looking across town from Palazzo Vecchio to Florence Cathedral.

Goofing off near what was once the Palazzo's barracks and prisons.

You can see the outline of one just in front of Ryan: The Palazzo had a series of trapdoors about every 15 feet that dropped straight down to the street, maybe 100 or so feet below.

One of the larger chambers of the inside of Palazzo Vecchio.

Ryan, looking out at Oltrarno (an historic town just across the Arno from Florence).

Eating

The most beautiful latte Jess had ever seen! Our first stop after dropping our bags off at our bed and breakfast was a lunch spot not far from Pitti Palace, where we sat outside and people-watched over bruschetta.

Apologies if this looks gross, but it has a funny story. Jess didn't know what this particular bruschetta was, so she started eating it anyway while Ryan looked on with apprehension. She thought it was a ground-up, slightly wet meatball. Ryan (now trying not to laugh) told her it was liver pudding. Needless to say, she didn't continue.

This was one of the best pasta dishes we'd ever had from a traditional Florentine restaurant. It was made with veal and plenty of garlic.

One of the most well-known local delicacies: Florentine T-bone steak, prepared and cut in a way we couldn't completely understand thanks to language barriers. But it was tasty!

The inside of a traditional restaurant just around the corner from our bed and breakfast, near Dante Alighieri square.

Our favorite place to stop for coffee and (chocolate) croissants in the mornings was a hip café just up the street from where we were staying. In Italy, you stand at the bar while drinking your espresso-based beverage; sitting down costs extra, and sitting outside costs even more.

Another day, another chocolate croissant and latte. It was the staple of our mornings!

Easily the best pizza we'd ever had. This was from Mangia Pizza, right next to the Uffizi. (We actually ate there between our tours of the Accademia and Uffizi galleries.) The crust was just as light and crunchy as it looks.

Not pictured: Across the street from where we sat while eating, a residence had a plaque with "9" (the street number) by the front door. Someone had written in "3/4" next to it. Jess approved.

Just another winding street near the heart of Florence, not far from the Arno river.

A latte from a café just off Ponte Vecchio, Florence's most famous bridge and the only bridge to survive bombing from WWII.

One of our last dinners in Florence was outside, looking at the main piazza where Florence Cathedral is located, and only just up the street we could hear cello music. It was a lovely evening, and the weather was perfect.

Caprese (with a side of red wine).

Train tickets to Bern

Catching the train from Venice to Bern.

Benefits of Eurail tickets: sitting in first class. Benefits of sitting in first class: fancy plates of peppers, cheeses, olives, and bread. We pretty much chowed down, wrote some blog posts together, and stared out the window as we started passing by the Alps.

The foothills of the Alps! This was our first time seeing them.

The Beard didn't stay awake too long.

A quick view of Thunnersee, the Sea of Thun, which lies between Bern on the northwestern end and Interlaken (our next destination) on the southeastern end.