Our Honeymoon – Carmel

I’m gonna skip ahead and take all this wedding business out of order and share some fun from our honeymoon!

Can I just say that honeymoons are the best thing ever?  Can we do this again next year?  After a year and a half of wedding planning and months of stress we had a beautiful wedding that was everything we had hoped for, but it was seriously exhausting!  On one hand, I’m sad it’s all over.  The actual wedding day flew by and I had the best time!  But, on the other hand, I’m so relieved that the stress is finished!  We certainly needed a vacation after our completely DIY wedding, it was a lot of work!  Thankfully, Branden’s new job let him off the hook for a whole week for our honeymoon.  We were afraid we wouldn’t get to go at all but it all worked out and it was AH-MAZING!

We left Monday afternoon and drove the 6 hours from Orange County to Carmel-by-the-Sea.  Carmel was so incredibly romantic and relaxing and Branden and I both loved every minute of it!  I would go back for another romantic trip in a heartbeat.

We booked our hotel just hours before we left home and we weren’t disappointed in the least.  We arrived around midnight and the sweet little Inn had closed for the evening so we were a little nervous as we walked up to the quiet office.  There was an envelope taped on the door with my name on it, asking us to please just check in in the morning and giving us our room assignment.  It was pretty cute.

Much to my surprise, we had booked an actual suite!  I was expecting a typical hotel room but this was anything but.  We walked into a huge living room area, complete with a mini fridge, bar, daybed, TV, desk, etc, with a room and bathroom in the other room.  It was so nice to be able to spread out and get comfy!  It felt like we were staying at some sweet little old lady’s guest house.  Check out this decor!  It’s so “old lady,” it’s awesome.  It gets so cold up there that they even had a heater under the tile floor in the bathroom, it was amazing!  I never thought that would be a feature I’d enjoy, but it rocked.  It was just so cool to not feel like you’re in a stuffy hotel.  It was sweet and endearing, even if it looked like Laura Ashley went a little crazy with all the flowers!  It felt like home, but somebody else’s home, which was just perfect for our honeymoon.  Plus, the staff was awesome!  After we checked in that first morning, they ran out after us when they saw that we were the people with the crazy “Just Married” painted car.  The guy literally ran to catch us and handed us a bottle of wine with huge congratulations.  It was really the sweetest thing!  I loved it there so much.

This is the first non-family trip Branden and I have ever taken together so we couldn’t wait to get out and explore this lovely, quaint little town.  Everything about Carmel is absolutely charming.  I took a ridiculous amount of photos on this trip, obviously, but here are a few of my favorites from our walks.

I’m seriously in love with all the sweet little cottages!  I want one!

We went in a bunch of little shops and this sign just cracked me up.  I love my man, he was a great idea, but this was too funny not to share!

Mmmm, we had the best meal at the famous Hog’s Breath Inn.  It was previously owned by Clint Eastwood and his presence was apparent with the masculine theme and signed Dirty Harry stills on the wall.  The food was just good old American cuisine, meat & potatoes, and it was delicious.  In fact, several of the places we ate were so good, we wished we could have gone back to them!  I wish I could have brought some of them home with me.

Love me some houses with character!  They make my suburbian track home look so dull.

Just a few more details about town.  It was hard to narrow it down, everything was freaking adorable!

More honeymoon photos are on their way!