18 Years Ago Tonight...

...I was waiting at the airport with my brand-new husband to board a flight to go on our honeymoon.

We were married earlier that day, around noon-1pm (some images here) and what not many people know (only our [only mine? can't remember now] parents who drove us to the airport) is that the honeymoon trip had a bumpy start!

We got to the airport early and noticed that our flight was delayed, so we didn't hurry to do our check in. However... because we didn't check in, we "missed" the flight even though we were there with plenty of time to fly! I was flabbergasted. It all worked out for the best, though, because the later flight we were re-scheduled to take meant that we arrived at our really old hotel in Recife early in the morning instead of in the middle of the night (which would have been slightly disagreeable).

A friend of the family had booked the hotel which was very cheap and had a wonderful view, but which was in such disrepair that the taxi driver who took us told up flatly that we wouldn't be staying there long! (That was pretty ominous, but it was OK, we were there for a week and we were fine. In fact, we took public transportation [crowded buses] in several occasions during the honeymoon! That's what budget honeymooners like us do -- and also buying food at the supermarket not to go out to eat for every meal).

In any case, 18 years later here we are, happier than on day one, actually! We continue our stringent budget lifestyle (which today meant going out for lunch while kids were in school instead of hiring a baby-sitter, which we don't really have anyway).

As some of you have seen already, today I decided to post about our anniversary on facebook and it was nice to receive a bunch of congratulatory comments! The blog post comes a little late (it's after midnight, but I'll change the date so it's posted on the 18th), but better late than never, right?

I can let you know more about our month-long honeymoon which involved a week or so of travel with my husband's family -- something that horrifies some of our friends! I had a wonderful time getting to know Brazil's Northeast (which is the part of the country my husband's family hails from) and several places where K spent his childhood, including the town where he was born. We went back to some of these places last summer, but that decrepit hotel has been gone for years and replaced by fancy high-rises in front of the beautiful Boa Viagem beach.

Ha! Boa Viagem means a "good trip"-- in spite of the bumpy beginning, our honeymoon was a good trip indeed!

P.S. I was going to include some photos of Boa Viagem I took last August, but my browser is horribly slow, so maybe I'll do that in a separate post so I can go to bed! (it's 1:41 am, this morning after K took the kids to school we went back to sleep and woke up at 11 am, it was awesome!)