Tag Archives: Switzerland

Delaying Your Honeymoon? Travel in January!

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A lot of people choose not to go on their honeymoons directly after their weddings for a variety of reasons. As I wrote in a previous blog post about timing your honeymoon, I think it’s really important for a couple to consider where they want to go, what their work/school situation is like, how they want others to treat their honeymoon, and their finances.

Ko Olina, Oahu

Sunset at Ko Olina, Oahu

So if you do want to delay your honeymoon, when is the best month to travel?  That, of course, depends on where you’d like to go.  There are certain places that have great weather all year (e.g. Hawaii), but obviously the major European destinations like Italy and Greece are going to be quite cold.  Beach Tomato’s “Follow The Sun” map is an awesome tool for finding sunny destinations all year round.

Financially speaking though, January is a great month for traveling.  Prices are usually at all-time highs around the December holidays, but they drop dramatically after January 1st once kids go back to school.  And for spontaneous couples that don’t need a lot of time to plan ahead, you can get really great travel deals if you actually book your January trip at the last minute.

What are my favorite January destinations?  If you’re looking for warm weather, it’s a great month to visit the Southern Hemisphere, and I especially recommend going to Australia, New Zealand, or Argentina.  I’d also looove to visit South Africa in January one day, too.

But if getting a tan isn’t high on your honeymoon priority list, January is also the perfect time to visit world-class ski resorts throughout the U.S., Canada, and Switzerland.

Honeymoon Destination Recommendations For… Adrenaline Junkies!

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It’s pretty obvious that just because a honeymoon destination is really popular, it doesn’t mean that it’s right for everyone.  One of the reasons why I started this blog in the first place is because the internet is full of websites that can tell you where to stay and what to do once you choose your honeymoon destination, but there aren’t enough sites that will help you decide where to go based on your personalities, time allowance, and budget.

Hopefully this ongoing “Where To Go?” series of blog posts will help you and your fiancé make your own destination decision with plenty of confidence and excitement.  So without further ado, where do I suggest that adrenaline junkies go on their honeymoons?  See my top 3 recommendations (on 3 different continents) below for extremely extreme couples:

1) Queenstown, New Zealand

Queenstown is the city to visit if you like all things extreme.  Not only is the city itself absolutely beautiful, full of good restaurants, nice hotels, and some of the friendliest people in the world, the adrenaline-pumping activities that the city has to offer are endless.  You can spend your days skydiving, bungy jumping (do the Nevis – it’s the highest in NZ!), mountain biking, white water rafting, and parasailing, or you can take it easy with scenic hikes, cruising on Lake Wakatipu, and wine tasting.  During the winter, you can also ski and snowboard on the Remarkables mountain range.

I also highly recommend going on a Shotover Jet boat ride and then getting some cocktails at the Minus 5° Icebar.  Is the icebar overpriced and crowded?  Sure is.  Do you get to wear borrowed jackets and gloves?  Yep. Do the photos make it all worth it?  Absolutely.

Other fun things to consider doing are the street luge course and the ledge swing, but just a heads up about that ledge swing harness: it hurrrrts.

2) Interlaken, Switzerland

Hey Derek!

If Queenstown is the #1 adventure destination in the world, then I’d say that Interlaken comes in a close second.  Just replace the Remarkables with the Swiss Alps, and Lake Wakatipu with Lakes Brienzsee and Thun, and you’ll find that the two cities are very similar.

Again, the backdrop of the city alone would be enough to make Interlaken a popular tourist destination.  However, it also offers world-class skiing and snowboarding in the winter, and tons of fun summer activities like skydiving, hang gliding, bungy jumping, white water rafting, and rock climbing.

Since I had already done most of those extreme activities in Queenstown before I visited Interlaken, I decided I should do something a bit more unique when I was in Switzerland.  I chose to go canyoning.

So, what is canyoning anyway?  Well, first you start out wearing a sweet wetsuit, jacket, lifevest, and helmet.  Then you basically just end up following your guide down a series of waterfalls with a combination of hiking, jumping, swimming, and rappelling skills.  It’s all a bit blurry to me now, but I remember that everyone had a great time.

Although I was just a backpacker when I visited Interlaken, my husband was lucky enough that his firm flew him out there a few years ago for a weekend hike.  Yes, we live in San Francisco, and his law firm flew everyone out to Switzerland to go for a weekend hike.  I was just a little jealous, to say the least.  Anyway, they stayed at a very beautiful hotel called The Victoria-Jungfrau, and it sounds like it would be perfect for honeymooners.  He said that the cleaning staff were like ninjas because he’d leave the room for a few minutes, and by the time he came back it would be spotless.

One drawback to both of our Switzerland experiences, neither my husband nor I remember anything remarkably positive about the food.  However, he did mention that there was a Hooters next to his hotel.  Just where you always imagined eating during your honeymoon, right?  The legend told is that the people who purchased the land adjacent to the hotel wanted to build a gift shop, but the hotel shut them down because there was already a shop in the resort.  To get their revenge, the neighbors built the most spiteful (yet profitable) thing they could think of… a Hooters restaurant.

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