"Our first transatlantic trip together was to Paris. We rented an airbnb in the 10th with a stray cat who would visit every other day."
"Of course we had more than our fair share of chocolate croissants and crêpes. We'd walk to the city center every day just to go to Amorino's."
"Mont Saint-Michel is an ancient city along the Atlantic coast of France... when the tide comes in, the castle turns into an island so we woke up early and walked the isthmus at low tide just around the break of daylight..."
"I remember walking around... the streets were totally dark and deserted. Then we saw a hint of light coming through a store window. We crept up to it, and what do you know—the whole place was filled with a hundred tourists having some elaborate feast!"
"Madrid is a truly electic city. We spent days just walking around all the town squares and gardens, eating tapas and paellas..."
"My favorite park is probably Retiro Park. I'd hoped to try boating on the lake, but we got there too late... unhelped by Matt wanting to stop for ice-cream."
"We both enjoyed the Alcázar so much that we couldn't leave."
"We would have finished walking around in under six hours, but then several curious peacocks wandered in front of us and I got distracted chasing them around."
"I wish we befriended that girl waiting in line in front us. She kept saying how she wanted to try out different sherry bars in the city—I bet she knows a thing or two about sherry."
"Instead, we went to a gelato bar and had fig cream-cheese gelato... to this day, it remains our gold standard for all ice-cream."
"We took a day trip to the Portuguese Riviera and got the most stunning views of the Atlantic. The hikes were a trek but were well worth it."
"I think we had a tougher time finding a mailbox there to drop off our postcards!"
"I don't even remember what we did with them. We asked a local where we might find a mailbox or a post office, and they just looked at us funny. If only he knew that one of us still writes with a fountain pen..."
"During the tail end of the trip to Portugal, I had been secretly communicating with a sheltie breeder in Sacramento. The breeder had a middle-aged, somewhat sedentary sheltie who was in need of a forever home."
"Well, Matt had also been visiting sheltienation.com and norcalsheltierescue.org slash available dot html every day and sending me pictures."
"Yes, that is totally true. The morning after we landed, I drove to get her... the breeder was getting emotional letting her go so I just snatched her and sped away."
"She is pretty bashful and shy... and she doesn't play fetch or do normal things that other dogs do."
"She doesn't know many things..."
"But she sure is cute!"
"The next year we went to Scotland—don't worry, we went in the summer."
"It was still devilishly cold and windy. Our tour guide kept telling us stories of wars fought over pieces of land here and there, and I just kept thinking... why? The Highlands were spectacular nonetheless. We stayed in a town called Portree, and it was the quaintest little town."
"We also had plenty of haggis. Well, Alex did."
"I've done scuba diving before, and love how it puts you in another world. So in 2017, I convinced Alex to go get scuba certified together. We went to Puerto Rico to finish our open water dives."
"I still think it was the best dive we ever did."
"I got really seasick the first day, but otherwise the dives were great."
"Well, Matt got seasick 'cause he took Zofran—nobody should ever take Zofran. It's poison. I got him to take Dramamine the next day and he was all better. See, I know stuff."
"After an exciting couple of days in D.C. and an eight-hour layover in Dublin, we arrived in Barcelona, jetlagged and exhausted. That didn't stop us from walking the whole length of La Rambla, or taking a day trip to Tarragona..."
"Or getting engaged at the Magic Fountain..."
"We celebrated in a way that Alex knows best: firing up the grill and making plenty of smoked barbeque."
"We were so glad that so many people joined, including Matt's parents and brother Kevin!"
"After visiting Matt's brother's family in Chicago over Christmas, we flew to Mexico for another scuba trip in Cozumel."
"On our last dive in Maui, I was too busy breathing and never noticed some giant octopus that everyone allegedly saw. So this time I went prepared—I got a GoPro to make sure I missed nothing. But there was no giant octopus this time."
"My parents came here for another visit early this year, just in time to witness the blooming of a pair of century plants, Agave americana, just below our yard. The flower stalks must be thirty feet tall!"
"Shelby is most excited because she knows that Alex's parents are the weakest link, so she gets to eat five times her body weight every day."
"One day, the idea just got in my head. For our engagement photos, I wanted to rent a vintage blue convertible; I wanted a videographer riding in a car in front and filming us driving along the California coast."
"And I said, what you're describing is some Hollywood music video. I might have rolled my eyes."
"But once an idea gets in my head, I won't give it up. So I looked all over and found the exact car—a 1965 Mustang GT. Blue. Cerulean, in fact! You can only drive it around Monterey, so we spent a weekend there and pretended to be cool."