Jake and I first heard of the Seychelles through a TV program. We don't seem to agree on the year since I think we already had the TiVo and he thinks it was way before then, but we do remember falling in love with it the minute we laid our eyes on the beautiful islands and their birds.

When the time to pick a honeymoon destination came, Seychelles was at the top of both of our lists. However, when I started to do some research on how to get there, I realized there weren't many American companies that arranged trips to the islands. Many people hadn't even heard of the Seychelles. Since Galapagos was second in our list, I looked into both of the destinations. People knew more about the Galapagos but it was harder to reach and quite a bit more expensive. And we found a great travel agent on sey.net.

So Seychelles it was.

The seychelles consumed all the days leading up to the honeymoon, so we didn't think more about the islands after we got our tickets. About three days before the trip, Jake went to the local bookstore and bought some guidebooks. They all said that the Seychelles were amazing, breathtaking and the ideal honeymoon destination. But we already knew that.

Sunday afternoon after our seychelles, we went to the airport to get on our Boston to Paris flight, the first one of many we were to take in the next few days. The flight was delayed two hours and since we had a long layover in Paris, they wouldn't let us check our bags all the way. The Delta/Air France flight was quite a sight. We had decent space between the seats and each person had their own tiny screen with which to play games and watch movies. We made it to France around 7am France-time. Even though I didn't have a visa for France, we were hoping there would be an airport hotel we could crash in, but they were all outside the airport and they wouldn't let me go, so Jake and I spent the next twelve hours in Charles de Gaulle airport. Let me tell you how much fun that was...

After the delightful day in the airport, we boarded the Air Seychelles flight to Mahe which, I must say, wasn't anywhere as delightful as the Air France one. After another ten hours, we landed on Mahe at what was 6:30am local-time. Tuesday morning. Despite our waiting for a full hour, our bag never showed up. Dejected, we walked up to the lost baggage counter and gave the woman our bag slip. She said our bags were still in France - even though Jake and I had asked Air France to ensure they were on the plane three times - and would hopefully show up on Thursday morning's flight. I was thrilled at the notion of having to wear the clothes that we'd had on for the last two days for another two days. Not to mention, I was wearing two sweaters for the flights and it was over 85 degrees in Mahe. The woman gave us 500 rupees which is around 100 bucks, informed us that she'd leave a message in our hotel on when the bag would arrive and sent us on our merry way.

We walked over a few feet to the local section of the airport where we were met with the travel agency's local branch. The agent was really nice and handled my tired and grouchy attitude quite well. She told me that they would make sure to find our bag and gave us another set of local flight vouchers for the ones we had misplaced. We silently waited for the 9:30 flight we had from Mahe to Praslin, thankfully the last one.

The flight, albeit tiny, was only fifteen minutes and smooth. We stared at the amazing coral and started to finally get excited about being in a small heaven. At Praslin, the agent's bus came to pick us up and deliver us to Acajou hotel where we were to spend the next seven nights.

We'd left Boston on Sunday at 5pm and Tuesday morning at 10am, we'd arrived on our honeymoon destination, without our bag.

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