Amazing Vacation!

We're back from St. Lucia! We had a WONDERFUL time and definitely were not ready to come back! Here is my long story of our vacation for those that want all the details... :) For those that don't care to read the whole thing, feel free to just scroll thru and look at the pictures. :) I tried to incorporate pics in the appropriate spot in the story to make it a little more interesting to read.

We got into St. Lucia late Friday night (the 4th). We stayed at a cheaper hotel the first night b/c it was midnight by the time we got in and we didn't want to pay the all inclusive rate at the Sandals hotel since we would be getting in so late. We had a BMW taxi driver waiting at the airport to pick us up when we got there. Oh yeah...let me back up and say the flight from San Juan to St. Lucia was a bit scary. We were on a propeller plane with a youth mission group from Illinois. Michael kept saying he had a feeling we would crash or something bizarre would happen and that no one would know that was our flight since 99% of the flight were high school youth group kids. So after we take the BUS out to the plane and get on...we sit there a while and then once we start speeding the runway, all of a sudden we slam on the breaks and pull off the runway. Turned out one of the sensors was out so we had to go back and let maintenance come and fix it. I'm just glad they realized the sensor was out when they did and not when it was too late! eek!

Anyways, so we flew into the teeny tiny airport in St. Lucia. It was more the ideal location because it was in the city where we were going, but we land on this tiny runway in between two roads filled with cars, go to the end of the runway and come to a complete stop, and then the plane turns directly around and heads back up the runway to the little airport building. Interesting. So anyways, we make it to our hotel for the first night, the Coco Palm. It was actually a really nice hotel. When they showed us to our room, there wasn't a bedspread on our bed - so they took us to another room. Turns out they upgraded us to a suite with a separate living room and two seperate bathrooms. It was so nice!! We slept in Saturday morning and then took another taxi over to the Sandals to start our vacation! The taxi rides alone were quite interesting. They drive on the left side of the street there and the steering wheels are all on the right side of the car...so bizarre. And they honk at everyone! The island itself was just beautiful...tons of mountains everywhere and so pretty! The water was amazing and so many different shades of blue. We both agreed that the island and city seemed a lot nicer than what we saw in Jamaica....but we also only really saw the capital of the island, so not really sure what the rest looked like.


Anyways, we got checked in at the Sandals Regency. The resort was gorgeous. It was a really huge resort...had 6 or 7 restaurants, multiple pools with swim up bars, and a nice beach. We just got a pretty basic room which worked out great. We overlooked the spa and golf course, but to the left you could see the ocean.

(Looking to the left out of our balcony door)

Looking down over the main pool

Playing in the pool!

Saturday we just spent time walking around the resort, laying in the hammocks, swimming, and then we headed to our couples massage at 3pm. My part of the massage was quite nice - my girl went a bit crazy with some of the sore spots in my neck and legs, so I finally had to say something. I didn't hear too much from Michael who was on a table just about a foot away from me. Turns out his experience wasn't really the best. He said his lady popped his neck and other wierd things which resulted in him having a whiplash feeling the rest of the week. :( Poor guy....not the experience he was hoping for in his first professional massage. So it wasn't really as heavenly as we hoped, but at least we can say we tried it.

Sunday we just played in the ocean and the pool all day...so relaxing! The water was perfect with just a few little waves coming in every once in a while.

My silly hubby getting lathered up with SPF 50 for the day.

Monday, we took the free shuttle over to the other 2 Sandals resorts on the island (one is 15 minutes away and the other was 30 minutes away). It's one of those things where you stay at one Sandals resort, but you can play and eat at any of the others on the island. So we went to the Grande first (the most $$ one on the island). It was really pretty!

(view at the Grande resort on the north part of the island)

Then we headed to Halcyon Beach (the smaller and cheaper one) and played some shuffleboard there since our resort and the other one didn't have it! Unfortunately I didn't dominate in shuffleboard like I hoped and ended up being sore for two days afterwards...haha. Oh well, we always have a blast playing that.

At Halcyon Beach resort - they had gorgeous flowers everywhere!

Tuesday, we woke up and I could hear the waves crashing when I opened the balcony door in our room. Once we went down to breakfast, I noticed that they had a red flag up indicating the tide was too strong so we wouldn't be able to swim in the ocean that day. But we had fun at the pool, playing games, etc. Tuesday night we had dinner reservations at the Japanese restaurant called Komono's - basically like a Benihana restaurant. It was pretty good and was a really fun dinner. It was fun to talk with all the other couples at our table. It's fun b/c once you talk with people you end up seeing them around the resort all the time, so you kinda feel like you start making friends there. :)

Dinner at Komono's Japanese restaurant

Wednesday, the red flag was still up and OH MY! You would not believe how huge the waves were!!! They had to have been at least 10 foot waves! Luckily the resort has a kind of sea wall built up b/c the water was smashing into the wall like crazy. We got some really neat pics of the huge waves though and everyone had a lot of fun just watching the waves crash.
So we decided to go back to the Grande resort for the afternoon. When we were over there the first time, we noticed two huge hill/mountains that were part of a park where you can go and climb the hills to an old British fort from the 1800s called Fort Rodney. So we took our tennis shoes and hiked up to the top of both hills. It was so neat (and quite scary at times), but we got the most gorgeous pictures there of the island...it was just breathtaking!

(getting ready to climb hill #2)

My favorite pic from the whole trip...this was on the hike up.

View from the top We made it to the tippy top!

We headed back that night for our other dinner reservations at our resort at the french restaurant called La Toc. It was the fancy restaurant where they serve you wearing white gloves, etc. It was SO yummy! We were both quite stuffed.

After dinner at La Toc

Luckily Thursday, the waves had calmed down and they had the yellow flag back up. So we swam in the ocean a while and played in the remaining big waves that would come periodically. But after me just about losing my bathing suit 5 times and Michael getting cut up by some rocks, we figured we should probably call it a day. :) So we went kayaking and snorkeling instead. The snorkeling trip was so neat. They took us in a boat probably 10 minutes south of where our resort was to this bay with some amazing coral. We saw the neatest and most colorful fish - small and big ones! We even saw an octopus that our snorkel guide went and got to wrap around his arm!

So those were pretty much our days! The evenings we would go and listen to a St. Lucia cowboy sing country songs at the casual restaurant and even did a bit of dancing! On some nights they would have entertainment in the main pavillion restaurant and then the other nights we would just play cards or watch the big waves. :) We enjoyed some very yummy drinks while we were there too. Swim up pool bars are such a fun thing. hehe Their specialty drink there is called a "Dirty Banana". They put a whole banana, rum, coconut creme, milk, and coffee liquoeur (sp?). Oh goodness, it is quite tasty!! I consumed quite a few of those during our stay. hehe

Michael enjoying a dirty banana.

Few lessons learned on the trip...

1. Don't drink a glass of champagne followed by a Dirty Banana on arrival day when you haven't had anything to eat all day. (hehe)

2. Don't wear flipflops just because they match your bathingsuit when they end up getting super slippery on wet tile resulting in me almost wiping out about 5 times in front of huge groups of people.


3. Take more than one tube of SPF 50 sunscreen when having to reapply to Michael 3-4 times a day. ;)

So that was our trip! We get our underwater pictures developed tomorrow, so I will try to scan and add a few of those too. I'll also try to add a couple of videos soon, but those take forever to download and it's taken me hours to post this as it is! :)

Here are a few other pics: