Our Honeymoon~ St. Lucia

Anyone recognize this image of the cliff? It's in a very famous movie staring a pirate named Captain Jack Sparrow... ok ok I gave away too much. It's Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl! Johnny Depp was filming right there! This island has had a lot of famous people and famous movies shot here. Alright, enough with the name dropping for now.... Just wait till you see some of the houses!

If anyone ever needs a vacation, boy oh boy is St. Lucia the place to go. This vacation/honeymoon marked many first times for me. This is the first time I actually needed a passport, I have only been out of the country 1 other time and that was to Mexico with Todd and my parents when we were 17.
It was also the first time I ever tried anything seafood besides the best fried calamari from my favorite place in the world....Olive Garden. More about food later..
Leaving our familes on Christmas was also a first for both Todd and I. This was not my favorite part of the trip, but since I am a teacher, I didn't want to take off time after the wedding, so this was the only logical time to go for myself and Todd. Our families are pretty awesome and were very understanding about the trip.

Besides this gave my mom a chance to "watch" our darling cocker spaniel Lou. That was pretty hard too, we love our dog like a child, but my mom gave me daily updates on Lou, he was a very good puppy, she said. Duh, I raised him.  Just kidding....



We arrived on Christmas Eve to the St. Lucia airport. We stepped off the plane and stepped into humidity. 84 degrees and sunny. However that changed rather quickly. We were shuttled to our hotel that was over 2 HOURS AWAY. St. Lucia has 2 airports one is directly right next to our hotel, did we go to that one? What do you think?

The airport right next to our hotel has a runway landing trip the size of a football field. Our big ol' airplane was a little too big for that.  That's okay, it gave us a chance to see the beautiful island of St. Lucia.  Maybe I was just a little sheltered, but as we were driving to the hotel, I have never seen such a poverty stricken area in person. The surrounding area outside of Castries, well even Castries itself is a very poor area. Todd said it best when he said that he has seen "chicken shacks nicer than some of the houses were these people lived."

This made me kind of guilty. Here we are, Americans coming to the island so we can bask in the beauty of their island, while these people are trying to rebuild their country after Hurricane Thomas did some major damage.  These roads are very hilly, and very narrow. Parts of the roads were destroyed by the landslide and  driving on those roads were pretty scary.


After our 2 hour shuttle ride, we arrived to our hotel. We were greeted with glasses of champagne and hotel towels that smelled of lemons. Still pouring down rain but we were there and excited to start our vacation.

We got acquainted with our room and our resort and decided to have our first of many "free" drinks. The beautiful thing about Sandals is no tipping, no bills for drinks or food. None. Zero. St. Lucia has 3 Sandals locations that everyone can go to at no charge and they are shuttled to the different places for free! Our resort was the Sandals Halcyon Beach (which I still have trouble pronouncing) it was the smallest of the 3 resorts, but we loved it, this place is the kind of the place is where the bartenders remember your names after the first couple of drinks! We met some amazing couples who were (suprise, suprise) teachers celebrating their late honeymoon like us.

The top picture is Paradise Pool, it's the main pool of the resort where we rocked Pool Volleyball. No really, we were awesome. Not much competition in the females here. I guess they weren't athletes.
The next picture is outside our door. Room 125! We were right next to the pool which was really nice to walk outside the door and see the pool, and the beautiful ocean!
There were cabanas all over the resort to relax!
Last but not least had to have a picture in the room of course!

This was our first day there and we decided to go to the Pier for Dinner.
When it comes to food I am very stubborn. I know what I like and if it looks or smells funny 9.9 times out of 10 I won't try it. However, this time it was different. I was "brave" enough to try jumbo shrimp (loved it) Mahi Mahi (also delicious) snapper (tasty) duck (still not a fan). I guess this goes to show I should step out my comfort box and try food a little more often!