Heavenly, pure perfection, dazzling, alluring, incredible...just some of the words that come to mind when reflecting upon our long overdue honeymoon! After 3 years of planning, replanning, and replanning a wedding again (which also included planning and replanning many aspects of our honeymoon), this trip to St. Lucia was more than welcomed and more than appreciated.
And, unfortunately unlike so many other parts of our COVID wedding, it fortunately exceeded expectations in all the best ways!
I started this blogpost back in March, but I'm just now getting motivated to finishing it and posting it. Oops! Who doesn't need a little escape to a tropical location as summer is winding down though?
Anyways, from the get go, Shane and I knew we wanted a place that offered tropical paradise (for me!) and mountains (for him!). We also knew that we wanted to do a Sandals all inclusive. We were so. over. planning...and really, can you blame us? Shane gets all of the credit for the planning that was required, and he gave us more than I could ever envision with this honeymoon.
In our typical fashion, we did have some initial hiccups as our flight was cancelled the day before. Agh! Shane worked diligently (through much of our farewell dinner with out of town guests) to make sure we got a new flight so we were able to make our connecting flight in time.
As we were heading to the airport the morning of (at about 4:30AM), the Uber that came to pick us up didn't have room for our suitcases. Therefore, we had to wait for another Uber at that time of morning. By time we got to the airport, we were cutting it kind of close, and we also realized that we needed a hard copy of documentation of our COVID tests to get into St. Lucia. While we had an electronic copy, we were missing a hard copy. Our Delta agent was an angel, and she sent it to her own personal email to print it off. That took some time, so she was feeling worried about us making it to our honeymoon. As a result, she had me cut about 200 people in line at security (yikes...) while Shane had his military TSA precheck, she waved us off to our gate, and then called our cell phone to make sure that we had made it to our gate in time and knew that we could board first, as military. What a saint!
After these issues, it was smooth sailing from here on out...which was very unusual for us, hah! Let me just say that we sure can get used to this easy way of living though.
St. Lucia was pretty strict about COVID, so after taking care of that at the airport, they shuttled us across the island and through the rainforest to our Sandals resort. By time we got there, it was evening, so went to one (of the six) restaurants on our resort for a casual dinner and walked around the resort a bit!
Here are just a few views of our beautiful resort!
The next morning, we went to the informational session/tour of the resort and then grabbed breakfast. Oh my gosh, the food at this resort- especially for a gluten-free girl like me. We ate to the point of pain at every single meal. I can't tell you the last time I ate so much, and it just kept on repeating meal after meal after meal! I love this pic because we just have that honeymoon bliss look on our faces!
Breakfast and lunch were always at this amazing outdoor buffet restaurant. With the tropical music playing, ocean views, and total island early morning vibes, breakfast was my favorite part of each day.
With it being a smaller resort (the smallest of the 3 Sandals on St. Lucia, which gave it a total community feel with the employees and other guests, which we loved!) the staff recognized me after the first meal or so, and they would serve up my AMAZING gluten-free baked items. Ahh, the best I've ever had! I went TO TOWN on this food at each and every meal.
The "party" pool, hah. Our resort was known for also being quiet and calm- our kind of place! We heard the other Sandals resort had constant partying and people throwing up in the pool in the middle of the day...definitely not the case at our resort!
When your bachelorette party (peaches for Georgia) swimsuit doesn't see the light of day on your bachelorette party, you give it a chance on the honeymoon!
Since this was back in January, the resort (and the whole island) was good about having everyone mask up at the entrance to the resort, the main "indoor" public area, having our bracelets showing we were vaccinated, and when walking in and out of restaurants. They were hardcore about temperatures and sanitizing too. They said they were at about 75% capacity at the resort so otherwise, we could kind of forget about COVID for a little. They were strict but it didn't impact or ruin our vacation in any way.
Cleaned up for dinner!
The next day, we did our first excursions. We went on a catamaran which took us to mud baths, a waterfall, and snorkeling. It was all so much fun!
I never really truly loved traveling until this husband of mine is now here to join me on all of the adventures!
The famous "must-do in St. Lucia" mud baths were right next to this volcano.
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Then we bussed on over to this waterfall. They had had very minimal rain, so it was definitely smaller than normal, or so we heard.
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Up next was snorkeling!
These following pictures are so relaxing to me. They take me back to the some of the beautiful pool sights I naturally snapped when sitting there and taking it all in.
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One last picture of a fruity smoothie to leave you with some vacation vibes. Ahh, I'm so happy just reliving this honeymoon through this post. Take me back! If you've never been to a Sandals, pick a random reason to celebrate and head there ASAP...and take me with you!!!
Meanwhile, at home with Cherry...Caylor wasn't missing us at all.
Cashy even did have his sweet moments with Cherry too!
Part of 2 of St. Lucian honeymoon coming tomorrow! Thanks for reading along and reliving this magical week in our lives!
This made me miss MY honeymoon 😩 - SB
ReplyDeleteLet's leave the kids and pups with Bar and Shane and go on a Sandals trip, haha!
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