The Travel Blog

Friday morning Matt and I got up at our usual early time and headed to Eleanor’s for breakfast.  This was the only other restaurant that had breakfast however this was a sit down, order from the menu place.  We snagged a nice table outside.  The service wasn’t great, considering I ordered 4 mimosas and only ended up with 1.  Anyway, the food was really good.  While we were eating there were a few birds scoping us out from a few feet away.  When we finally finished one of them hopped over to our table.  Of course, Matt and I are laughing.  We want to see how brazen the bird would be.  He did not disappoint, within a minute or so he quickly grabbed an item off my plate.  We thought this was hilarious and I even took pics while it was happening. 🙂

When we got to our chairs, L & C were already there waiting on us.  We all laid on the beach for awhile.  Around lunch we headed back to the main plaza.  And on the way there I stopped to buy a cute giraffe statue.  (I knew the vendors were set up so I had run to the room and grabbed some money.  We’d seen them the first afternoon but they weren’t there on Thursday so I was really excited to finally get my giraffe.)  We decided on Neptunes for lunch.  This was an open air type pavilion and turned out to be a nice place for lunch.

We went back to the beach for a while and finally a dark cloud appeared so Matt and I decided to go in for a nap.  After our nap we got ready for dinner.  Jill and Steve really enjoyed their candlelit dinner while in St Lucia so they set this up for us as an anniversary gift.  🙂  We got to our table a few minutes early and ended up having an impromptu photo shoot with one of the resort photographers.  Clearly Matt and I had done this before so our expectations were pretty low but what the heck!

Finally our server grabbed us for dinner.  The photo took a few more pics while we were sitting and was sent on his way.  The table was set up really pretty.  White chair covers with hot pink bows.  There were several of the beautiful pink and white hibiscus on the table around the candles.  Matt and I decided to each get different items to take full advantage of the menu.  For the most part we each really enjoyed our food, though his soup was much better than mine.  I wished I had had the same.  We also got a personalized menu with our dinner choices.  The outside had our names and date.  We opened them only to realize instead of putting Matt on the inside they put Phil!  We had a good laugh over this.  First Sandals tries to get me to marry Matthew Spencer and now I’m supposed to have dinner with Phil?  😀  Nice to see they were at least consistent.  Anyway, the meal was very nice and sweet.  We really enjoyed the experience.

After dinner we headed to the main pavilion.  We ended up at the Neptune’s bar chatting with a couple for Cali.  They were nice enough, but thankfully they were leaving the next day.  After a few drinks we headed back to the room for the night.

~k

Thursday morning we woke up around 7:30 am and were headed to downstairs around 8.  We ran to the beach and were able to find 4 chairs with an umbrella so we put down a few things and started walking to the main plaza.   It was sunny and beautiful out so I took pics as we went.  We got to the main plaza and went back to Bayside for the breakfast buffet.

After breakfast we headed back to the beach.  Since we hadn’t actually walked the beach yet, Matt and I decided to walk to the beach back to our chairs.  The beaches were beautiful with pretty white sand.  Unfortunately for me there were no shells to be found so I scooped up the small ones I saw.  We got back to our chairs and decided to keep walking to see if we could find L&C.  We didn’t see them when we got to the end of the chairs so we decided to keep on walking.  The resort property went a few hundred feet past the last of the huts but you could sign out and keep walking down the beach.  We took pics as we went and at one point I told Matt it felt like our own little deserted island.  It was so pretty to have the beach to our left and mangroves to the right.  Not to mention it was so serene and quiet.  We only ran into one couple headed back to the resort as we were walking to the end.

We got to the end of the sand and decided we could probably go further if we wanted but we’d have to walk in the water.  Neither of us were really up for that so we decided to head back to the resort.  I felt like I took about a million pics while we were walking and most of them turned out pretty well.  On our way back we saw a sea urchin shell (which I am still kicking myself over not grabbing) and then Matt spotted a starfish in the water.  I ran over to it and picked it up.  It was soo cool.  I barely had it in my hand when the little tentacles came out.  They felt like a caterpillar   It was weird and cool.  We took a  pic and I put him back in the water.

We finally got back to our chairs around 10:30 when L&C walked up.  They’d gotten up and eaten breakfast and then found us on the beach.  We laid out until lunch time and then the rain set in.  We all huddled under the umbrella for a few minutes and then L&C decided to run and get a table for lunch at Bluefields.  This was the only restaurant on our end of the resort.  Matt and I waited a few more minutes until there was a break in the rain and then we headed over for lunch.

After lunch Matt and I went back to the beach and hung out till about 3.  We headed to the room and took naps before getting ready for dinner.  We met L&C at Neptunes bar and then went to Jasmines for dinner.  After dinner we grabbed coffees and pastries from the Paris Cafe and found some couches by the fire-pits   We sat there chatting for a while before we headed to our rooms.

**Again, more pics to come.

~k

Matt and I woke up around 4am to get ready for our 7:30 flight to ATL.  We showered, dressed, got our things together and headed for the airport.  The security line was actually pretty long considering the time and date but the process was smooth and we were able to get through pretty quickly.  I grabbed some breakfast and looked at FB while we waited for our plane.

On the flight to ATL, we met an older lady from Raleigh.  She was sitting on the aisle seat next to Matt.  We hit a patch of rough air and she grabbed his arm.  She immediately apologized but we laughed and told her it was fine.  We started talking to her and found out her and her daughter were on their way to Jade Mountain in St Lucia.  Talk about WOW!  Not only that but they had a mountainside room.  Jealous!  It was a gift from her son in law for the daughter’s birthday and mother’s day.

The layover in ATL was pretty uneventful and soon we were on our way to Jamaica.  The flight was nice and I got some cool pics from the plane.  We think we might have been over Cuba but we weren’t really sure.  The flight was a little under 3 hours so Matt watched a movie while I read.

We landed in Montego Bay around 2pm local time (they don’t observe daylight savings time).  It was a pretty long walk to customs and once we were through we found the Sandals lounge.  This place was CRAZY!  There were people everywhere and unlike the lounge in St Lucia, we barely had time to freshen up before our bus was called.  A porter, un-associated with the resort grabbed our bags and walked us outside.  Matt wasn’t extremely happy about this because we weren’t told this up front, and of course you have to tip.  We got on a bus with 2 other couples and waited for a driver.  A few minutes passed and the decided to move us to another bus.  It turned out the girl that sat beside Matt on the ride down was on the other bus (she was an AL grad).

On the bus ride several of us began to talk and we found out one couple was from the ATL area.  We ended up staying with them while we were checked in and walked to our rooms.

The bus ride took about an hour and a half.  The roads were awful and I’m sure the trip would have been greatly shortened had we not had to come to a complete stop to pass over most of the pot holes.  The scenery was nice but in a dilapidated way.  There were numerous houses/structures that were mid construction, only you could tell it was finished.  No one was coming back to complete the project.  The houses were mostly small and many had large rocks on the roofs holding down the tin.  I didn’t get any pics from the bus.  The windows were tinted and well…yeah.  About an hour in we finally got to a point where we could start to see the ocean.  You could see the beautiful bright blues.

We finally got to the resort around 3:30 pm.  There was a long drive that took us to the main building.  We were greeted with cold towels and then proceeded to the lobby to check in.  Our group was seated and we were brought Champagne while we waited for the paperwork.  Somehow all the guys ended up filling out the forms so the girls went to the desk to put credit cards on file.

We got to our building and parted ways with the couple from ATL.  They were in the next village but we didn’t exchange room numbers.  Matt and I went to our room which consisted of a king sized 4 poster bed and a small love seat.  We had an amazing view of the pool and the ocean.  I not so patiently waited for the bell boy to bring our luggage.  I was ready to get in a swimsuit and grab a drink.  Finally our bags arrived and we headed out to explore.

There was a bar in front of our pool so we picked up drinks and headed for the main pool.  We noticed the sky was looking pretty dark but we kept going and by the time we got the main pool it started to rain.  We grabbed more drinks and ran to an umbrella to wait out the rain.  It only lasted 10 – 15 mins and then we headed back to our room.

We laid down for a little while then got ready for dinner.  We had no idea what we wanted so we walked to the main plaza and settled on Bayside.  They served breakfast in the morning but had a nice set up for dinner and we were able to sit outside.  After dinner we walked around just checking the place out when we ran into the ATL couple, Lauren and Chris.  We decided to have a few more drinks and headed up to the martini bar.  Everyone was pretty tired from the day so we turned in early but we told L&C we’d save chairs the next day and we’d see them in the morning.

***I’ll actually add some pics to this post when I get home and have access to my pics but for now here is the link.  These should be mainly from Wed and Thurs. http://www.kellysuzannephotography.com/?page_id=201

~k