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