St. Lucia Honeymoon part 1

Catch up on Part 1 of our love story here, Part 2 here Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, Part 8 here, Part 9 here, Part 10 here

I know everyone says the honeymoon is the best part of getting married {get your mind out of the gutter!} but for us, it really was! After months of planning a wedding, Cory graduating and starting a new job and buying a house, we needed to recuperate. We spent seven incredible days at the Sandals Grande St. Lucian! A St. Lucia honeymoon was the perfect way to start our lives together.

We loved everything about the resort and the employees were the friendliest people I’ve ever met. They were willing to do whatever they could to make our honeymoon perfect. In my opinion, you really can’t go wrong with all-inclusive. It was so nice not having to worry about how much money we were spending or who we needed to tip. I just can’t say enough positive things about our time at Sandals.

The first couple days looked very similar.  We purposefully didn’t plan too much on our honeymoon but especially didn’t plan anything on Monday and Tuesday. Our days looked something like this…breakfast, beach, pool, lunch, pool, beach, dinner and hanging out in the lobby. Every night they had live entertainment in the lobby and bars {and it was all open, facing the ocean} so it became one of our favorite spots each evening.

Sunday

Technically, this was Sunday because it was almost 2 am when we got to our hotel in Charlotte but we were too excited to sleep and dug into our food that Cynthia, our wedding planner, had packed in our car. Greatest idea ever! We were starving and gorged ourselves on all the delicious food we didn’t get to enjoy at the reception.

7:00 am take off came early but we were so ready to be in St. Lucia, we didn’t care. Before this trip, I had never flown so I was giddy about getting the chance to. We had a short flight to Atlanta and then about a 5 hour flight to St. Lucia. I seriously would have slapped someone to have a neck pillow, though. Lesson learned, Sloan. Lesson learned.

After we arrived at the airport, we had about an hour drive to our resort and I’ve never felt closer to death. Our driver was freakin crazy. At one point, I just knew we were fixing to maul a goat standing in the middle of the road because our only other options were to swerve into oncoming traffic or off the side of the mountain. I just closed my eyes as the drive laid down on the horn and somehow we all survived. goat included. We finally arrived at the hotel and immediately were greeted by staff, our luggage was taken to our room and we were handed drinks to sip on during check in.

At this point, we were pretty tired. It was almost 4pm and we were going off about 3 hours of sleep. The majority of the people on our plane were heading to the same resort so check in took awhile. We found a comfy place to sit down and wait to be taken to our room.

I loved our quaint little room! We opted to save a little money and get a room facing the gardens rather than the ocean and honestly, I don’t regret it. Sure, it would have been nice to have a balcony but we really didn’t spend much time in the room other than sleeping and getting ready.

We rested for a while and than got ready for a late dinner. For the first night, we ate at the Olde London Pub. Let me just say, we didn’t have any bad food all week but this place didn’t really stick out to us. That ended up being the only time we ate there.

When we got back to our room, we had champagne waiting on us with rose petals spread all over the place. We also had a menu for our room service breakfast the next morning so we filled it out, put it on the door and called it a night.

 We wanted a little of everything so that’s what we got. All-inclusive, remember?

Monday

We were a little embarrassed the next morning when all this food was delivered. We knew it would be a lot but I guess we went a little overboard. As you can see, we killed most of it and headed down to explore the resort.

Apparently, it never rains in St. Lucia. Some of the employees told us it hadn’t rained in months until we got there on Sunday. It mostly just drizzled a few times but was pretty overcast the first two days. We didn’t let it stop us though.

Cory met Peanuts and bought an conch shell from him. He told us that he dives for these and sells them for a living. Was it the truth? Who knows but he was a fun little guy to be around.

Monday night they had a beach BBQ that got moved inside because of the rain but we still had a good time. They had fresh coconuts, St. Lucian dancers and a live band.

Tuesday

Tuesday morning we had breakfast at Bayside Restaurant and I’m sure I had a big cheesy omelet {they became my go to breakfast throughout the week}.  It was a little windy on Tuesday so after breakfast, we headed down to the beach and grabbed some canopies for our chairs.

Lunch on Tuesday was at Barefoot by the Sea and this quickly became our favorite restaurant. It was right on the water, so you could squish your toes in the sand while eating an awesome burger.

After lunch, we headed back down to the ocean and found us a hammock. Is there is anything more relaxing than a hammock on the beach???

Okay…I take back what I said before. Dino’s Pizzeria became our favorite restaurant and Barefoot by the Sea was a close second. I can’t even tell you how many of these little pizzas we ate throughout the week but I’m gonna guess and say at least two a day. They were so good and they would bring them to you poolside. Heaven on earth!

See how skinny I was? I definitely didn’t leave that skinny after the 413 pizzas I ate while I was there.

For dinner Tuesday night, we had a late reservation at Toscanini’s so we headed back to the pool for a little while before we got ready for dinner.

After dinner, they had a chocolate fondue party happening in the lobby with live music so we indulged and had our second dessert of the night. I’m not really sure what this girl was supposed to be but I think she was supposed to be a chocolate goddess?

Next Wednesday, I will share Wednesday and Thursday of our St. Lucia honeymoon including the excursions we went on. I promise, the latter part of our trip was much more exciting than the first!