Honeymoon - What We Did (Post-Hurricane)

As I left off, Hurricane Tomas hit St. Lucia on Saturday.  Hit hard.  What they thought would be a passing tropical storm ended up just kind of parking itself on top of the island for a full day and gaining strength to become a Category 2 hurricane.  Category 2 hurricanes have sustained winds of 96-110 miles per hour.  Yeah.  

So anyway.  We realized that the storm wasn't going anywhere, and neither were we.  The rain got worse and worse and we decided to hunker down with other guests in the Mirage.  They were showing movies and had board games out.  We watched more (terrible) movies than I care to think about - Grown Ups, Machete, Piranha 3D, Legion...a few more.  The only good movie we saw was Charlie St. Cloud.  We played Battleship and Boggle.  We ate our meals in the Mirage, bringing them over from the Bayside (it was mostly covered between the 2).  And we definitely took advantage of the open bar!  By the end of the evening, they were having a hard time keeping the rain out, having to sweep it constantly out the doors.  The rain was coming down in sheets.  I've never seen anything like it.  At one point during the afternoon, I ran back to the room for something.  The rain was just barely covering my feet.  When I returned, about 30 minutes later, the water was up over my ankles.  It was incredible.  Just after dinner, we decided to go back to our room and sit on the balcony and read.  Because of the overhang, we were actually able to do that - we stayed pretty dry!  But the rain and wind were so loud, I couldn't sit there for too long.  It was scary!  We finally went to bed, but I couldn't sleep.  I just layed there, waiting for the roof to rip off or for a tree to fall on us.  I finally was able to fall asleep by listening to the Harry Potter soundtrack on my iPod.  

Inside the Mirage.  Not sure which movie that is.

It's hard to see, but it's pouring.

The next day (Sunday), it was still raining.  So we spent another day in the Mirage.  Finally, Sunday night, the rain slowed and the sky started to clear.  We ate all meals at the Bayside again.  Just to keep track, that's 2 full days of nothing but buffet.  

Sunday night.  The clouds parted.

Monday the sun was kind of out.  We spent the morning exploring the resort and taking in all the damage that Tomas had caused.  It was really sad.  But we (the guests of Halcyon) were pretty lucky.  The resort never lost power and though they made us conserve water (no showers/toilets in our rooms from 10am-5pm), we had plenty of water.  Much of the island was not so lucky.  Anyway, after we explored, we spent the day at the Paradise pool.  The lounge chairs were wet and the pool was closed for most of the morning for cleaning.  But it was nice to be outside again!  On our way to dinner, we saw that Mario's was open, so we went in.  We were so excited to finally get to eat there!  Alas, it was still the buffet.  Boo....

A tree that fell on our building

Down at the Beach Bar

Some of the grounds, down near the Beach Bar

On the other side of the resort.

On the beach.  Yeah, that's a hubcap.

At the Paradise pool

Tuesday the sun was actually out, so we spent the day at the Sunset pool.  For dinner, we finally ate at Mario's!  For real!  Yay!  After dinner, we had drinks at the Irie Bar.

Taken by our favorite bartender, Rita!

Wednesday we had enough of the Halcyon.  We wanted to take a shuttle to one of the other resorts, but were told that the shuttles still weren't running.  Luckily, another couple heard us asking, and told us that they had taken a cab the night before.  So, we packed our bags and took a cab over to the Sandals Grande St. Lucian.  That resort was fully up and running.  Their beach was completely clean and everyone was out there!  We had a great day at the Grande.  We ate lunch at the Barefoot By the Sea restaurant, where you eat right in the sand!  I don't know why, but I was absolutely enthralled with this.  After lunch, we explored the resort a bit.  When we got to the lobby, we discovered a big board listing all the flights that had been cancelled.  Wouldn't you know?  Ours was cancelled!  I had checked my email that morning and gotten nothing from AmericanAirlines, even though I had signed up for e-alerts.  Grr...  So we rushed back to the Halcyon so we could start making calls to reschedule our flights.  Luckily, we were able to get on a flight just one day later than our original flight.  There were other people there who'd been stuck for 4 or 5 days!  Once we had that taken care of, we played some shuffleboard.  Finally, we got ready for our special night - our private candlelit dinner!  We had a full 4-course delicious meal and our own private waitress!  We also had a kitty guest with us throughout the entire meal.

The beach at the Grande

Barefoot by the Sea.

Shuffleboard

I beat Matt both games.

Dinner.  Best meal of the trip.

And finally, Thursday.  Our last day.  We woke up to delivery of our breakfast in bed.  It was quite lovely.  But we were still pretty over the Halcyon, and hadn't seen the Regency yet, so we got another cab and headed off to the Regency.  That resort was pretty nice, too.  We had lunch (pizza!) at Neptunes over-looking the beach.  We went to sit by the pool for a bit, but it started to rain.  So I scheduled an impromptu massage at the Red Lane Spa and left Matt to fend for himself.  Turns out, it stopped raining not long after I disappeared into the spa, and Matt sat back out by the pool.  We had dinner at the Regency, at the Cricketers Pub.  It was really yummy, and they had Guinness!  We had a great time there, but headed back to pack our bags and get ready to take off the next day.

Yum!!

Kisses!  On our way home from the Regency.

Friday morning, we woke up, finished packing, and gave our luggage to the porter.  We had breakfast and then just hung out, waiting for our taxi.  Around 11am, the taxi came and we were off to the airport.  Sad to say goodbye to the Halycon and our honeymoon.  But excited to get home and start our married life!