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!

Honeymoon - What We Did (Before the Hurricane)

I told you all about the Halcyon here.  But what did we do on our honeymoon?

Well, on our first night, we took it easy.  We were tired and gross after our long day of traveling.  We checked in, got acquainted with our room, and then had drinks and watched the sun set at the Beach bar.  After a couple of drinks, we went to dinner at the Bayview.  After dinner, we went back to our room and sat on our balcony for a bit, then went to bed early.  We slept a lot on our honeymoon.

On our second day, we were still feeling pretty lazy, so we just layed around the Sunset pool.  We were invited to play a couple of games, but declined, and weren't bothered much after that.  It was a relaxing day, and we really needed it.  After a few hours at the pool, we needed to get out of the sun, so we went and relaxed on one of the beds in the garden.  Then it was back to the room for a shower and dinner at the Pier. 

Sitting on the balcony of the Irie bar, waiting for the Pier to open for dinner

A small storm off the coast.  I tried for about 5 minutes to get some lightening.

Dinner at the Pier

We tried to play chess.  I don't get it.

Day Three (Thursday) found us on our first (and only) excursion.  We took a catamaran down the coast to Soufriere.  From the port, we were driven up into the volcano, where you get to see/smell the Sulfur Springs.  Then we went to the Botanical Garden to see the Diamond Waterfall.   After that, they drove us up to this amazing restaurant with what has - hands down - the best view ever.  Once we had a our fill at lunch, we went back to the boat and headed up to Marigot Bay for some snorkeling.  It was Matt's first time snorkeling, and I'm pretty sure I was more excited for him than he was for himself.  I just couldn't wait to see his face when he got to swim right with the fishes!  And it was so worth it - he absolutely loved it.  When we got back to the hotel, we were greeted by a bottle of champagne chilling in our room!  We split our bottle of champagne and then had dinner at the Bayview.

Our catamaran

The Pitons

Our captain took a picture of every couple on the trip!

The town of Soufriere.

When we got there, there were 3 women bathing in this hot spring

Yeah...it was stinky!

Mineral springs.  People were bathing in this.  They say it's good for you.  I'll just take their word for it.

Cocoa beans!  Our tour guide even talked about Hershey!

Us at Diamond Waterfall

It's multicolored because of the different minerals in the water

At lunch.  Seriously.  Best. view. EVER.

This is the restaurant

I still haven't decided if this is natural carvings or not.

Yay!  Champagne

That was easily the best day of the trip.  It's sad, though, because Soufriere and the entire Southern end of the island was destroyed by Hurricane Tomas.  The road we drove up to get into the volcano basically doesn't even exist anymore.  It was entirely washed out by the rain.  Much of Soufriere was under water.  We were very concerned about that restaurant where we ate lunch.

Day Four (Friday) found us back at the pool, but this time we tried out the Paradise pool.  And we ate dinner at the Pier again.  

Matt at the Paradise pool swim-up bar

Friday night, during the night, the rain started.  It woke me up at one point, but since it had rained a bit every day, I didn't think much of it and went right back to sleep.  We were scheduled to go on our Zip-lining excursion on Saturday.  We were awakened by a phone call Saturday morning from the Tours desk explaining that a Tropical Storm had hit St. Lucia overnight, so our excursion was canceled for safety reasons, so they could check the lines and such.  We were disappointed, but figured we'd reschedule for later in the week, and headed out for breakfast.  We quickly found out that the Tropical Storm hadn't just "hit" overnight, but instead had parked itself on top of St. Lucia and become a Category-2 Hurricane.  More on that experience and the days after the hurricane next...

Honeymoon - Where We Stayed

Day Twenty-Two of Reverb is about Travel.  And I've been meaning to start our honeymoon recaps.  So...what better time than now?  I'll have to break this down into a couple of posts, and it may seem a bit scattered.  Forgive me.  I'll try to start off first with just describing the resort, then I'll tell you about what we did.  Then I'll go back and review everything. 

If you remember, we chose to go to Sandals Halcyon Beach, in St. Lucia.  It seemed to be everything we were looking for - quiet, serene, intimate - and it got good reviews on Travel Zoo and Trip Advisor.  We left the Tuesday after our wedding.  We didn't want to feel rushed after the hustle of the wedding, so we decided to wait a couple of days.  I'm really glad we did that, and if you can afford the time off from work, I highly recommend it.  Plus, flights are cheaper in the middle of the week.  We booked our stay for Tuesday through the following Thursday.  Again, on the back end, we wanted to give ourselves time to settle back into "life" before having to start back at work.

When we arrived in St. Lucia, they took everyone off the plane and put us in this big long snaking line to get through customs.  Which was fine - that's to be expected pretty much anywhere.  Once you got through customs, you went to find your luggage, and headed outside where there was total chaos.  I mean, complete and utter chaos.  You basically had to follow the crowd, find your resort name, and then wait to be told what to do.  Matt stayed with the luggage while I got in line, and stood there for a few minutes before I realized that I was in line for Sandals Grande St. Lucian.  I could skip the big long line and get our transport vouchers right away.  So I did that and we were hustled onto the bus going to the Halcyon.  There were 3 other couples on our bus.  We were not a chatty group.  In fact, 2 of the couples fell asleep on the drive there.  I dozed a bit, myself.  It's a long drive - about 1.5 hours from Hewanorra International, in the south, to the resorts in the north.  And it was a windy drive up and down the mountains.  Not for the weak-stomached, that's for sure.  I have a stomach of steel but even I was starting to feel a little woozy by the time we finally arrived at the resort. 

We pulled up and were ushered into the piano bar, where they gave everyone a glass of champagne, a cool towel, and a welcome envelope, which included our room keys, resort passes, and a map.  After that, we were escorted to our rooms.  One by one, the bell staff dropped us and our luggage off at our respective rooms.  Our room was simple, but nice.  High ceiling, island decor...pretty much what we expected.  It had a huge balcony that was partially covered by some flowering vines.  The balcony had a small cafe table and chairs.  There was a safe in the closet.  And the fridge was stocked daily with soda and water.  By the end of the trip, the housekeeping staff must've noticed that we weren't touching the Cokes and switched them out for what we were drinking - water and Sprite.  That was nice.  The bathroom was big, but the slat door offered absolutely no privacy - if you're at all "potty-shy," be prepared to ask your spouse to leave the room, or at least go on the balcony, cuz they'll hear everything if they're in the main room.  Just sayin. 

From the balcony

From the entrance

Our balcony offered a great view of the gardens.  You could kind of see the ocean, if you looked hard through the trees.  That was kind of disappointing, since we'd paid for the oceanview "upgrade" but the gardens were beautiful.  We were kind of off to one side of the resort, but also sort of smack in the middle of it.  The beach and beach bar were about 100 yards in front of us, the main pool (the Sunset pool) and all the restaurants were about 300 yards to the right, and the smaller pool (the Paradise pool) was about 100 yards behind us.  Plus, much of the walk from our room to the main entrance/lobby was either covered or heavily shaded, so when it rained, we stayed relatively dry.

View from the balcony

View from the door

Halcyon has three restaurants, plus the beach bar.  The beach bar is open from 11am-6pm, closes up shop for a while, then re-opens from 10pm-3am (I think).  For lunch or early dinner, they serve your basic beach bar stuff - hamburgers, pizzas, salads, etc.  For late-night, you can get help-yourself nachos and fries.  Each bar serves pretty much any mixed drink you could want, and they (of course) have their own menu full of signature drinks.  They also have 2 beers on tap: Heinekken (yuck) or Piton, which is a local light lager, much like a Heinekken, only without the skunky taste.  The beach itself is kind of...meh.  Not many people actually swam in the ocean, and few even hung out on the beach.  Most people stuck to the pools. 

First Piton at the Beach bar

The three other restaurants are all right in the same vicinity.  All clustered around the main pool, there is the casual Bayside restaurant, which serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner; the Pier Restaurant, which serves only dinner; and Mario's, which is the "fancy" place and also serves only dinner.  Also right there is the Irie bar and the Mirage, which is kind of like the activities center of the resort.  

Sunset pool and bar

Mario's restaurant

The Pier restaurant

Inside the Mirage

The Irie bar

If you walk through the Sunset pool area, you'll reach the other side of the resort, which is where the "oceanview walkout" rooms are, and you eventually reach the water activities area, where you can take out a small sailboat or a hydrobike. 

One of the two chessboards

Watersports area

Back behind our room was the Paradise pool.  That's where you go when you really just want to relax.  There are no games at the Paradise pool, and the music is played at a nice, low level.  There is a swim up bar, and several hammocks scattered around.  It's also where they serve afternoon tea (there are a lot of people from the UK here!).

Paradise pool

The resort grounds are really quite pretty.  It is all basically buildings tucked in among these very lush gardens.  Lots of hibiscus and plumeria blooming - it smells fantastic.  Scattered around the resort there are a couple life-size chess boards, shuffleboard courts (is that a court?), and dart boards.  The lobby is open, and across the parking lot is the gift shop, where you can find everything from t-shirts to keychains to bandaids.  Of course, they charge an obscene amount of money for these things (Um, I'm sorry, $30 for a bottle of sunscreen?  Really?!), so be prepared.  But, they also make you put $600 down for incidental charges, like purchases in the gift shop or photo shop or using the laptops from the front desk.  [Yes, they charge for that]  If you don't spend that much, obviously, you get it back.  But once you know it's "spent..." why not?  Ya know?

So anyway.  That's the resort.  Next up, I'll tell you about what we did.