On the last weekend in October, we finally made it down to the beach for a quiet, relaxing weekend.  We hadn’t been back there since we got engaged in June 2010, and Phillip had been looking forward to some beach time for many, many weeks.  I also got in some camera practice on migrating butterflies.  Scenes from the beach:

Phillip's parents, Mark and Pat, beach-gazing.

Personally, I think this bird is pondering the vastness of the ocean and the meaning of his life on the edge of it. You can see it in his eye.

Phillip, all smiles after a weekend at the beach.

Trying to ignore the fact that our week in St. Lucia was already halfway over, we spent all of Thursday lounging by the pool.  We were so lazy we even had our butler bring us our lunch in our pool chairs.  And of course, smoothies all around.

Barnaby really embraced the island lifestyle.

And that was Thursday.  On Friday, we loaded up in another van to go ziplining in the rainforest.  I was extra nervous about dangling from a wire high above the ground, but ended up having so much fun.  Of course, the sight of Phillip in his headgear helped lighten the mood.

You can really appreciate it in profile.

There aren’t many pictures of me ziplining since Phillip was having some trouble working the camera, but that’s okay because as much fun as I made of Phillip’s headgear, I was required to wear a hairnet.  Ziplining was a lot of fun, but my day was really made when I discovered the snack shop had Mountain Dew!  In a can!

I'm a total addict and I hadn't had a Mountain Dew all week. Coke does a fine job of supplying my caffeine needs, but nothing beats a cold Mountain Dew in a can.

On Friday night, we had reservations at our resort’s nicest restaurant.  It was a French restaurant and the food was amazing.  Taking full advantage of our all-inclusive status, we had three appetizers, including escargot, and three desserts.

Our last full day in St. Lucia also happened to be my birthday.  We spent most of the day doing nothing in our favorite spot by the pool.  Never fear football fans, we also had a mini-tailgate in our room for the Alabama game.

On Sunday we had breakfast at the Italian restaurant and packed our bags.  We had such a wonderful time and hated to leave!  Hopefully, we’ll make it back sometime for an anniversary trip.  Until then: 

The next day, we were signed up to take a tour of the island.  Phillip had done some research before we left and the Joe Knows tour was the most highly recommended.  It’s a land and sea tour that lasts most of the day.  We started out on the Joe Knows boat with our two crazy tour guides, one of which was named Big Al (Phillip got a kick out of this).

We saw some beautiful scenery along the way and stopped for a photo op at the Pitons. 

The Pitons - the highest points on the island. Our tour guide took our pictures at various points in the day, always insisting that we do some silly poses. So, this is us being silly.

After this, we went snorkeling.  It was my first time to snorkel so it was a little awkward at first, but after I got the hang of it, I really enjoyed it.  The fancy camera is very fancy, but not quite fancy enough to survive encounters with water, so there aren’t any pictures of our snorkel adventure.

Then, we got off of our boat and headed to see the volcano. 

The island's active volcano.

We coated ourselves in the volcanic ash mud/clay/paste and took a quick dip in the sulphur springs.  There were several unfortunate cheesy photos (including the classic prom pose) our tour guide forced encouraged us to take, but those shall remain viewless.  They asked us to keep our face masks on until we reached the waterfall.

Phillip getting beautified.

Just your average Tuesday for me though.

We got back in our van and traveled to the waterfall park. After a short hike through the rainforest we ended up at a beautiful, warm waterfall.

Then, we went back to the beach for an authentic island lunch, including a banana casserole made with unripened bananas (which taste and feel more like a starch).  After lunch and a quick trip to the bat cave:  We stopped and went swimming in the Caribbean.  Finally, our tour boat dropped us off on our resort’s main beach.  It had been a long day, which our butler apparently knew, so he’d prepared a couple of surprises for us when we got back to our room. 

As I mentioned in Part I, I really loved this giant tub.

Joe knows, good vibes y’all.

The next day we spent the morning on the beach before going out on a snorkeling excursion.

The second round of snorkeling was the only thing we would change if we had it to do over again since our boat ended up taking us to the same place we’d been the day before.  It was still fun to see some more of the island on the way though.   And that takes us through Wednesday.  Stay tuned for the final installment of the honeymoon story, and then, back to reality.

After a fantastic wedding, Phillip and I were up extremely early the next day to head to the airport and catch our flight to St. Lucia for our honeymoon.  The entire flight was full of newlyweds.  I saw several new wives with matching “Bride” tank tops and even some with their wedding hair still up!

The lengthy flight and broken in-flight movie system gave me lots of time to get acquainted with my wedding present from Phillip - a super fancy camera.

Despite the early departure, it was a smooth trip and we arrived safely in St. Lucia that afternoon.  However, we still had an hour-long van ride to our resort.  We were the last couple in the van so Phillip sat in the front seat and I sat in the very back next to a nice couple from Canada.

That's Phillip, way up front by the air conditioner. You will NOT be seeing me as I had straightened my hair that morning to save time and by this point, it was way past an acceptable frizz level.

Once we arrived at our resort, we were surprisingly loaded right back on the van to be taken to a special check-in location because we were in a butler suite.  That’s right, we had our own butler for a week!  It was kind of awesome.  But anyway, we arrived at the Butler’s Lounge (although I think it’s more fun to call it the Butler Hut) and were immediately greeted with a fruity beverage and a sandwich.  I could tell this was going to be my kind of place.   We checked in and were shown to our suite:

This is not very scenic, but I LOVED this giant jetted tub.

Our balcony. We even ate breakfast out here one morning.

The view from our balcony. We were feeling pretty fancy.

We settled in and met our butlers for the week, Tony and Denver.  Then we went to Armando’s, the nearby Italian restaurant, for dinner.  We thoroughly enjoyed the all-inclusive aspect of our resort and frequently took advantage of trying multiple appetizers and desserts with our meals.

After sleeping for 12 straight hours the night before, we spent our first full day doing mostly nothing.  We started with breakfast in bed.  The ocean was rough that day so the beach was closed, but it was no great sacrifice to spend the day lounging by the pool.  The resort had three pools – a large pool at the main resort area, a medium-sized pool near our suite, and a small pool in another area of the resort.  We loved our pool because it had really nice chairs, was never extremely crowded, and was always really quiet.  Since Phillip and I are readers, we appreciated the lack of party music.

Our butler reserved us a couple of lounge chairs by the pool.

Our pool also had a bar in the middle of it and you could swim or float by anytime and grab a fruity cocktail, smoothie, or Coke.  My favorite was a banana smoothie, although Phillip preferred the Mudslides. 

And that was our day.

We had planned to go to the resort’s beach party that night, but a restaurant that we wanted to visit had a last-minute cancellation so we were able to go there for dinner.  This meant riding a shuttle to another of the Sandals resorts, The Grande.  It was very pretty, but we were so glad we were not staying there!  The guests there all seemed to be much younger and there was a lot of loud music.  Yes, I realize how old and un-fun this makes me sound.  But really, our goal was to relax on our trip and we just didn’t think we could have accomplished that at the larger resort.  Anyway, back to the story.  The meal at Gordon’s was probably our favorite from the week.  The atmosphere was incredible since Gordon’s is on a pier out in the ocean.  It was just beautiful.And so ended our first full day in St. Lucia.  In the next installment, Joe Knows…