One Month

Today it has been exactly one month since Jason and I got married! We are going to celebrate tonight with dinner at our favorite restaurant, Outback :) We also have an interview with a church tonight for a potential part time youth minister position. We would love your prayers about that.


Also to celebrate I'm going to finish up the honeymoon posts! Our last day in St. Lucia we started the day off with breakfast. After breakfast Sandals took us on a shopping excursion to buy souvenirs. Our first stop was the duty free mall where all the cruise ships come in. There were a few good shops, but most of the stores were jewelry stores. After the duty free spot, we headed to the craft market in Castries. This is where the locals go to sell things. It was anything from t-shirts to handmade jewelry. It was like a huge warehouse with stuff set up everywhere. Each person had their own section of the shelving to display their things.  We found a lot more stuff there, and actually got a better deal because the locals will bargain with you. They said they come out to this warehouse to sell everyday except Sunday. What I found most interesting is that they made so many things out of coconut! Coconut earrings, coconut, bracelets, coconut necklaces, coconut purses, coconut birdfeeders- all from the coconut shell! It's amazing!


These are the two bracelets and earrings we bought at the Market- all made of coconut!

After the shopping trip, we had some lunch and spent our last afternoon by the pool. We had a complimentary photo session with one of the Sandals photographers before dinner. Most of the pictures turned out good, but they wanted almost $10 a picture just to put them on a CD for us. Way to expensive! For dinner we headed over to La Toc again. They were having a Friday night street fair. There was tons of authentic caribbean food and a live band. It was fun, but we left too early because the fire breathers came right after we left! Back in our room, we got all our stuff packed up. We were actually ready to go home. Jason still wasn't feeling that great, and we missed our sweet Daisy Duke and our family. 


On Saturday we were up early getting ready to go. We had breakfast with our new friends who were also headed home. Check out was at 11 then we waited in the lobby for our shuttle to the airport. The ride to the airport was gorgeous. I love all the scenery in St. Lucia. When we got to the airport and got checked in we found out our flight was delayed almost an hour. It was frustrating. It meant longer sitting in the airport and later getting home. Our flight left St. Lucia around 3:40 and we arrived back to Atlanta right around 8:00. Jason's mom and dad came and picked us up, and were nice enough to bring us a burger! After getting Jason's truck from his parents we headed to our new place and back to Daisy! It was probably close to midnight by the time we got in and in the bed, but we were definitely glad to be home and in our own bed! :)


Here are some of my favorite pictures from our trip:

St. Lucia is a gorgeous island. Hopefully someday we will be able to go back!

No More Studying! :)

I have been studying non-stop for the past 10 days for my last two tests to get licensed as a pharmacist. I had the second test on Friday, and the very last test was today. Now that I am done with studying I can finally get back to updating our blog! I should find out in the next couple of days whether or not I passed these last couple tests. I did get a letter today saying that I passed the first test I took three weeks ago! Yay!


Back to the honeymoon, Thursday was our second to last day. We started the day off with our second breakfast in bed. This time we had it on our patio, complete with a view of the beach and the sound of the waves. It was yummy :) 


Unfortunately, Thursday was also the day that Jason started feeling bad. He had some drainage and was really congested. We checked with the Sandals gift shop, but they didn't have anything for sinuses. At this point, I was really wishing I had brought my Neti Pot! Believe me, I will not be leaving home without it again! We decided to walk down to the grocery store on the corner to see if they had anything to help. We found something that had sudafed in it, so Jason was good to go. Since we were there we also got some snacks for the trip home. We starved on the way down, so we didn't want the same thing to happen again! 


After our trip to the store, we headed out with the Sandals crew to go snorkeling. This time we went to a much better spot. There were a lot more different kinds of fish and lots of reefs to look at. The only thing that bothered me were the tiny jellyfish looking things that seemed to be everywhere! I tried to stay away from them, but there just seemed to be so many. Jason called them sea ants. Other than those things, it was a great experience. Once again, wishing we had an underwater camera!


After snorkeling, we went back to the resort for lunch and hung out at the pool for the rest of the afternoon. For dinner we headed back to Sandals La Toc to eat at Kimono's, the Japanese restaurant. It was Hibachi style. The food was pretty good, but not as good as the french restaurant the night before! 


Here are a couple of pictures of the beach at La Toc and the sunset!

Study Break!

I have literally been studying ALL day for my next licensing test! So I am taking a break to update about the next day of our honeymoon! :)


We slept in after all the excitement from the Joe Knows tour the day before! After breakfast we headed to the pool. We decided not to do aquacise and just relax. Then we decided to get in on the beach games for the day. Two other couples played with us so for the first two games we did boys against girls. Unfortunately the boys won both times. First we played bocci ball. Then horse shoes. Horse shoes was a close one, the girls almost won! The final game was cricket. The "playmakers" at the resort had to teach us how to play. It was pretty fun though! :)


Jason relaxing by the pool.

Playing bocci ball.

Cricket! Jason is the pitcher (they call it something else though)

After cricket we headed to lunch and spent the afternoon in the pool. It's so hot in St. Lucia that you have to get in the pool! 


For dinner we went to one of the other resorts, Sandals La Toc. We took a shuttle over there. It wasn't too far away, only 15 minutes. We went to the French restaurant, also called La Toc. It was definitely one of the best meals we had in St. Lucia. And we even got to have creme brulee for dessert; it's one of my favorites!

Good Vibes

On Tuesday we woke up to breakfast in bed. We got to have two free breakfasts in bed- one for getting concierge service and the other for being on our honeymoon! It was great. I wish we could have had breakfast in bed everyday!

After breakfast we got on the move for the Joe Knows St. Lucia Land and Sea Tour. By far the best investment we made in St. Lucia! We had a blast and got to see so much of the island.

First let me share the phrases and song of the day. Phrase one is "Good Vibes" the St. Lucia way of saying "It's all good". Everyone there says it ALL the time! The other phrase they like to use is "No pressure, No problem". Everyone is really laid back in St. Lucia. Then we had a song that they played about 100 times on the boat ride. It was so much fun! We even danced on the return trip. The song is called "The Bumper Sticker Song". Here is the link to youtube if you want to check it out! :)

The tour started at the Market Place in Castries. There we got on a speed boat to head around the island. Here is a map of the island. You can see Castries near the top left and where we ended up was down by the two mountains, the Pitons and the Soufriere Volcano. So we covered most of the Caribbean side of the island. It was absolutely gorgeous!

We took soooooo many pictures!!!

This is the harbor that we left out of in Castries. Our captain was Donovan and our guides were Big Willie and Big Al. They were so funny and really made the trip! 

Scenery around the island

Below is Marigot Bay. There is more water behind the palm trees on the left side, a secret bay. They said the British would hide their ships behind those palm trees to surprise the French.

 Up on the ledge were supposed to be some celebrity houses. They said George Foreman, Mick Jaggar, and Oprah all have houses on the island.

 Another village

Our first stop was snorkeling. Unfortunately we didn't take an underwater camera so we don't have any pictures to share. But we were able to see a lot of really cool fish and even some crabs on the ledge. We saw a few what looked like barracudas too! After snorkeling we continued around the island to the Pitons and Soufriere. The Pitons are absolutely beautiful! They are not the highest point on the island though. The highest point is Mount Gimie more toward the center of the island.

In Soufriere, we got off the speedboat and into a van for the ride up to the volcano. The volcano is active, but it lasted erupted over 100 years ago. They said it should erupt again sometime in the next 100 years. The volcano causes hot springs. There is also mud up near the volcano that the St. Lucians say is therapeutic mud. We took a mud bath and spread it all over us, then washed all of it off but our faces. They said the water was 108 degrees, so pretty hot! Here we are with mud all over us!

We also took a few shots of the volcano. You can see the steam rising from it!

We got back in the vans and headed to the waterfall. It was also a hot spring, but not quite as hot as the mud bath. It felt like bath water instead of a hot tub! There was a little hike to the waterfall so we got to see some cool things and hear about some of the plants that grow on the island.

The green thing hanging off the tree to the left of Big Willie's hat is sour sop. It is supposed to have medicinal value.

These are cat tails.

A beautiful view of the rain forest from the trail.

Down at the waterfall we washed the mud off our faces and took a few more pictures.

After leaving the waterfall we headed to eat some authentic St. Lucian cuisine for lunch. It was very tasty. We had tossed salad with vinaigrette dressing, banana salad, rice, red beans, papaya pie, baked chicken, and fried fish. We even had dessert- a little cake with raspberry ice cream. There was a little shop at the restaurant so we bought some bracelets as souvenirs. Then we got back on the speed boat to head back to Castries.

The view leaving the restaurant:

There was a huge cliff next to the restaurant where some of the locals were jumping off from up to 90 feet high into the water for tips! It was crazy! Here are some pictures of them jumping and swimming like crazy to the boat for a few dollars.

Next we stopped at the bat cave. We took some pictures, but the bats are really hard to see because the cavity is so narrow.

Here we are on the trip back!

Our next stop was the cove feature in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The one with all the skulls hanging down. We took a few more pictures there. And some people got out of the boat to swim, including Jason!

A beautiful view looking out into the Caribbean. God's creation is truly magnificent!

Another village on the way back...

Our speed boat dropped us off right at the beach of the Halcyon so we were able to go straight back into the resort and back to our room to rest. It was such an exciting day! Most of our pictures from the trip are from this tour. It was awesome! 

For dinner we stayed at our resort and tried out the italian restaurant, Mario's. It was okay, not the best we had though. I think we both agreed that the Joe Knows Tour was well worth the time and money! We give it 4 thumbs up! :)

First Full Day in St. Lucia

On Monday morning we slept in since we were so exhausted from the wedding and traveling. After the breakfast buffet we headed to the pool.

This is the Sunset Pool where we spent most of our time. They had another pool but it was mostly in the shade and not as much was happening there. It is hot and humid in St. Lucia so we could only lay out for a little bit before getting in the water. At 11 the trainer for the resort announced he was starting a water aerobics class at the pool. They call it  "aquacise". So Jason and I decided to give it a shot. It was only 30 minutes put it was tough. We had fun though! I actually really liked it!

This is a picture of another group doing aquacise on Wednesday. We were too lazy to do it that day. :)

We also went down to the beach and rode the aquatrikes on the water. They are these giant tricycles that you peddle on top of the water. It was pretty cool!

After lunch we talked to our concierge and planned out the rest of the week. She took care of all our dinner reservations and set up our snorkeling trip for Thursday. We also signed up for a land and sea tour with Joe Knows for the next day. When we headed in to the room to get ready for dinner we realized our backs were pretty sunburned. I couldn't believe it because we wore SPF 30 sunscreen! I guess being so close to the equator really makes a difference when it comes to sunburn. Jason said we didn't have a good enough base tan!

For dinner that night they had a Caribbean BBQ outside by the pool. The food was really good! Then a reggae band played for awhile. They sounded awesome!

Here is a picture of the beach. The restaurant we ate at the first night, The Pier, is in the picture on the left.

Here are some pictures of the beautiful sunset that night.

Our first full day was great. Up next is the Joe Knows tour!! :)