The Honeymoon
Sandals - St. Lucia in the Caribbean

December 30, 2001 - January 6, 2002

The day had come and gone and what a day it was.  The wedding went off flawlessly - everything from Hilton's arriving on time to the cutting of the cake.  The kids were awesome, the parents were proud, and the bride was beautiful.  But now it was time for fun, relaxing, and sun at the St. Lucia all-inclusive Sandals resort.

We left the synagogue at around 2am or so in a cab to the Miami Airport Hotel which is attached to the terminal from which we were to leave.  We had decided to catch the 7am flight to give us a good portion of a full day at Sandals versus catching the 4pm which arrived in the evening.  Do the math - leaving the ceremony at 2am doesn't give us much time with the newly imposed 2 hours check-in time.  Amy was confident she would get in at least 1 or 2 hours of sleep, but Hilton knew this was just not going to happen.  We arrived at the hotel, popped up to the room and headed straight for the shower.  After emerging all scented, I smartly set up the CD player speakers to add some ambiance to the room and set that, you know, wedding night scene.  It became all to obvious to newly married Amy that there was no sleep in her immediate future.  Add together a long shower and an hour or so of late-night cuddling, and before we knew it, we were packing and leaving the $150 room, or $75/hour room, to check-in for our first hop of two.

Getting There

When Amy needs to sleep, Amy sleeps.  She could no longer keep her little eyes open and literally collapsed on the airport floor while I inserted match sticks between my eyelids and started reading the manual of my newly acquired Sony DSC-P5 digital camera.  What a gift!  I've been wanting a digital camera for ages especially to capture the moments of my Angel Flights and other noteworthy events.  We went to board the plane and Igor decided I was to be the one who was to remove my Nikes.  Afterwards, Amy and I settled down in our seats.  Amy awoke a while later at 35,000' asking me when we were going to take-off.  She slept most of the way to San Juan.  From there we boarded the turbo-prop American Eagle ATR-72.  We were not aware that St. Lucia had two airports.  As luck, planning, or a good travel agent would have it, we landed at the smaller airport just a 10-minute drive from the resort.  The larger airport to handle the Boeing and Airbus aircraft was on the other side of the island and a much longer 50 minute drive.  In fact, this airport had one wide runway and no taxiways.  Airplanes therefore landed and did a 180° turn on the runway to taxi-back to the terminal.

The humidity slapped us in the face as we left the plane and walked to the terminal.  Our bags were through in a flash and customs was a non-event.  Someone from Sandals was waiting for us and plonked us in a cab together with another couple for the same resort.  The drive took us around the small harbor, past some run down houses, and up a slight incline to the resort.  We were taken to the main area, then transported via shuttle to the suite check-in up the hill.  Thanks to Eddie and Patsy, our room had been upgraded to a suite.  We left our bags outside after being assured of their safety.  This was something we figured out during the trip.  The resort job is a prime job on the island.  Employees are expected to be honest and be very polite and provide great service otherwise I guess the supply-demand curve takes effect.  They suggested we walk around and do stuff while the room is cleaned for us.  At around this time, Mother Nature set the stage with a warm and sudden downpour.  The locals ignored it like it wasn't even happening, while Amy and I were like, look, rain!

The Weather

And so it was for the week.  Apart from Thursday (rained all day) and Friday (sunny all day), every day was the typical tropical weather - periods of hot sun and periods of warm rain - otherwise known as Liquid Sunshine.  We quickly discovered that the best way to 'brave' the rain was to cover up the essentials (I'm referring to the books etc here) and head for the jacuzzi after grabbing a couple of Pina Colladas.  After 15-20 minutes or so, the sun once again peeked out the side of a cloud and on went the suntan cream.

The wet ground and hot climate made for the perfect environment for plantation growth.  It also made the ground slippery and on our first venture from our room down the hill to the main pool area, I took Amy on a short-cut.  Turns out that despite it being the straight-line path, took twice as long as walking the road - it was also a little embarrassing to be told at the bottom "You should use the stairs over there."  The rain had made the path very slippery, but fortunately we made it down safely and none the worse for wear.

The Sports

I strategically packed my workout gloves.  Hey, why let the honeymoon disrupt my intense exercise routine?  :)  The fact of the matter is, is that I never once took them out of my bag despite the really nice workout facilities.  Why?  Cause I was distracted by other sports.  My usual day was to wake up around 10am, by which time Amy was already soaking up the sun.  I would then figure out which of my dirty clothes to wear - yip, I ran out of clothes on the second day as I had planned to wash clothes at the Birnbaum's house, but found myself mostly at the hotel.  Anyway, I would eventually leave the suite around 11am which would give me an hour or so at the pool sipping on one or more Pina Coladas.  Then lunch would start at 12:30pm and we planned to be there at the opening.  Then after lunch, we would go back to tanning and reading for an hour and then I'd find myself in the pool playing pool volleyball.  Pool volleyball wasn't that great, but entertaining nevertheless.  The game often degenerated into the simple object of bashing the ball back over the net in one hit.  Anyway, I used the game a a warm-up for the beach volleyball.

Beach volleyball was the highlight of the sports for me.  The game would start at 3:30pm and we'd play a best of three.  After that, some people would leave, but a core group of us stayed to play more.  With the heat, humidity, and direct sunshine, we sweated bullets, so every time we hit the sand, the sand stuck pretty well to the sweat and sun tan lotion.  The games were really good, I love diving in the sand and the leg workout really showed as each day, the hike back to the room got harder and harder.  Amy also played beach volleyball one day and added consistent serving and some good play to the team despite continually moaning about sand on her tushy.

The property was setup very well.  There were three pools, jacuzzis, and pool tables.  We played pool a few times and on the last night we even managed to find a snooker table.  I have been explaining to Amy how much better snooker is than pool and on Saturday night I met up with an able and willing Caribbean for a quick game of snooker.  It was fun to once again play on a real-sized table.  Amy and I had fun showing off our newly acquired rings.

Our vacation was mostly just relaxing, but on Thursday we planned to go SCUBA diving.  I am a NAUI Open Water I certified diver, but decided to take the free Resort Course with Amy for two reasons: I haven't dived for a while now and I thought it would be the honeymoon thing to do to be with Amy.  We woke up very early and headed down the hill to the beach and our lesson in the pool at 8:45am.  Troy introduced himself and setup our equipment for us.  Amy was very attentive during the 30 minute classroom session and learned the hand signals very quickly.  Then it was time for the pool session.  All five of us donned our buoyancy compensators (BC).  There are two primary diving organizations - NAUI and PADI.  NAUI calls the buoyancy compensator a BC, whereas PADI calls it a BCD as in Buoyancy Compensator Device.  Sounds silly to me.  I guess then I should put my fin devices on my feet and my snorkel device on my face and my watch device on my wrist.  Anyway, I digress.  Amy looked quite cute all dressed up - wish I had taken my camera.  Troy had us put our faces in the water sans mask and try breath through the regulator.  I even found it uncomfortable, and I guess the whole thing overwhelmed Amy.  She decided to spectate rather than participate.  After a few laps around the pool, doffing and donning the mask and regulator underwater, it was time to hop on the bus and go to the boat.  So Amy had it tough lying in the sun and reading while I crammed into the mini-bus with others and headed down to the harbor which happened to be within walking distance of the small airport.  As we were leaving the harbor, a Boeing 727 flew directly over us perhaps just 50' about us - wow!  The boat trip was about 15 minutes.  The dive was average, somewhere right in the middle of my best ever dive and my worst one.  One of the younger guys was flailing around and using way more energy than necessary.  I tried to get him to relax, but to no avail.  After about 10 minutes, he had had enough and popped up to the surface.  I had only used half of my air in 40 minutes by the time Troy decided it was time to return to life above the oceans.  The dive was only at 25' - less than about half of my maximum depth of about 54'.

The Food, Drinks, and Service

Gotta love these all inclusive resorts.  Now I'm no big drinker.  My drinking consists of a once a month tot in a hot chocolate.  So it's at times like this when I tend to indulge a little.  I became quite the Pina Colada connoisseur.  If we had to pick one thing we liked best about the honeymoon was that we never used, or even saw, money throughout the week.  I bought a shirt and some sun tan lotion, but other than that, I locked away my wallet at the start on the week and unlocked it when we left.  The biggest decision was not whether or not to go a restaurant, but simply which one at which to eat.  The food, in contrast to Cancun and Porta Vallarta, was always fresh, always good and tasty, and always plentiful.

The Arizona was a very casual outdoors take-out type with chicken burgers, french fries etc.  We ate there the first afternoon, but that was it.  The Caribbean Restaurant gave us a taste of the islands.  It was directly opposite Herbie's sing along bar where the piano player cum singer was horrible, but very entertaining if you were drunk - I guess.  There was an Italian Restaurant at the suite concierge.  On New Year's evening, we ate at a Benihana wannabe restaurant.  The food was OK, the chef was entertaining, but the best part was that we had a very social time and met up with a few couples including Lauren (and husband Luke) with whom I played beach volleyball everyday.  A funny part was some body builder guy who kept asking "What's for dessert?".  Amy looked cute with the chopsticks.  By the time desert time came, the restaurant was out of dessert.  The day was saved by a run down to the "La Toc" French Restaurant for some crème brule by one of the waiters.

The "La Toc" French Restaurant was the best by far on the property.  Joel, Renee, Amy and I ate there one night and it was a long dinner, almost a full three hours.  While the service lacked promptness, the food was excellent, especially the crème brule - again.  Yummy!

On our last night of the honeymoon, we ventured to the other Sandals property - Hacyon.  A smaller resort, but nice.  Apparently there is a daily trek from the Halcyon to the resort at which we stayed as it has more activities etc.  We had about 30 minutes before our dinner reservation and had a quick game of shuffleboard after the mandatory pina colada at the pier restaurant.  The Italian dinner was great, but Amy was sad that it was the last night of the honeymoon.

All in all, the all-inclusiveness of the resorts, the hassle-freeness of the food and drinks really added to the relaxed atmosphere.

The Room

Patsy and Eddie upgraded us to the suite.  This really helped us enjoy the honeymoon.  The room had an upstairs and a downstairs - the upstairs being the bedroom and bathroom and the downstairs was a lounge with a TV and a small drinks bar.  Oh, and the drinks were free.  As usual, Amy and I were going to sleep and waking up at different times, so the two rooms was an important feature for the three of us.

The Flight Home

We were sad to leave the land of relaxation, but it was time to go.  A small touch was that lunch started at 12pm versus the usual 12:30pm for people catching the 12:15pm shuttle to the airports.  We shoveled that down and caught the shuttle arriving at the airport early to check-in.  Then it was through to the small and somewhat crowded boarding area for two hours - Amy read, Hilton watched planes.  The view out of the window of the island was great despite the 20 minute wait before take-off - it was going to be close to make our connection in San Juan.  We arrived in San Juan making our approach through the weather and some rain.  Cutting to the chase, we waited an hour and a half for our bags - ridiculous.  We flew through immigration and customs in a flash, but our connection flight was long gone.  We were told to join the American Airlines Customer Service line.  Amy joined it, Hilton went for customer service we could get this decade.  I walked outside the secured area and walked up to the First Class ticket agent.  Using the best 'foreigner accent' I have, I left the counter with round-trip taxi tickets and dinner, breakfast, and lunch for two as well as a room for the night.  Oh, yes, and an upgrade to First Class!  We knew that there was no other connections out, so I had resigned to the fact that our honeymoon was extended for a day - we were happy about that, but unhappy by the fact that we would miss one day with the Birnbaums in Florida.  I went through security to find Amy - she had moved forward about 5'.  I'm sure she'd still be in line if the friendly ticket agent hadn't helped us out.

We bundled into a cab with another couple also stranded by American Airlines.  We checked-in soon after Amy discovered that we were going to stay at a casino - we're talking a big smile.  I snapped a few pictures of the huge fish tank in the foyer that contained coral and some fish, including the poisonous Lion Fish.  Our room had a nice view.  After dinner, we checked out the casino, but the tables were full and we didn't feel like the smoky atmosphere.  So it was up to the room to once again run through the pictures we had taken.  The following day it was off to the airport once again after a quick breakfast and lunch at Max's.  Before we could check our bags, we had to send them through an agricultural checking machine.  That broke, so by default, all bags thereafter  passed the test and got their little red sticker.  First Class rocks, but if we were to always fly First Class, there is no way we could keep the pounds off.

Patsy came to pick us up at the Miami Airport, and took us home to the welcoming committee.  What a wonderful honeymoon.

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The main hotel building.

The buffet downstairs, pool tables above that, and La Toc on top.

A view from water level.

The pool bar on the right.

The beach view.

Our SCUBA dive was around this corner quite some distance.

Relaxing at the pool.

We spent a lot of time here.

Night view at the pool and bar.

When the sun set, the pool was just as nice.

The tropical weather.

Sun, clouds, rain, sun, clouds, rain - everyday.

Would you like a game of chess?

Don't believe Amy if she says that she beat me.

Our view from our perch.

We lay under the trees with the pool volleyball court right in front of us.

Sweating bullets at volleyball.

I loved playing volleyball - I lived for volleyball.  It was a great workout.

Sipping of da vino

The Italian Restaurant was pretty good, if you knew what to order.

Flames!!!

This shot was partly skill and partly luck.  I'd like mine medium-rare please.

Shnuggling in the hammock.

We only discovered these on the last night - unfortunately.

The Pier Restaurant at the Halcyon.

The camera makes the photographer look good.

Amy heading out to the party!

All this before even having a single drink.

The fireworks show.

The New Year's fireworks were very good.  I was expecting a mediocre show, but it was a great show.

Amy in front of the ATR-72.

It was finally time to leave.

A tunnel leading to the casino.

This tunnel has no significance other than a nice photo.  Amy is carrying my new shirt in a bag.

Lunch at Max's.

We got the ocean view!

Waiting for Patsy.

The end of a fantastic honeymoon in St. Lucia.