First Bump in the Honeymoon

Good Morning! Happy beginning of a NEW week!

I cannot believe that’s it’s already the middle of June! (ok, well almost 😉 ) It feels like time has been in fast forward since we got married. I guess I just would like life to pause…just few a little bit. The good thing is that life has been grande! 😀 I always heard that once you are done with all of the wedding planning, the actual wedding & your honeymoon, that you get kind of sad. Just sad/ depressed that it is all over. But, honestly, I am LOVING every minute of life after the wedding. I love being a Mrs. & I love having a husband. Craig & I were talking this weekend about all of the fun things that we have to look forward to in the upcoming months! Some of the things are silly little things between the two of us, but other things will be shared with our wonderful families.

Anyways, this morning I am going to start the honeymoon re-cap! I hope this helps other people that might be trying to plan their honeymoon as well!
First things first– we stayed at Sandals Grande St. Lucian.

There are two other Sandals resorts on St. Lucia- La Toc & Halcyon, but we decided to go with the Grande because we heard better reviews about it. We did a lot of research on it before deciding on our final destination. We did actually find out from some of the locals that the Grande has the best beach. The other two resorts have beaches, but they are kind of rocky & have smaller shore lines. But, the good thing is that if you DO stay at the other resorts, you can catch a bus (there are on-going buses between the resorts) & go to the beach at the Grande.

So, our flight out of Orlando was at 7am the next morning..which was Saturday. We didn’t end up going to bed the night of the wedding until around 1am/ 2am on Friday night, well, I guess that would be Saturday morning. So we needed to be at the airport at 5am Saturday morning. Craig & I had a taxi service taking us to the airport that morning because we did not want anyone to have to worry about taking us. Well, the first thing that happened was that the taxi service ended up being LATE. Craig & I were ready with plenty of time, but then they showed up late…thankfully not that late though. We made it to the airport around 5:30am Saturday morning.

Once we got to the front of the line for United Airways, we found out our flight was CANCELLED. Yes, you read that right, our honeymoon flight was CANCELLED. They did not have any other flights until the next morning at 8am. Craig was really upset at first, I mean I was too, but I reminded him that there was really NOTHING that we could do about it, so we should make the best of it.

United Airlines ended up giving us a room at the Hyatt, which was located at the Orlando International Airport. Thankfully the hotel was REALLY nice & Craig & I had a great room. United Airways also gave us food vouchers– $5 each for breakfast & lunch, and $10 for dinner. -Kind of funny because that amount of money won’t get you very far at an airport for food, but I figured it was better than nothing, right?

We actually ended up having a pretty good day at the hotel. Once we got into the room we CRASHED hard. We slept a good 4-5 hours…guess we needed it after our fun night! 🙂 We spent the day just watching t.v, talking about the wedding & we did hit up the hotel gym– which was VERY nice I might add. 🙂

Sunday morning we were READY to go! We kept checking our flight– it was going to Miami first & then to St. Lucia. Thankfully it was still on time & we were out of the gate at 8am! Perfect! Once we got to Miami we had a 2 hour layover. During that time I thought it was a perfect opportunity to check out some airport shops 😉


^ Saw the Longchamp store & immediately thought of Julie! I know she is a big fan of their bags 🙂

& then I saw these…

^ I also saw the Lily Pulitzer animal crackers that Christina mentioned a little while back on her blog..I was amazed when I saw them on her blog & was so excited to find them in ‘real life’ – haha 😀

After we did our shopping…or rather window browsing, we headed off to hop on our next flight from Miami to St. Lucia. As a part of our wedding gift, Craig’s parents got our flights from Orlando to St. Lucia & then back from St. Lucia to Orlando. They also really spoiled us & got us FIRST class for ALL of our flights. Let me tell you, now that is ALL that I want to fly. (ha- I wish that’s all I could fly 😉 ) Oh man, I felt like a celebrity! We got a meal for our second flight —

Holy cow- what a great meal! I was VERY impressed with what they offered for meals. They also had a pasta dish, which Craig got. I had the chicken with rice, steamed vegetables & a side salad. All of the meals came with a whole wheat roll & raspberry cheesecake. Craig was happy because he scored TWO cheesecakes…I’m just not a fan. US Airways also gets major props because they offer vegetarian options AND gluten free- pretty nice, huh?

Craig snapped that picture, unbeknowst to me. Obviously someone had a bit too much food & wine 😉

Here are some of the pictures that we got when we were flying into the island:

The St. Lucian airport is VERY small & they do not have those walkways from the plane to the airport, so you just get a ramp with stairs & you head into the airport. I have only had to do this one other time- which was when I went to Puerto Rico. It just felt so weird to go directly out of the plane, ya know what I mean?!

Here’s a picture of the airport, you can see it is VERY small.

Look, here’s our plane:

(I know, that’s an American Airlines plane, but our tickets were actually through United Airways.)

And, when you enter you have to go through immigration, where you fill out this form:

In case you are like me, and need to pee (sorry, tmi!) like every 5 minutes (no lie!), make sure you look for this sign:

NOT the bathroom sign…you won’t find one of those! 😉

Once we went through immigration, which was pretty quick, props to St. Lucia on that one, we headed to the ‘Sandals resort waiting area.’

Oh, and look what also arrived…

OUR LUGGAGE!! Wooooohoooooo! We were so worried that they might lose it.

While you are in the waiting you they will offer you some refreshments- including water (which we opted for) & Rum Punch (which most people opted for). Beware of the Rum Punch, it will get you loopy 😉 …in a good way, of course! We tried it later in the week & it was REALLY good…you don’t know you are drinking liquor…& you know what that means!

This post is getting PRETTY long, so I will leave you with that. Tomorrow I will tell you all about the CRAZY ride from the airport to Sandals Grande!

Hope you are off to a good start! I knocked out a long run on the treadmill this morning..wanted to start the week off right 😀

Questions:
1. If you are married, did you get kind of depressed once your wedding was over? Did you miss all of the hussle & bussle & all of the planning?
2. Have you ever had a flight cancelled? What happened? Did you get on another flight? Did you have to wait it out at the airport?
3. Have you ever flew first class? What kind of foods did they offer? Were you really impressed?? (I know I was 🙂 )

Posted by Holly at Holly on the Run on June 13, 2011

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