I woke up with a start at 7:00 am and ate the most wonderful room service omelet that I'd ever seen or tasted. Aaron had picked out this vegetarian omelet for me and it was absolutely heavenly. Of course, I may very well have just been in a pleasure-coma from actually sleeping for over twelve hours after my deprivation. I probably would have slept for longer, but we had an appointment we just had to keep at 8:00 am with our wedding coordinator, Michele, from Awesome Caribbean Weddings.

The second we stepped out of our cool air-conditioned room into the muggy hotness of St. Lucia for what could be considered the first time, our breath was taken away. A storm was going to roll in, but meanwhile, the island was under what seemed to me to be an oppressive humidity. My camera fogged up immediately and took quite a while to de-fog. All around birds were chirping and singing their songs while vibrant flowers and foilage proved to be a delight for my eyes. I truly was in a different "world."



We met with Michele down in the lobby of Sandals. She was extremely professional and lit up when she discussed our wedding with us. It was evident that this is a job that she enjoys. Her laughter was contaigious and even after the last few days that I'd had, I couldn't help but join in and relax. We explained a little more of what had been going on with Sandals, and she sympathized with us. We discussed a bit of the history of the island and she told us about our wedding location - Pigeon Island. There is an old British Fort on Pigeon Island with old cannons and ruins sprinkled all over. I felt it was a perfect match because of my six years of (American) military service and my love of history. We discussed the specifics of our wedding and exchanged paperwork.



After our three hour meeting with Michele, Aaron and I went to speak with the concierge about our experience with Sandals wedding department thus far. We also set up our tours for the next few days - horseback riding, scuba diving, snorkeling after a half-day catamaran ride, touring a volcano and some botanical gardens, going climbing around in the rainforest, etc. The concierge told us that they'd get back to us with information on what they were going to do about this extra $1,500 charge we never should have had - you see, the wedding department on St. Lucia told us that they absolutely could have done our wedding. It was Unique Vacations that had steered us wrong. They asked us if we would like for Sandals to do the wedding now, but we told them it was too late. We'd already signed a contract and Awesome Caribbean Weddings were working their butts off to make our wedding happen the way we wanted it. That was much better than Unique Vacations response - tough, too bad. We told them that we expected them to do something for us now that we'd had to cough up that extra money in order for us to be happy and to want to come back. But, let's talk about this unpleasantness later...

After we set up all of our tours and lodged our complaint, we went over to Barefoot by the Sea. This restaurant was on the beach, next to the sea, with no floor other than the sand. There was a large wooden structure built to be a roof, but it had open walls. The sea breeze swept into the pavilion and Aaron and I took off our shoes and played in the sand with our toes. We tried not to think about anything disgusting that may be in the sand, and instead just enjoyed ourselves while we sipped water and looked out over the ocean.





The restaurant had fabulous sculpture all over and was very beautiful in all of its decorations.





There were birds swooping down and trying to steal food from plates that people had abandoned, dragging french fries off into the bushes. There were other birds that just sat on the bushes next to us and sang us a beautiful song.





After our wonderful lunch, we went swimming in the ocean and then spent quite a bit of time at the swim-up bar.





We watched the sun go down over Pigeon Island and at least I thought very romantic thoughts. Who couldn't, when it was as beautiful as it was?



We finished up our wonderful day by eating at this wonderful Italian restaurant. Aaron had his favorite - lasagna bolognese. With our bellies sated, we wandered back to our room where we watched 10,000 BC on cable and then went to sleep.

Don't I look happy?

Labels: marriage, traveling