St Lucia Day 4 - after a wonderful nights sleep we were up by 7am - this is one of the drawbacks of being married to a scuba diver, the boat leaves at 8am (lol) Up and ready we headed down to Bayside for breakfast. I have caught something (cold/sinus issue) so I was very grateful that they offer hot tea and honey!! Had fun chatting with a few other couples at breakfast then got Duane off to the boat. I headed up to our room for more tea and to organize some photos - one nice thing about an English style resort (St Lucia has huge French and English influences) is they have an electric kettle and tea in every room. I got some honey from the buffet and am all set! I headed down to the main lobby at 10:30 and went to the Culinary Relations desk. Only moments later I had our dinner reservations for Tues-Thurs at three places wed really like to try, it was simple and easy! The shuttle schedule said it would arrive at 11am and it was exactly on time. I hopped on the shuttle and headed over to Sandals Halcyon for my tour. It was about 15 min with traffic through Castries but still pretty fast! I met with Trevor who took me around this pretty little resort! they have a great beach, very quiet and laid back feeling, one main pool, a quiet pool, some awesome restaurants and a theatre for the evening shows. The rooms are very similar to Sandals Grande but none of the buildings are more than 2 stories high, they offer afternoon tea, and it is just a really pretty, laid back setting. I really liked it! Trevor was great and told me he really loved it when a travel agent takes a lot of pictures because he knows they are taking this seriously and will really be able to tell clients about the resort. In true Melissa style, I took a ton! We met his supervisor at the end of the tour and I assured her that Trevor did a great job (grin). Amazingly I was done by 12:15 which is exactly when the shuttle arrived to take me back to the Grande - awesome! I met up with a couple who were headed to the Grande for a wedding, and another headed over for lunch/beach time, I took a moment to help them get oriented so they could find their way around. Heading back to the room I was surprised to have Duane arrive right behind me - hadnt thought we would get to see each other much until dinner, but he had decided to work on getting his advanced dive certification and had some homework to do before diving again on Tues. So he took the afternoon off! We headed down to the dive shop to find Natalia, one of the dive masters. At Sandals if you invite a staff member to dine with you they can! So we took her to the international buffet at Bayside for lunch. She was very curious about the resorts we had seen the day before and asked great questions. Duane had brought his laptop down and showed her the pictures we took of Jade Mountain, she was as amazed as we had been! With Bobbi Bronson-Lipscomb in mind I asked her if she knew when the over water bungalows would be finished. She said that she knew they had all the permissions to build but now some local politics were holding things up. After lunch she walked us down to the far end of the beach, where I hadnt been yet and showed us a LOT of open land at that end of the resort.. all that open land belongs to Sandals and they will be expanding the resort that direction, also there is stone/earth pier that juts out into the water right there, and that is the planned location of the over water bungalows! Also on that end of the beach they had three beach chairs in a circle with caution take and a security guard... its a turtle nest! I love how they protect it and take it so seriously. The Sandals Foundation supports education, the local economy and conservation. I really respect that! We took the afternoon off, just chilled out together and relaxed. Many of you know this is NOT something I do well so it really was nice! Getting cleaned up and ready we headed down to the main lobby by 6pm and were greeted by the Managers cocktail party (I hadnt noticed it in the Daily Breeze) so we decided to pause in our plans and join in! They had drinks, a band etc so it was a nice little gathering. Taking a seat we met some of the staff and gave them our names when asked. The managers were all introduced and then the general manager said it was time for prizes! Prizes??? =) One couple won a ton of points for Sandals Signature that will help them come back on another trip, one couple won dinner for two at the Butler only restaurant ($140 value) another couple won a gift from the resort shop and then they called OUR names - we won a gift from the Colombian Emerald Shop - it is a beautiful little emerald pendant, I love it!! Thank you Sandals!! The Snap Shots paparazzi are always waiting on the grand staircase in the evenings because they know everyone will be all dressed up for dinner, and yes, we stopped and got our photo taken, well look at them on Thursday and see if we want to buy any =) Monday night is Beach BBQ Party at Sandals Grande and they had a number of local artists with booths on the beach boardwalk. Really great wood work, stone work and two artists doing paintings as you watched. I got a little stone turtle for my desk and Duane picked us a lovely sunset painting that the artist personalized for us. Now these artists only accept cash so you can not charge their work to your room, but theyre really fun and I feel our purchases were worth it! While Duane ran up to our room to get some cash I wandered down the beach towards some music and found a wedding reception going on. They were playing great dance music and most of the guests were dancing their hearts out on the sand - looked like a great time! Weddings are HUGE here! On Tuesday, between the 3 resorts, they have 14 weddings! in one day!! =) After we paid for our painting we found out that the Beach BBQ had been moved into Bayside due to the rain. OK lets go! On the way in, an employee was opening fresh coconuts with a machete! I had never tried fresh coconut water before so he chopped the top off one for us. It was good. On to the party - The food was amazing! I loved the bbq ribs, the bbq chicken was amazing, lamb, fresh fish and all the bbq fixings! Really would not pass up the beach party if you are ever at Sandals! They pull out all the stops! For dessert they had all the goodies and one man making bananas foster to order. Adding the wonderful dessert to my plate I mentioned it would be so great with ice cream. He paused a moment then asked me to wait and disappeared! I thought he would get me ONE scoop of ice cream, no, he brought me a bowl with three!! Added the hot bananas and oooooh baby, so good!! Duane had a certain amount of reading to get done before his dive on Tues so we went up to get the book and find a quiet spot. We camped out by the firepit with a drink and relaxed for awhile. I am sick (sinuses draining, throat hurts) so I turned in and was sound asleep by 10pm - he finished his work and we got another great nights sleep - good night St Lucia!
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 14:18:41 +0000
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