"But the fun that day didn't start til we left on our honeymoon."

Okay, so I'm delaying writing about the wedding until I get the professional pictures. Since pretty much every moment of the wedding is posted on Facebook, those of you who weren't there can get a feel for the day in advance. Obviously, it was perfect! A liiiiittle hot. Just a little tease below. I'm sticking with perfect. :)

But the honeymoon! Oh the honeymoon. It was wonderful. Even the flights to and from the islands were just, perfect. No hassle at all. Let's start from the top. Bear with me, this will be long.

We left MD at 3:30am and I was a huge teary mess. I don't usually fall apart so dramatically but this time, after seeing so much of our friends and family over the previous week, I was just falling apart at the seams at the idea of leaving everyone. And as I'm sure a bunch of you figured, we won't be home for awhile. Funny how a wedding, honeymoon, and essentially a two week break from reality can deplete your bank accounts... Anyways, I was pretty heartbroken to be leaving, but life goes on. We were at the airport before we knew it, and an easy time getting from Dulles to Miami, then onto Barbados.

Barbados was my first time in ages walking from the plane to the airport over the tarmac. I think the last time I did that was for a flight to Montreal with my friend Linda in the sixth grade? We had a representative from Palm Island Resort help us through customs. Ed found out that if he wore the camo shorts he presently had on during the return trip through Barbados they would be confiscated. Apparently camo is illegal in Barbados? Ed promptly changed. A quick, super hot island hopper plane ride to Union Island later, and we're transported on a little boat over to the resort. They gave us bottles of water and cool damp towels to refresh ourselves with.

Our teeeeny tiny plane

When we arrived on the island they were waiting with rum punches for the regular guests and champagne for those of us on honeymoon. I think there were 3 of us couples on honeymoon, and 2 on regular vacation. One couple that looked not much older than us? Celebrating their 15th anniversary! High school sweethearts with four kids to boot we found out later. Crazy. They walked us to our rooms which were crammed with bazillions of these tiny, pretty red flowers. Also waiting was some fruit and more champagne! Omi would have loved this place. The staff took care of our luggage and said we could check in the next day, for now, enjoy the drinks, relax, change for dinner- which will be in half an hour just down the path. Oh, in case this didnt sound nice enough? They had a whole nest of baby sea turtles we had to name and release into the ocean that night. !!! So amazing.

Swans!!!!

Flowers eeevvvverrryyywhere

I know it's so hard to see, but here's one little sea turtle trying to climb up the side of the plastic container

View from above the plastic container. Anxious little turtles! We named our five: Meatloaf 1, Meatloaf 2, Ryan Lochte, Natalie Coughlin and of course, Michael Phelps!

Palm Island is the entire resort, there's nothing else on this little island. It's swamped with iguanas and lizards. It's also a bit mosquito-y but they kindly provide you bug spray and bug killer in your rooms. There are two restaurants on the island: The Palm - which is closed to outsiders and for hotel guests only, with a dress code in the evenings, and The Grille - which is open to boaters, but does not serve breakfast. There's a library, a spa, a gift shop, pool, and tons of trails. Also, we were one of just a couple Americans there. It was mostly British couples and a handful of European couples. This meant lots of smoking. Remember my last post about being shocked by people that still smoke and drink soda? The smoking was definitely surprising. The few other Americans agreed, it's a disappearing sight in the US, but hey, we ain't in the US here...

View from our room

Note the little guy above the big guy!

This is part of a hilarious series of pictures I'm gonna post to facebook. This lizard was out of his mind for these flowers. You can check them all out there when I post tomorrow!

We developed a routine for the first couple days. Wake up at 7, go to breakfast, snorkel or just swim in the ocean, then hang poolside until lunch. Have a couple drinks (oh, did I forget to mention, the drinks were all free? Yeah, and they serve you beachside and poolside and pretty much everywhere all the time, whatever you want). Take a three hour nap. Go poolside again if up to it. Then dinner. Then bed at 9. Repeat. I can't complain, it was pretty amazing. Considering while we were home we both maybe had about 4 hours of sleep a night, it was good to catch up! We read a bunch, Ed read three books, I read 4. To be fair, one was Feast for Crows which I had started before we left CA. It was my kind of heaven.

Documenting the poolside reading!

Not amused.

Poolside

Lizard play ground

Post beach

The only downsides were the full body heat rash I developed and the mosquitos. Both made me itch like crazy. I can't imagine layering on 3-4 applications of sunscreen did anything to calm my skin either. We finished the first bottle of sunscreen we bought the very first day. I think total we ended up buying 3 bottles of sunscreen and 1 bottle of aloe for a week down there. There was also a hilarious (though I didn't agree at the time) incident where - for those of you who don't know I am pretty spooked by dark water, big bodies of water, any place I can't see the bottom, etc. - Ed was coaxing me out into the deeper, darker area. Unfortunately, as I worked up the nerve to come out and got closer, Ed kicked the line attaching the buoy to the anchor, leading to him exclaiming slightly. Of course, I took this as Ed kicking a shark or some other mutinous sea creature, immediately began to cry and took off like a rocket. A rocket that was... doggie paddling. Yes, in my moment of fear and panic, I thought the best thing to get me to safety was to doggie paddle my terrified little heart out. I could hear Ed yelling and laughing behind me, explaining he had just kicked the line and that it was okay, but I was in full flight mode, not letting up until I dragged myself out of the water. It's good to know that if it really was a shark coming after me, well, I'd be dead. Doggie paddle for the win! :)

About midweek we changed our pace and didn't nap as much, spent more time at the pool. We biked around the island exploring and thanks to the heat sweated more than either of us ever has before.

My bike had a flat, womp-womp.

Literally, sweat dripping from my nose, mouth, ears, eyes... every.where.

Beautiful sunsets

We had a wonderful private dinner at 'the heart' which is a heart made out of two manipulated palm trees. One of my favorite parts of the meal? The appetizer was smoked salmon, and it was like they just took a whole container of it and put it on a plate. I was overjoyed. I love me some smoked salmon.

We had a manager's cocktail hour and then a BBQ another night, both of which were just absolute feasts. I had the most amazing snapper during the lunches. We had seafood with almost every meal. Except breakfast. I had cinnamon rum butter french toast EVERY MORNING. Can I reiterate here I didn't gain a pound on this thing? I do not know how that is possible. I suspect it was the serving sizes... when we realized the servings were 'real' servings, not 'American' servings, it made it much more reasonable to eat 'treat' foods and a bigger variety of things. Also cool was the night they brought out a ton of coconuts, chopped off the tops with a huge machete, and then let us pour rum inside for our own coconut cocktail!

I still miss the french toast... le sigh....

We took a day trip to Tobago Cays which is where they filmed a bit of Pirates of the Caribbean! Anyone remember this exchange when they are trapped on an island together:

Jack Sparrow: [Wakes up and sees Elizabeth burning the rum] No! Not good! Stop! Not good! What are you doing? You burned all the food, the shade... the rum. 
Elizabeth: Yes, the rum is gone. 
Jack Sparrow: Why is the rum gone? 
Elizabeth: One: because it is a vile drink that turns even the most respectable men into complete scoundrels. Two: that signal is over a thousand feet high. The entire Royal Navy is out looking for me. Do you really think there is even the slightest chance they won't see it? 
Jack Sparrow: But why is the rum gone? 

Well, that small island was just across the way from where we saw about 20 sea turtles and then a ton of sea life on the most incredible snorkel trip. It was wonderful. 

On the Pink Lady to Tobago Cays

Does it look familiar? That's the "Why's the rum gone?" island!

Pink Lady and the Pirates filming island in the background

Dos conchs!

Apparently this is the ship they used for filming the actual Black Pearl. The captain of the Pink Lady said they hardly recognized it when it came back from filming.

Also, snorkeling in the Cays I got the only horrible sunburn of the whole trip. No not on my back, Ed was smart enough to order me to wear a running shirt to cover my back. No, I burned my rear. Reeeeeal good and toasty. Sitting down was not fun. Oh well, it was worth it! 

Yeah I look happy now, only later did I wonder why my tush felt like a furnace...

After that we just relaxed until it was time to leave. The last dinner we had there, a torrential downpour came out of nowhere. I loved it and thought it was just the best thing that could've happened. What else screams island than a random downpour for a couple minutes? All in all... it was the most amazing honeymoon. It didn't fly by, and I'm glad to be home without the heat rash, but I'll miss a lot of things. And I'ma start working on my rum butter cinnamon french toast ASAP!

Bye!