Part 1: Our Honeymoon in St. Lucia at Sandals Regency La Toc

In October Brandon and I went on our honeymoon to St. Lucia and we stayed at the Sandals Regency La Toc. Sometimes when Brandon and I talk about it now, it seems like it was a dream. Seriously the best week ever. We had our wedding in June and waited to go on our honeymoon because we actually hadn’t booked anything for it. I had already booked a wedding to photograph the week after our wedding and honestly I’m glad we waited a few months. It gave us time to get back to normal life after our wedding. Plus, it allowed us time to book and prep for our honeymoon.

How did we decide on St. Lucia? Honestly, Brandon was doing some research on honeymoon places and landed on St. Lucia. He thought it looked like the place we should go, so I went with it and decided that’s where we were going. (one last decision I had to make haha).

P.S. be sure to watch out Honeymoon video on YouTube: Click here to watch!

Day 1 & 2 Traveling to St. Lucia

On a Monday evening Brandon and I drove to the Denver airport to start our journey to St. Lucia. Our first flight was a 3.5 hour flight to the JFK airport in New York. I tried to sleep on the plane, but have a super hard time sleeping on planes in general. We landed in New York at around 3 a.m. and so I tried to sleep on the ground until our flight to St. Lucia around 6:30 a.m. that morning. Before our flight we ventured through the airport to grab some breakfast. The flight to St. Lucia was a long one (4.5 hours). I tried to sleep some and watched a movie/show. Once we landed in St. Lucia we were so ready to get off the plane and were pumped to be there.

 

Arriving at the Airport

Once we made it into the airport and through customs (which was easy) we picked up our suitcases. The people from Sandals resort whisked us away into their waiting room. In the room they have drinks and snacks (plantain chips yum!). Soon the shuttle for our specific resort arrived and we were in a van with 3 other couples on our way to La Toc.

If you read reviews, lots of people talk about how terrible the ride to the resort is. It is about an hour or so in the van which is a long time. Especially when you’ve been traveling all day and want to be at your beach resort ASAP. But the ride wasn’t as bad as I expected, like some people recommend Dramamine because it’s so bad ( I didn’t think that was needed, but definitely had some packed). We also stopped along the way at a really gorgeous view point that I took the below photos from.

Checking-In to Sandals Regency La Toc

When Brandon and I walked into the open air lobby we were already blown away. While we were checking in they seated us with glasses of champagne. Yessss! Our room wasn’t quite ready so someone escorted us to a resort restaurant for our first meal. We ate at Neptune’s which is a central place on the resort. I had a dish with rice, veggies, and fish. It was the perfect size (small portion sizes is a thing on the resort!). Seated at our table Brandon and I couldn’t stop smiling and saying that we couldn’t believe we had made it and this was where we would be hanging out for the week!

For dinner our first night we walked over to Cricketer’s pub and then went back to our room since we were pretty exhausted from the travel.

Our Room

We LOVED our room for the week! We stayed in the blue townhouses and were on the second floor and with a balcony. Our room wasn’t anything crazy, just the basics. However, the balcony was a really nice bonus. Brandon spent a lot of time out there at night while I was getting ready.  Though we didn’t spend a ton of time in our room, I appreciated the more private feel compared to the more hotel block style of rooms they had. I think it’s worth spending a little extra on.

Day 3-Full beach day

Our first full day at the resort we spent on the beach and really got to experience all-inclusive resort life. For breakfast we went down to the Pavilion, which is the main buffet breakfast area. I was blown away by all the options. There was an omelet bar, fresh fruit & veggies, oatmeal, bread varieties, potatoes, bacon, coffee, juices, and so much mroe. Pretty much everything you could want for breakfast they had.

Next, we went and found some chairs on the beach with a shade cover and found our spot for the day. The water was the perfect temperature. Brandon set up music for us and I spent a lot of time reading. We had a no phone/no social media deal deal for the week. We always kept one phone on us for pictures, but didn’t get on it for social media or anything. On our trip I read “The Women in the Castle” by Jessica Shattuck. Throughout our day Brandon would go up to the pool bar and get us drinks. Soooo many drinks! For lunch that first day we also had the buffet lunch at the Pavilion by the pool, which was so amazing! I could always find some veggies and a solid protein source and carb source. My favorite veggies from the lunch buffet were slices of pumpkin, zucchini and squash.

Towards late afternoon Brandon and I went to our room and got ready for the evening. We ended up hanging out and meeting up with some couples we rode in the van to the resort with. The resort was hosting a Caribbean night party. There was a cocktail hour and a dinner buffet with local food and drinks. Then they brought out some fire dancers. After a few minutes, I was over the dancing (haha) and eventually we went up to bed.

The swimsuit cover up I wore all trip is from Amazon. Here’s the link to it! The red dress below is from Amazon. Here’s the link to it!

Day 4-Joe Knows Tour

Before leaving on our trip I had done some research and had come across blog recommendations and a recommendation from a friend to do the Joe Knows Tour. This excursion was so awesome! Well worth it! We left around 8:45 in the morning and took a van to the marina in the town of Castries. From there our group was divided in half and we were out on a speedboat. Our host was named “Chocolate Thunder” and on our ride to the mud baths, he did some “name & where you from” intros with all the couples. For each state people were from CT was able to list off notable things for that state (sports teams, sights, important people). So that was fun and really impressive!

Our first stop on our tour we took a van to the mud baths. It was honestly a fast part of the trip. We put mud on each other and then took a dip in some hot tub status water to wash it off (the mud stinks, but my skin felt great). Then the van took us to a waterfall where each couple took a quick turn beneath the waterfall. And once again we were whisked away back to the place where we docked initially. The lunch served was supposedly a more traditional meal that was custom for the locals. I had salad, rice, potatoes, and chicken. Followed up with pistachio ice cream! I don’t think I’ve had pistachio ice cream before that, and it was surprisingly good. The tour continued on to another part of the island where we did some snorkeling. That was fun…but I wasn’t the best at snorkeling and eventually felt the need to get out of the water. The floating and the feel of the water made me feel slightly nauseous.

Green swimsuit pictured below is from Amazon too. Here’s the link!

Once everyone returned to the boat from snorkeling this was where the fun part of the tour really began. The rum punch was brought out and the music was turned up. The whole ride back was basically a huge party with lots of rum punch drinks! By the time we made it back to the resort lots of people on our boat were feeling reallyyyy good if you know what I mean.

The funny thing about this day is that it was cloudy and rainy off and on throughout the day. But even when we got back onto the resort the party went on and people were still out having a good time despite the weather. Most everyone on the tour gathered at the pool bar to continue the fun and it was seriously a blast.

Brandon and I had reservations that night for Kimonos the Hibachi grill. So we got ready and headed to that dinner. There wasn’t anything special about the hibachi dinner (typical hibachi style) except we got a little bit of each meat entree ( so you got to experience all the meats instead of just one).

The tour made for a long day, so we were ready to go to bed after dinner.

Part 2 of the rest of our Honeymoon will be coming next!