Wedding Blog

Mr. Lemon and I spent 8 crazy nights (and 9 wonderful days) on the beautiful island of St. Kitts for our honeymoon. A lot of people have visited the island as a stopover on an eastern Carribean cruise, but as we soon found out by the small number of tourists on the island, very few people stay for longer than that day. The island is relatively free of any major resorts (minus a new Marriott), so there really aren’t that many room to stay in to start with… which was perfectly fine with us! After all, my dream honeymoon consisted of empty beaches and tropical laziness… but I got so much more in Kitts!

Our adventure started out with a bit of a panic, however, thanks to some low lying clouds at LAX. We flew out of San Jose and due to the traffic delays in Los Angeles, our flight departed 2 hours late… giving us a window of ZERO minutes to make our connecting flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico. This is where scheduling all of your flights on the same carrier helps tremendously, as American Airlines knew we were stuck in the air and that we’d be running onto the plane. When we finally got on, two people had taken our seats and grumbled as we laid on the honeymoon guilt trip. Seriously people… I’m not sitting next to a stranger on the plane as a 24-hour newlywed! Our flight to San Juan was long…. and difficult due to a “Class of ’87″ high school reunion group on the plane that liked to drink, snore and talk loudly at 3am, but we made it to Puerto Rico without Mr. Lemon or I slugging anyone. (I did, however, “SHHHHH!!!!” them quite a few times… sorry, it’s the middle school teacher instincts kicking in!)

We had a 4-hour layover at the airport, and we had been advised to head over to the “Casino/Hotel” that was attached to the terminal. That was pretty much a BAD idea, since the casino consisted of about 30 video slot machines in a stuffy little room, and nothing else was open. We did, however, find a ping pong table with a busted ping pong ball, and that entertained us for about 40 minutes. We walked back to the airport to peruse the Duty-Free shops and buy some reading material for the trip and logged online to send a brief blog update. Then we were off on our last of 3 flights!

Mr. Lemon’s super happy to get on the final plane…

 
Here we are waiting on the tarmack to get off in Kitts. The planes have no A/C, so we were getting a little sweaty and impatient to get off…

Hooray!!! We’re in Kitts!

Looking back at the plane and toward the volcanos.

When we hopped off the plane and through the passport check, we hopped in a cab and headed straight to our final destination… Ottley’s Plantation. Inn. The inn is an old sugar plantation that was converted into a resort, and is located about 15 minutes from the capital city of Basseterre on the Atlantic side of the island, nestled against the rainforest. We passed fields and fields of sugar cane, and before I could really get accustomed to the whole “left side of the road” driving, we were there!

The “great house” at Ottleys. Most of the rooms are guestrooms in the house, but it also has a large great room and gorgeous decks to lounge on..

Our room (#20) was located down the hill from the great house. It was a detached house just down from the restaurant, with a little trail leading onto the deck.

Our giant King bed inside the room! The plantation shutters let the breezes flow through, and there was A/C as well.

Five minutes after arriving in our room, a bartender brought in 2 fresh rum punches (omg… their mixture was amazing!) and champagne for our honeymoon arrival!

Just outside the room was our lovely “plunge” pool!

We jumped in our plunge pool every chance we got, and just sat and read and relaxed on our private little deck.

The view from our patio and room.

One of the sparkling pools (fed with natural spring water from the mountains… no chemicals needed!) in front of the main restaurant bar.

It just happens that Ottley’s is home to one of, if not THE, best restaurant on the island. Dinner every night was served starting from 6-8pm, and on the weekends the place was packed with tourists from the Marriott and other hotels/inns. The prixe fixe menu was included in our package rates, so we never had to worry about what to eat or where… just what time we were going to wander up to our nightly feast.

Now when I say feast… I really really mean it. Each night there was a 4-course menu (plus a sampler course) of gourmet food that was to die for! The staff mocked me a bit the first night since I had severe difficulty finishing all of my courses… but I definetely got the hang of stuffing myself by the end of the trip!

That first night we had:

Ahi/Mango Ceviche

Roasted pork (It had a fancier name I’m sure…)

Grilled Pompano w/Peppers

Mr. Lemon’s flourless chocolate cake…. with 4 dessert choices everynight it was so hard to choose…

(p.s. the food just kept getting better and better… here’s a sample of the menu the next night)

When we got back to our room, the nightly turndown maid had left us a message!

Let’s just say that I was completely in love with this place after rolling down the hill from dinner the night before, but when we really started relaxing the next day, I never wanted to leave!

Breakfast every morning (also included) was so filling that we never ate lunch while we were on the island!

Banana pancakes

Island scramble

So the plantation came with some added kicks as well….

Hammocks were strung in the trees and nestled near the rainforest.

Mr. Lemon was checking to find a ripe mango

Right behind the great house, there are two paths that lead into trails within the rainforest. They’re well marked paths that we walked each day in flip-flops, but only 20 feet from the start of the trail you could feel the difference in the humidity and notice the change in atmosphere.

At one end of the trail was the amazingly old tree whose roots went in every direction imaginable!

And guess what you could see all along the trail…… MONKEYS!!!! Yes, huge monkey families in fact with baby monkeys too! Mr. Lemon and I would stand and watch them surround us for 40+ minutes as they just frolicked and played in the trees. A few got close to inspect us and make sure we weren’t going to harm them (the local farmers shoot the monkeys, since they’re huge pests on the island), and once we were ok they went on playing.

A video of the monkeys in action

Ottley’s was one nice spot for a honeymoon… and the staff made the experience top-notch. It didn’t hurt that there were, at most, 8 other people staying there (including the owners) at the same time as we were due to the off-season! Who wouldn’t want this place all to themselves!

Here’s a little video Mr. Lemon took leaving our room…

PART II with our rainforest and beach excursions coming up….