Notes from a honeymoon
We’re back from a wonderful honeymoon to the islands of Saint Lucia and Dominica! As David quipped: “So far every day of marriage has felt like a tropical paradise.” Ha! Putting that to the test now that we’ve been reunited with our pug on the eve of a blizzard.
One of the things that I felt strongly about was taking a honeymoon directly after the wedding. I know that mini-moons and delayed honeymoons are super popular right now, but I feel like there’s something special about immediately heading off to celebrate together once it’s all official. And a honeymoon is one of the best excuses for taking an extended vacation at work—since we both work full-time, I wanted to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a no-guilt 10 days off.
Like weddings, there’s a lot of pressure on it for your honeymoon to be a PERFECT vacation. I tried not to subscribe to that notion too much. We’re very lucky to travel as much as we do, often to “honeymoon-like” destinations—say, Aruba or Paris. Bonus: we just signed up for a lifetime of being travel partners! I try to keep that in mind whenever I feel “behind” in the travel world: as my mom used to tell me when I would rush through my homework or take pride in being the fastest person to take a test, you don’t get points for finishing first.
So, how did we choose Saint Lucia and Dominica? Obviously, we both love relaxing on the beach, so that was a big part of it! Part of why we opted for the Caribbean was because of the March timing—if we had been traveling later in spring, it would have been Japan, and if it was in summer, it would have been Greece. Fingers crossed we make it to both of those destinations soon.
Alas: I’ve been enamored with Dominica for a while, and because there aren’t any direct flights from the USA, it was precluded from ever being an easy weekend escape. We opted for Saint Lucia because JetBlue flies directly there (we were able to book our flight on points) and because it offers a ferry to Dominica. Bonus: I’ve been dying to see those gorgeous pitons in person!
After a couple of relaxing days at Stonefield Reserve (think: private patio with a hammock and a pool, emergency pina coladas and lots of sunshine), we took the ferry from Castries to Roseau. General thoughts on the ferry: expect chaos when it comes to Caribbean line management, 4.5 hours is a long time on a boat, I really need to get better about packing Dramamine. But we made it to the Nature Island!
We spent the first half of our time in Dominica at Rosalie Bay, which we both loved. We did a bunch of hiking and waterfall chasing, both on our own and with a guide. It felt healthy and adventurous and full of activity, and it was wonderful to fall asleep to the sound of the waves crashing. After so much lazing about by the pool in Saint Lucia, it was good to get our legs moving!
And then we headed over to the northwest side of the island for a stay at the luxurious and secluded Secret Bay. We had our own stunning villa, complete with a plunge pool overlooking the Caribbean. Although the weather didn’t completely cooperate with us, it did feel like our own little paradise.
We were supposed to fly home via San Juan on Saturday, but hurricane-level rains ripped through the area and flooded the river next to the Dominica airport. All flights were cancelled, which meant we ended up spending an extra night on the island at Pagua Bay. It was stressful in the moment, especially since it was tough to get any accurate information from LIAT—all jokes about extending the honeymoon aside, we’d had a lovely 10 days together and were VERY ready to head home and see our pug. We had some emergency pina coladas and were thrilled to be on the first flight out on Sunday morning!
Overall, it was everything that I could have hoped for in a honeymoon and I can’t wait to share more photos and experiences soon! And although the honeymoon is technically over, I’m so thrilled to be back in our Brooklyn apartment with Gert and a husband (!).
