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I begin my blogging adventures tonight to share photos from our honeymoon in Barbados which we've been home from for a good two hours. It was amazing! As I mentioned to my husband while we lay on the net of a catamaran after snorkeling with sea turtles, at a reef and a ship wreck, if a movie crew followed us around shooting us from good angles with good filters and editing it for the exciting bits, they wouldn't need to add any footage to get the ideal honeymoon montage for a good RomCom. Sure the wedding took us seven weeks to plan and the honeymoon four months, but it was all worth the wait.
More time spent in the side pool by our room today, and on the pool side beds; then a quick stop by the pool side bar and on to the second pool and the ocean side lounge chairs; then a quick dip in the Atlantic (we think, we were right on the south point of the island, but we're pretty sure it was the Atlantic side) and on to more ocean side lounging. This is precisely the reason we wanted somewhere simple and tropical, so we wouldn't feel guilty not site seeing. By the time we got back to the room we'd finished our first can of spray on sunscreen and still got a little burnt on the bellies... I guess we're just not meant for that much time in the sun... yep, we're as whitey as whities get.
We didn't get much in the way of photos that day, but here are some images of the hotel and from our balcony, to give you an idea of the atmosphere we were taking advantage of.
How is it Monday already? Wanting to get the right balance of lounging and site seeing we decided to rent a car today and drive around the island. One of the nicest things about traveling in Barbados is that most of the things you would want to do offer a pick up and drop off service, or in the car rental scenario a drop off and pick up service, which is what we took advantage of. We set the course up to the East Coast views of Bathsheba as best we could with the detail-less maps and headed out.
Driving on the wrong, I mean right side of the car and the wrong, I mean left side of the road wasn't very difficult (not to say I didn't run over the curb two or three times) since the car was quite little and the drivers are all very courteous. The difficulty is really in the lack of, "non-existence" as put by one of our cabbies, of signage. We can drive around a roundabout with the best of them, or at least the mediocre of them; we've driven around them before, even on the opposite side of the car and road, but when there's no sign telling you what is in which direction, it makes things a tad more challenging.
After a few detours we made it to Harrison's Caves, a 
spot recommended to us by a number of people where you can go down in to large (clarified as to avoid any uncomfortable claustrophobic situations) caves with apparently beautiful stalagmites and stalactites, but which turned out to be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. So we headed out on the roads once more. Now on to the "town" of Bathsheba. As with many of the spots in Barbados, we expected from the "not to be missed" Bathsheba a lovely town with shops and restaurants and an area you'd want to park and
walk around in; as with many of the spots in Barbados, this is not quite what we found. Beautiful, beautiful views with really interesting natural landscape (terrible currents in the water, every book and person tells you not to go in unless you're a good surfer) for about a quarter of a mile, and then you're back out of "town" (I may be generous with the quarter mile, my distance judging senses aren't the best, much like my age judging senses).
According to the tan and red-eyed epitome of a 'beach bum' man who spent most of his time while we were around town in his front porch hammock at his little 
house/shop (red house pictured here), most of the businesses were closed that day, though aside from a small bar or two, more like that of Cool's Castaways from day 1, we didn't see much to be open. There were some people with tables set up with souvenirs to purchase and tourists looking at sarongs and shot glasses with either a frog or a woman hanging off the side that says "Just hanging out in Barbados."
We wondered around, enjoying the beach beauty, perfect weather and being out of the car for a bit. Then we headed back on the road to find the Andromeda Botanic Gardens... driving down in to and back out of Bathsheba each direction a few times before finding it thanks to an old Bajan (slang term 
meaning the same as Barbadian) man enjoying a Banks at another small shack style bar.The first photo of this entry was taken at The Andromeda Botanic Garden, a beautiful sanctuary for both native vegetation and that which was brought to Barbados from around the world. It was hot, very hot, and you may be thinking, 'why does Andy have an umbrella in that photo?,' a very logical question, I'd agree. As we entered the path we could hear the thunder from somewhere else on the island, and having experienced the sudden showers already, decided to borrow an umbrella from the shop. In the end we didn't need it, that time.
The first image here from the gardens is a tree called the Bearded Fig which is where Barbados gets it's name "Bearded One." When people first came by the Island, these trees were everywhere. Now you don't see them much, in fact these here in the sanctuary were the only ones we saw at all. Here are a few additional photos we took that I particularly liked.
After walking the two paths of the gardens and sweating through our shirts we stopped in the cafe, a porch off the gift shop, for a couple of ice creams and a slushy bottle of sprite to bring the
internal temperature down. Then we headed on the road back to the east coast toward the capital of Bridgetown. After a fairly painless drive there... side educational note: Barbados is 27 miles long by 14 miles wide. While there are no straight shot roads across the island, it doesn't take too long to get from one side to the other... we made it in to Bridgetown where we got terribly lost and likely only managed to escape because of that aforementioned Barbadian courteousness.
We drove up the west coast this time, toward what is known as the posh area near Sandy Lane, where according to the drunk blond cookie cutter travel agent from Texas on our flight to Barbados, "Tiger Woods was married, and I agree with them, put him on the cover of
everything." I can't explain what that means, after she started telling us about her church going history thinking we were missionaries because we were staying in the Christ Church province I didn't feel the need to find ways to engage her.
We wound up pulling in to a shopping center to get off the wet roads and out of the car after the Bridgetown escapade. We did a little souvenir shopping of our own and then enjoyed an amazing falafel sandwich at a small little cafe. Everything was made from scratch including the pita bread and we couldn't stop thanking and complimenting them. You're probably thinking this entry has been long enough, why on earth is still blabbering about some pita, but it was pita worthy of proper blabberage.
After our time out we decided to head back to the hotel in preparation for some getting lost and not wanting it to be in the dark. We did in fact get lost, a number of times, even being three blocks away from the hotel for easily a half hour before finally finding it. It was tucked away in what would be best described as a residential area and we gave it a shot without asking directions for a while and then resigned ourselves to stopping about every block and asking someone the way. I was prepared to pay the next kid on a bike I saw to let us follow him there, but unfortunately for that kid, I didn't see him.
We had been considering keeping the car for another day or two but were certain once we returned that while we had a great day, we didn't want to get in that car again.
Now that our sunburns have cleared up a bit and we got our site seeing guilt taken care of yesterday we decided to spend some more time reading poolside. One of the hottest days of the trip, the sweat doesn't just collect on your skin, it drips off your body.
We went out for dinner tonight, to a lovely little restaurant called Cafe Luna at Little Arches Hotel. We got there just as they were setting up so had a couple of drinks and watched this sunset while we waited to be seated. This photo was taken after being seated and after most of the color had already gone from the sunset. There had been bright pinks and oranges coming from all sides of the clouds including underneath, along the horizon. It was a beautiful night, and the only place on the island we saw fireflies.
Having no veggie entrees listed on the menu we shared three really tasty starters, but still hungry asked if they had any veg options to offer for us... they suggested a veg pasta, which is pretty much the standard veg dish in Barbados, and a mushroom ragout which we accepted not really knowing what we'd be getting but rarely disliking a mushroom dish. In the end we were so happy we asked because we loved every lick of.
