Honeymoon, Day 2.

Woke up at 9:15am to a full breakfast set up on our porch. Fruit salad, assortment of French pastries, a plate of brie slices, jams (mango-lime, chocolate-coconut!) and coffee. I could seriously get used to this. Ate outside looking at the ridiculous view of the ocean and trees, completely surreal. After breakfast we went swimming in our private pool. I realized that I love pools as long as they're fresh water and I have a raft to lay on. We swam for what seemed like forever and then realized that it was only 11:00am. Time definitely slows down in the islands. Showered and got ready, picked up our rental car at reception (a Mini Cooper convertible) and made our way to St. Jean. Ok, so the roads on St. Barts are TINY. So narrow. And winding! If I could compare them to anything I'd say that it's like driving on the Pacific Coast Highway, only half the width, more hairpin turns and a lot steeper, with a speed limit of 30 km per hour (18.6 mph) but most people want to go double that. I realized halfway to St. Jean that I must have gotten a lot more sun than I had thought (I put on spf 8 tanning oil, I usually wear no more than spf 4 at home, if anything) because my arms felt like they were on fire with the top down.

Got to St. Jeans, had lunch at Nikki Beach. I ordered the Seaweed Salad and Tuna Tartar, Brian got the Mozzarella, Tomato and Proscuitto Salad and the Lobster and Crab Spring Rolls. Everything was surprisingly good since I thought Nikki Beach was a cool, trendy place but figured the restaurant was subpar. Definitely noteworthy! I ordered the sorbet trio (also figured out on this trip that when it's hot outside, I love sorbet!) and Bri ordered the Caramel Ice Cream with Nutella and Banana...he loved it. Waitress gave us a whole bottle of Sex on the Beach, on her! So nice! Love Nikki Beach!

Something interesting I realized about St. Jean: even though nudity is outlawed in St. Barts, and Saline Beach is supposed to be the only beach where nudity is accepted, the European tourists in St. Jean don't seem to know that. I saw SO MANY BOOBS. Most of which I (as well as probably everyone else there) never want to think about ever again. I don't want to sound like a prude American or anything but really, I don't need to see fat old women topless while I eat my lunch. No thanks.

After lunch we drove around the island (SO SCARY) and made our way back to the hotel. Made dinner reservations at Do Brazil and hung around the hotel looking up fun things to do while here. Mapped out our route to Do Brazil (it is in Gustavia on the opposite side of the island) and left for dinner. This was my first time driving on the island at night. It was absolutely terrifying. I am a New York driver so I'm used to crazy cabs, narrowly avoiding accidents and psychopathic drivers, but NONE of those things prepared me for driving at night on St. Barts. First of all, there are barely any street lights or road signs. There are road closures, street repairs, and ditches everywhere, hardly any guardrails on steep turns. At one point we came around a blind curve and practically ran into a gathering of locals who were hanging on the side of the road, then saw a few of them on scooters coming up on us about a mile down the road. I was convinced they were going to jack us for our rental car but Brian insisted it was a pretty safe island. Still, I didn't take his word for it. Insane. Had a huge panic attack but eventually made it to dinner. Do Brazil is right on Shell Beach and is very pretty. Most dining in St. Barts is outside so we sat on the patio overlooking the beach. We were brought hummus Amuses-Bouche (they love that here!) and drinks, I ordered the Prix Fix menu: an asparagus shooter (which I never received), grilled eggplant and other mixed vegetables, scallops with hazelnut risotta as the entree and grilled pineapple and vanilla bean ice cream (glace) for dessert. Brian ordered the plantain and prawn tempura with spicy chili sauce, and some sort of fish burger that he said was "delicious. It was crazy." He ordered this dessert, oh my god, strawberry ice cream sandwiched in a giant macaron, which he said he ordered with me in mind. Aww. Speaking of macarons, I'm really surprised I haven't had any since arriving. There is plenty of time left...

All dinner I was very anxious about driving back to the hotel...seriously, I can't stress enough how terrifying it is to drive on St. Barts, but we made it home in one piece. Again we were so tired that we went to bed by 11pm.

Wedding down, Honeymoon to go. Day 1.

Our wedding was this past Saturday, June 11th, and was literally the best day of my life. It went without a flaw (I had read an article that at least 3 things would go wrong and to just expect it...), everything was beautiful and everyone had a great time. Success! More on that at a later date.

I had meant to buy a travel journal before our honeymoon but with all the chaos of planning a wedding, I completely forgot. I will be keeping track of the day to day events here so I can write them down later. We left first thing Sunday morning for our honeymoon to St. Barts. After having a few drinks Saturday night I was kind of a zombie the next morning and I still had to pack. I made the car service sit outside my apt. for 20 minutes while I scrambled around but thankfully didn't forget anything important. Got anxiety on the plane (nothing new) so I took a Xanax for the first time in like 8 years (I learned how to deal with my anxiety on my own but certain situations, plane rides being one of them, take me to that next level where I can't even handle it) and it helped tremendously. I calmed down enough to stop freaking out and finally fell asleep, waking up in St. Maarten. We transferred to a puddle-jumper (minor baggage transfer issue but it worked out) and were in St. Barts 15 minutes later.

This is our first time here and it's very exciting! David from our hotel picked us up at the airport and gave us some important island info on the way back to our hotel. We're staying at Hotel Le Toiny, which is absolutely gorgeous. It's not on the beach but we have our own pool right outside of our door on the porch and insane views of the hills and ocean. They had champagne, fruit and coconut cake waiting for us when we got to our room which was perfect, it gave us a chance to sit and chill and just take it all in. We unpacked, then got ready for dinner at the hotel's restaurant, Le Gaiac, which is supposedly one of the best restaurants on St. Barts. In NY, French food is definitely not our go-to when it comes to choosing restaurants, but when in St. Barts...

This trip has definitely opened our eyes because the food here is DELICIOUS. We had an amuse-bouche of tomato gazpacho in a shot glass with a straw and some sort of gelee on a cracker. Very good. For an appetizer I ordered the Mahi Mahi ceviche which I'd never had before...so good, I shared with Brian and we devoured it. He got the crab meat and avocado which was served over some sort of tomato, also delicious. They gave us a passion fruit ice in between which I really wish was on the dessert menu because I would have ordered it. As an entree I ordered the carrot ravioli with ginger, Brian ordered a whole local lobster that they had freshly caught. Both were amazing, we were in awe of how good the food was. For dessert we ordered the sorbet quartet and the ice cream quartet. I had the most unusual and incredible sorbet...pineapple and basil. I could eat this all day, every day. The bill came, our first of the trip, and all I can say that the dollar-to-euro exchange rate is not friendly to Americans! Oh well, we only get one honeymoon!

We went back to the hotel and were so surprised to see that they turned down our bed while we were at dinner. Definitely a 5-star hotel, I've never had that kind of service anywhere. We were so exhausted from the wedding, our traveling and suffering from a slight food coma due to dinner that we went straight to bed. At 10:30pm. Unheard of for us!