Hello, friends! I’m straying a bit from my usual inspirational-type blogs to do something a little more fun! As you may have already read in an earlier blog here, my husband and I recently returned from a trip to an all-inclusive resort, Sandals Royal Bahamian.
I wanted to share a few more details about our experience – the good (most of it), the bad (well, a little), and the ugly (mainly just consisting of sunburn and sickness).
DAY 1 : Travel and the first day…
Our flight left from Charlotte, NC, which is about an hour-and-a-half drive from our home, at 9:45am on Saturday, April 1, and we were encouraged by the travel agent and Scott’s work folks (who were awarding him with the trip) to be at the airport by 6:45am. Now, it turns out that was an overabundance of caution as we got there well ahead of schedule, but on the way we noticed the other side of the interstate backed up for quite some distance due to road construction, and you never know when that can happen, so it’s better to be safe than…well, you know.
We had to wake up our son early to drop him off at my parents’ house, which was difficult, but he was in good spirits when we left, so that helped ease the pain of leaving him for the first time to go out of town. The drive to Charlotte was smooth (including a quick stop off at the Bojangles drive thru), the check-in and security clearance was painless, and soon we were waiting in our terminal for our flight!
There was a huge backup on the runway, so we were actually in the plane for around an hour before taking off. The plane trip was uneventful (which you pretty much want with any plane trip), and before we knew it, we were checking in at the Sandals lounge area at the Nassau airport. They took our luggage for us and escorted us to a waiting shuttle prepared to take us to our resort.
The weather was absolutely gorgeous (and stayed that way the entire vacation), and we enjoyed the short ride to the resort, looking at the beautiful sights around us. Pulling up to the resort was magnificent! (I wish I’d gotten more pictures of the resort, because it was absolutely beautiful.) As soon as we stepped off, we were handed cool, wet, lemon-scented towels and ushered into a beautiful reception area. They were passing out glasses of champagne and iPads to use for check-in, and we immediately knew we were in for the royal treatment this week. The service was definitely top-notch. After finishing our check in, one of the concierges took us to see where they would be serving lunch, since our room wouldn’t be ready for another hour or so.
We enjoyed our first meal at the Royal Cafe, which was one of only a few restaurants open at that time for lunch.* Lunch was good (I had a caesar chicken wrap, Scott had a steak sandwich, I think), and by then we were tired ready to see our room.
*SIDE NOTE: We found ourselves comparing the all-inclusive resort to our honeymoon cruise several years back, and one place we felt the cruise was superior was that there was food available pretty much around the clock, while everything at the resort had opening and closing hours, which were not always convenient. Sometimes you just want room service after 10:00pm, after all!
We went back to the concierge desk after lunch and someone else escorted us to our room in the Windsor Tower. I have to say, we didn’t have the most expensive room in the place, but we could not have been happier. It was beautiful, spacious, and well-located to everything at the resort, with an amazing balcony view. The room was one of my favorite parts of the trip. In fact, we got some ideas for how we want to renovate our master bathroom. Which may happen sometime this century.
Then we did something we hardly ever get to do.
We took a NAP! Yes, a nap! In fact, we napped every day of this trip. Sounds like a dream right? Well, it happened.
After our nap, and some freshening up, we decided to make our first dinner a special one. The resort has 10 restaurants, and only one of them required a reservation, so our options were open. One place I knew I wanted to eat at least once was the French restaurant, Baccarat. It ended up being our favorite meal of the vacation. We were seated at a window seat overlooking the pool as the sun set. The entrees were rich and decadent, and the desserts were the best of the whole trip. (Dark chocolate mousse and creme brulee, anyone?) Yum. And, to top it off, one of our servers had the same name as our son, which we thought was pretty special.
We ended our night strolling around the resort and even walking on the beach a little. It was an amazing first night in the Bahamas and we looked forward to what came next!
(Although, the next morning did not go as anticipated…)
She Who Has Believed 
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