Our Honeymoon in Barbados
Today I really really wish that I was sitting on a beach sipping a strawberry daiquiri (instead of in gloomy Ohio), so I figured that it was a good time to finally recap our honeymoon in Barbados last October!
Mark and I left two days after our wedding - we headed to Miami first and then transferred to a flight to Barbados. The travel wasn’t too bad - if i’m remembering correctly it took us about seven or eight hours in all. We booked our honeymoon through Sandals - and stayed at the Sandals Royal Barbados. I’ll share more thoughts on staying at an all-inclusive resort like Sandals later in this post, but honestly - Barbados was so incredibly beautiful! Traveling there in October was perfect, and part of the reason we chose the country was because of an almost guarantee of good weather during that time of year there. We were met in the Barbados airport with free drinks, live music, and a sunny warm day. I will never forget the energy that the people of Barbados had, and how much of a warm welcome they gave us and all of the other travelers.
We arrived at the resort by bus, were immediately handed MORE drinks, and shown to our room. We decided to splurge a little on our room and got a ground floor level suite with a walk out pool - and man, am I so glad we did! The resort was really breathtaking - beautiful flowers and plants everywhere, and the layout was easy to navigate but also lended itself to a lot of privacy, which we really appreciated. One of our other reasons for choosing Barbados and was because we knew we wanted to try a Sandals resort, and in this country, there are basically two resorts in one: Sandals and Sandals Royal. Royal is a bit pricier, with larger and newer rooms that have a bit more privacy. The great part about the two being right next to each other is that you get twice the number of restaurants to eat at, and twice the amount of pools, beach space, activities, and events. Like I mentioned before, Sandals is an all-inclusive resort, which meant that all of our food, beverages - everything was included! We didn’t need to leave the resort and except for one snorkeling excursion, we didn’t!
Normally, Mark and I are not the type of people who want to stay on a resort the entire time when we’re traveling. If we are going to a new place, we want to experience the entire culture and not have a censored experience. However, after talking about it a bit, we knew that if we were going to travel immediately after our wedding, we were going to do it with relaxation in mind. We wanted it to be as stress free and fun as possible. Relieving the responsibilities on planning out days of activities and transportation and restaurants was such a great decision. Instead, we got to spend most of our time at the beach, in the pool, and could eat, drink, nap, and explore as we pleased.
Another key reason for splurging to upgrade our room was to have access to room service most of the time for no additional charge. If you are ever going to travel to Sandals location - I would highly suggest upgrading your room level so that you’re able to do that. There were also ever more expensive options to have a full time Butler, but we really didn’t feel a need for that. We did use the room service A LOT though, and that combined with our personal swim-up pool allowed us to spend a lot of time together alone, which was honestly so special, and an aspect of our honeymoon that I highly recommend to anyone. We also had a HUGE soaking tub on our patio, a table for outdoor dining, and in-pool lounge chairs. We definitely took advantage of all three - having breakfast on the patio via room service most mornings, reading and taking periodic dips throughout the days, and soaking in the tub in the evening. Honestly, i’ve never felt more bougie in my life, and I loved every minute of it.
The other place that we spent most of our time was at the swim up bar and pool located in the heart of the Royal Barbados complex. This pool was pretty quiet most of the time - there were always free chairs and space to stretch out, and the swim up bar was amazing! I think I drank my weight in strawberry daiquiris at this pool throughout the week. We also spent time at the beach, and took plenty of nice walks on the beach, but it was generally more crowded so we did spend a lot of time at pools as well.
Pretty much everywhere you looked on the property was gorgeous. I had so much fun photographing the beautiful tropical flowers and plants that we saw. It was just such a peaceful experience, and felt like we were on a totally different planet at times!
One of the most memorable experiences of our whole trip was our boat excursion. For about $100 USD per person we got to have a day of sailing, eating a traditional Barbados meal, and snorkeling with sea turtles and among shipwrecks. Snorkeling with sea turtles has been on my bucket list for years and it did not disappoint! The boat that we ended up on that day had three other couples - so only eight people in all. It ended up being super fun because the other couples were one other recently married couple (the were married the same day as us!), and two couples who had been married for years and years, celebrating their anniversary in Barbados. We all got along really well and enjoyed time together talking about our recent weddings, and getting advice from the older couples about making a marriage work. The captain and his first mate made us a meal themselves on the boat that we super delicious. We had limitless drinks and it was truly one of the best days of my life - spending the day sipping drinks on the boat and then snorkeling was just the right combination of exciting and relaxing!
Back at the resort, we spent most of our days taking it really slow - drinking and reading and swimming. Most nights though, we got dressed up and went to one of the many restaurants available to us at the resort. The food wasn’t earth-shattering or anything, but we didn’t have a bad meal, and there was a lot of variety to choose from! A few of the fancier places we made reservations at in advance (which was easier to do the higher your level of room) and the rest of the evenings we had no problem getting into some of the more casual restaurants. We ate at an Italian-themed place, a seafood restaurant, an English-style pub, Caribbean jerk chicken, and got pizza to take to our room one night too. My favorite place that we ate was the rooftop French bistro - it overlooked the ocean and was a perfect romantic dinner to end our last evening in Barbados.
There were so many restaurants on the resort that we didn’t get to try, namely the steakhouse that we couldn’t get reservations for. There was also an Indian place, a Japanese steakhouse, and much more. Every restaurant offered customized drinks, and three course meals. We most definitely did not go hungry while there. We also got to do some really fun activities when wanted: there was a bowling alley that we had a fun evening at, and Mark also taught me to play pool, which we ended up doing most nights to wind down our evenings. We even got to try jet-skiing on the ocean on day, which was terrifying was lots of fun. Not sure i’d do that on the ocean’s choppy waves again, but i’m glad we tried it out! We did notice that a lot of couples at the resort were there with friends, which I think would be super fun if you were taking a group vacation with only adults! For our honeymoon though, it was nice to have so much to do when we wanted to get out, but a lot of time for just the two of us as well!
Our Honeymoon ended up being the perfect relaxing week we had hoped and planned for. I’m not sure if we will take another vacation to an all-inclusive resort any time soon, but it was a great decision for this trip! It’s a time in my life i’ll never forget and I truly feel so lucky to have been able to take a luxurious trip like this right after having our dream wedding. We were so thankful to the Barbadian people for welcoming us so warmly into their country and allowing us to have such a relaxing and memorable experience! I hope you enjoyed re-living this trip with me through photos - especially these very cheesy ones that I made Mark take with me on the beach our last night. What a handsome guy my husband is!
