Okay, finally time to talk about our honeymoon! If you didn't know, Whit and I spent the week in Ocho Rios, Jamaica at Sandals Grande Ocho Rios resort. AWESOME. For a few years, I have been dreaming about my honeymoon. A little dreaming about the wedding, but mostly the honeymoon! I LOVE traveling and I love islands, so the honeymoon seemed like the perfect opportunity for a romantic retreat to the Caribbean. I knew I either wanted to stay in a private villa or go to Sandals resort. Whit didn't want the hassle of flying somewhere, but since we got married in November and it was cold everywhere close to us, he realized we would have to fly to get somewhere warm. Sandals sold him with the wonders of being all-inclusive.
We found a sweet deal at Grande Ocho Rios where we could stay in a villa (with living room, kitchen, and semi-private pool) for cheaper than the lowest room category at any of the other resorts! The resort had lots of restaurants too so we decided it was a perfect fit (Whit loves eating out) even though the beach wasn't quite as nice as some other places. I was really looking forward to our little villa, which was actually located on the mountain side of the resort (not the beach). When we got there, our bus driver dropped off half the people on the mountain side and told us to stay on to go down to the beach side. Whit didn't seem to be disturbed, but I knew something was wrong - I wanted to make sure they didn't mess up our room, since it was going to be really awesome. We heard a bunch of people whispering about upgrades and we decided we'd just wait and talk to the people at the front desk once we got down to the ocean side.
When we asked them what was going on, they told us they had upgraded us to an oceanfront room. Apparently a lot of other people had the same thing happen to them. To ease our pain and confusion, a waiter brought out glasses of sparkling wine to welcome us and put us at ease. Although they told us it was an upgrade, we were skeptical. I mean, our villa room was supposed to have 3 rooms and its own pool. A hotel-style room sounded like a downgrade. They tried to convince us it was an upgrade and told us to try it out for a night and if we didn't like it they would try to get us one of the other rooms that we had requested...but they said that most people wake up in the morning with the ocean view and don't want to leave. I was a little disappointed, but we went to check out our room.
It was just what we suspected. We couldn't figure out if it was really an upgrade because the room was smaller, but the ocean view was definitely nice. I wanted to keep weighing the pros and cons of each room, but Whit just wanted to make a decision and enjoy our vacation. After spending the night there and realizing how close we were to all the restaurants, activities, and the beach, we decided we were better off (on the other side, we would have had to taken a shuttle every time we wanted to go to the beach). I liked it more and more when we hung out in our room with the door open to the ocean breeze, sound of the waves, and live music that we could hear downstairs. We knew we made the right decision when we woke up the next morning to the sun shining through our doors with the beautiful Caribbean below us.
I'm not really sure why I spent all that time talking about our room upgrade, but the point you can take away is the Jamaican attitude that we learned through this: No Problem. Jamaica was the perfect place for our honeymoon because the people really helped us to relax and not worry about anything. We had been so stressed out with planning the wedding, so once we got there we just enjoyed ourself. We would ask questions like "Can I take my drink down to the beach?" and "Can I order two appetizers?" and were always answered with "Yeah mon, no problem." It made for a really chill week. If you're looking for a great, relaxing honeymoon destination, Jamaica is it.
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