Getting there is Half the Fun

Or the story of our last vacation… (at least getting to the island!)

So remember how I won an amazing prize from Sandals Resorts on Valentine’s Day? After a lot of thought, and asking for opinions… we decided to to go somewhere we never would have thought of visiting on our own; in this case St. Lucia. After choosing St. Lucia, we had to choose a resort, since Sandals has 3 separate resorts on the island. After a lot of deliberation, we chose the Grande St. Lucian. (Of course knowing that if we wanted we could visit any of the other 2 resorts) Once we knew the resort, and figured out the time we wanted to go…. we booked and started the countdown to adding a new stamp to our passports!

In the time we were deciding on where and when to book, I started following several people in the Sandals organization, as well as the resorts’ various accounts (Island Routes, Sandals, Beaches, WeddingMoons) **Professional Note – The Social Media people at Sandals GET IT. They really get it…. ** They were some of the people that helped us choose St. Lucia, and between them and the folks on the other end of the Live Chat that pops up helped us narrow down our choice to the Grande. If you are interested in a Sandals Vacation, ask these people!

I digress slightly….

Everything was booked and we were finally on our way. The Diva and Lil WO off with Gramma for a week of California Fun (after 5 hours of driving – Leg #1), and we were off to another visit to the Caribbean. I am not a huge fan of LAX, but since we couldn’t book a round trip flight from Sky Harbor. And we hit our 1st issue… Just an FYI if you ever plan on flying JetBlue out of LAX… their ticketing counter is NOT always open. We got to the airport a bit early for our flight, and all we wanted to do was check our bags, and get food.

Unfortunately for us, JetBlue’s ticketing counter was closed for the next 2 hours… Yes, you read that right, CLOSED for hours. Which mean we sat, at ticketing for hours. Not happy. AT.ALL. Thank GOD I had saved one bag of flips from the GannettLocal Office Snack Shack! (Yay for Flipz… they probably save WO from a huge melt down on my part….

Anyway… after the wait, we finally were able to check our bags, and head through security… And headed to get dinner. (and a drink… I don’t think I have mentioned yet that I don’t consider myself the BEST flyer) After dinner we headed to our gate. Now, since we left AZ when it was 105 degrees, and had 2 flights to catch and our final destination was a tropical island, I was dressed comfortably, yoga pants and a tank top… and sandals. So, by the time our flight was approaching (leg #2 was a red-eye to JFK) my toes were cold (more accurately FROZEN) which was issue #2. So, after a quick couple of purchases (fuzzy socks and Sominex) we boarded and were off.

We landed at JFK at about 5am… and since the Sominex hadn’t completely worn off, all I wanted was coffee. So I was going to make at beeline to the nearest Starbucks. But… the only coffee in the terminal was Dunkin Donuts. This did not make me a very happy traveler. All I wanted to do is find a place to curl up and sleep the layover away. But I managed to drink it just to get some caffeine in my system for Leg #3 of the trip. JFK to  Vieux Fort, St. Lucia. After 12 hours of traveling, we were slightly slap happy, but very glad we were just one flight away from our stay in Paradise.

I admit that I was more than ready to be off the airplane well before the flight was over. Just slightly stir crazy and claustrophobic. I had done a little research before we left (because I like to have some sort of idea of what to expect.) But I still wasn’t ready for the Hewanorra International Airport! It was quite smaller than I expected, and I never thought I would be getting off a plane and walking down a mobile staircase! But that is exactly what you do! We went in to go through immigration, which went much faster than I expected… and then it was off to baggage claim and then to the Sandals lounge, to wait for our transfer to the resort.

Lessons learned?

JetBlue has fairly decent customer service, though very odd hours for ticketing counters. But their free in-flight entertainment is nice… especially the google map channel. Both WO and I would be listening to Sirius Radio, but had the TV on the Google Map channel so we could see where we were at any time during the flights. Fun stuff for geeks like us! I’ll definitely fly them again.

3 legs of travel that are 5+ hours each… is too much.

To Be Continued….

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