Flare Fixation

Breakfast ♥

January 23, 2012
Day 2 - Official First Morning

Anticipating breakfast

We wake up to surf and sun! Last night when we checked in we were told to call our butlers on this cute little cell phone they gave us. We do so and meet our daytime butler: Roger. Silly me, never did get a photo of either of our butlers. He comes to the room so we can meet him and he is SO cheerful! Especially for first thing in the morning. He introduces himself and we start to get to know one another. He's so nice. He asks us if we enjoyed the crickets last night. We mention that yes we did and the frogs so much more! "Those aren't frogs." Oh? "That's Jim the frog." We laugh. This is very important - my dad's name was Jim. A very poignant coincidence. He asks us our plan for breakfast and offers to bring us breakfast on our patio. We think that's a great idea. We ask for assorted pastries and local fruit expecting mango, pineapple and assorted tropical fruit. After breakfast he promises us a private tour of the resort. When breakfast arrives, Roger runs off to get us some fresh coffee as the stuff room service sent us was not good enough for us. We were disappointed that fruit meant melon, which I'm not the biggest fan of. Turns out that all the melons were local and super fresh. I've never had watermelon or honeydew that tasty! Goes to show what it means for fruit being picked off of the bush when fully ripe.

Mmm... Breakfast

We enjoy breakfast - which was actually a lot of food. Oh, the Banana Bread was AMAZING. They do not undersell the bananas of St. Lucia. Let me tell you - a banana that's been fully ripened on the tree is like no other. They were one of the best parts of our trip!

The beach with a view of the bluffs - where our room was

Viewing the resort in style

Roger takes us on a tour of our resort. We see another group of people on a tour - but ours was private! Way cool. We explore the property, see the gifts shoppes, the spa, the different restaurants and most importantly: the beach. It's a beautiful stretch of pristine sand with waves crashing to it. We learn about the three flag system for the ocean: red - don't go in the water, it's too dangerous (a fact we learned about later but that's another day, another entry) yellow - only strong swimmers should go in & green - safe for all. The entire time we were there we never saw it green. It's not like Jamaica [where I went last year] the beach here isn't protected by a reef. Then again the whole resort is nothing like Jamaica. It's just so much more elegant. I felt the whole trip that the staff were just that much nicer and there wasn't as large a difference between the resorts and the rest of the island. In Jamaica you didn't feel safe leaving the resort. It's so desolate. Beautiful, but very poor. All in all I just enjoyed my stay with Sandals La Toc so much more.

 We settle in next to the main pool while Roger goes and fetches us some drinks. He brings Mom a Piton beer and Chu something pink in a martini glass. It was luscious! The flavour was strawberry and something with rum. It went down so smoothly! I asked for another one later in the day and asked about the name so I could ask for it at lunch. Roger wouldn't tell me. He said that it was a bad word and felt terrible saying it to a lady. Mom and I then nicknamed the drink the blushing bride. Felt it was fitting.

Mmm... so good.

While we enjoyed ourselves by the pool for a little while Roger went up to our room to unpack our bags for us. Yes, that's right. Unpack. ^.^ We return to our room to change into swimwear so we can walk the beach and get wet. We enjoy ourselves for the day finally wanting lunch at 3:30pm - well after the restaurants have closed. We call our butler and he brings us lunch in our room. We enjoy local mahi-mahi in a spicy hollandaise; with local fresh zucchini. Oh it was great. Again, so much better than the food in Jamaica. The food there really felt like it was shipped in frozen from Florida. Here everything was local and fresh. It was like night and day; making the food just that much better.

We then settle in at the pool near our room for after the peak sun to enjoy the outdoors. We dip our toes in the pool and decide it's too cold. So when the pool bar closes we're not sure where to get our drinks. We test out what our butlers and do for us. Sure enough our butler brings us drinks! By this time it's our other butler, Ficus. He's just as bubbly and fun as Roger. He's our evening butler. We have them from 7am to 10pm.

Smoothie Bar

Our first sunset

Getting ready for a night out

For the night we decide to visit the Italian restaurant: Armando's. It had a decent menu. The seafood risotto I had was actually amazing. It had shrimp, mussels and baby scallops (baby as in small) it was really tasty. I wrote in my journal that night that if I were writing on a computer my "!" button would break. The whole day was just bliss! It was the perfect temperature all day long, and all night. Perfection is being able to wear a light sweater and never sweat. Of course for my Mom it was being able to wear no sleeves at all. We have very different temperature zones. We fell asleep to another chorus of crickets, surf and Jim-the-frog. ♥