Day 1

☆Heads-up: Long, picture heavy post.☆

Saying goodbye to friends!

Meet Miss Chu (pronounced "shoe" short for Takochu): My travel companion. She is planning on accompanying me on every trip that I take from here on out.

January 21, 2012
Packing Day
I spend the day packing my long list of sunscreens and summer dresses. Miss Chu helps out by bringing up my suitcase and making sure everything was there.

January 22, 2012 - St. Lucia

Travel Day

Mom with passports all ready to go

Excited to go!

Checking In

Miss Chu impatiently wating

 We leave Edmonton WaaaaaaY to early. I manage to sleep on the plane a little bit and Miss Chu does too. 

Arriving in TO

Petrie & Miss Chu

We arrive in Toronto for a 2 hour lay over.  This isn't a bad thing as we meet up with my best friend Petrie for lunch! The lunch at Swiss Chalet was so gross but the company was well worth it. He even said hello and had a wonderful welcome for Miss Chu.

The plane ride from Toronto to St. Lucia was awful. It was long, cramped...
ugh, I don't travel well without room. I'm not a compact person. Unlike Miss Chu. Mom brought her iPad with her and we watched the movie "No Reservations". A very good movie even if it did send me into tears a few times. The worst? They wouldn't turn out the cabin lights.

In flight entertainment

Are we there yet?

Arrival Bouquet

Hors D'oeurves

We arrive to lovely, friendly people. We check in at the Sandals waiting area and Aaron comes to take our bags to the shuttle. We pop off quickly to visit the loo - as I said, it was a long flight from Toronto. We return to see that no one else's bags had been taken yet. Aaron asks if we are ready to go as we were about to settle in and wait for the rest of the bags to be loaded. We say that we are and he escorts us to a private car! A surprise from out butlers.

Rum punch

After an exciting, twisty road, car ride - complete with cold, local beer (Piton) & cold water we check in privately at the butler's lounge. While we wait for everything to be placed in order we are served hors d'oeuvres and rum cocktails. The shock of the evening? Mom admits that she enjoyed the rum cocktails! She hates, I mean HATES rum.



We decide to forego room service and enjoy the food that I had prepared for the plane ride but didn't end up eating, as well as our welcome food! We eat on our private balcony to a symphony of crickets and little frogs. The frog's croak sounds more like a bird - like the red and black birds I used to hear at the boat. I said to Mom as we ate dinner that the frogs are like our Caribbean Dad. Allow me to clarify, at home mom and I characterize my dad's spirit in the form of a crow. Crows seem to accompany us on all of our trips, ensuring we make it home safely. The first sound we heard upon arrival at the hotel was these little frogs. Thus my reasoning that the frogs are our Caribbean version of Dad. We watch the stars from the balcony and decide that the brightest star in the sky is my Gran.

We decide to enjoy a lovely walk of our end of the resort. Our rooms are up on a bluff, separate from the rest of the resort - which is quite nice. There's a pool, complete with swim-up bar, the Italian restaurant Armando's, and villas that all have their own plunge pools. During our walk we meet an adorable kitten, probably only about 6 months. I name him Patches. He has orange and black patches on white fur.

 We return to our suite and enter our bedroom to find welcoming towel swans along with an itinery for our week. We'd planned to go to the special butler service restaurant on Friday, January 27th for my Dad's birthday and our butlers had made reservations at the "Japanese" restaurant and La Toc, a special French restaurant.

We return to our room ready for bed and hunker down for the night serenaded by a chorus of wildlife. Onto dream land and further adventures. ♥

A bed just for Chu