Jamaica

Well, I'm back and I am a changed person -- with a new last name, anyway. :) Robert and I got married almost two weeks ago, on August 22nd, and it was absolutely the best day. I'll share some pictures and a story soon, but in the meantime I'm going backwards and sharing some pictures from our honeymoon in Montego Bay, Jamaica. We stayed at the Secrets Wild Orchid resort, and we did our best to make the vacation equal parts relaxing and equal parts exciting. I think we managed both.

[We arrived in Jamaica to this beautiful view. As a person who is absolutely petrified of 

swimming in the ocean (that's the shark's house), having clear water was amazing. 

I really swam in the ocean for the first time in years and it was glorious.]

[We also had a pretty sweet view from our room. We splurged a little for the swim-out, and for our honeymoon, it was absolutely worth it. We spent a lot of time hanging out here during the week.]

[I like the way this bed-swing looks, but I never could get 

myself to lay on it, for reasons I'm sure you can guess.]

[Early in the week I discovered lounging chairs covered by these shade trees, and 

started referring to them as banana trees. They're not actually banana trees, but they 

are the best thing to lay under while you're reading a book.]

[I spent most of my 6:00-7:00 AM hours under the banana trees on the beach, reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I loved the alone time in the cool air before anybody else was awake and I loved the book.]

[One morning I watched a cruise ship go from a tiny dot on the horizon to a massive 

floating city. Do you ever wonder how things this big manage to stay above water? I do.]

["I got my toes in the water, toes in the sand, not a worry in the world, 

a cold drink in my hand, life is good today....life is good today."]

[I don't even really want to think about how many pina coladas I drank last week. 

But this one was the best so I went ahead and photographed it.]

[My handsome husband<3]

[My not so handsome selfie.]

[Robert and I did zip-lining as one of our excursions, and it was amazing and simultaneously terrifying. They warned as at the beginning that there were "seven zips and three surprises" and the surprises turned out to be vertical drops from a lot of feet up. The silver lining was one of the guides who would push people off and say "byyyyyeeee" in a child's voice. I'm laughing just thinking about it. Anyway, this is a pretty poorly executed selfie (where are we looking!?) post excursion. Pretty sure I was still shaking!]

[A bar was available post-zip. I thought it was funny that rum shots were first and wata was ninth.]

[Our second excursion was a catamaran cruise to a local bar/water park called Margarita-Ville. We also stopped to snorkel along the way and I snapped some photos of my guy from the boat. Try as I might, I could not get myself to jump into open water. That said, I did partake in the water activities at the ville including a water slide, trampoline and what I can only describe as "the blob." This was probably the most fun we had on the trip.]

[The food at the resort was delicious. There were different restaurants you could visit every night (Italian, Jamaican, Mexican, Japanese & French, to name several), and we tried to hit all of them. My favorite bite of food was this, a goat cheese croquette, from the French restaurant.]

[This picture is totally staged, but we had to get a picture with the giant chess set.]

[Doesn't get much more beautiful than this!]

[Husband & Wife!]

I have to admit, this week has been a pretty rough transition back into real life. Luckily I still have some happy memories to recall & a three day weekend to look forward to. Thank you for the great honeymoon, Montego Bay! We already miss you!