St. Kitts: A Smith Family Vacation (Part 3)

Hey ya'll! It's hump day! This week has been flying by! Ryan had to travel for work and I have been volunteering at Super Summer Kids Week in the DRAMA tent, which goes on all week! 

I'm back today to finish my recaps on our trip last week (womp womp). 

Day 6- Thursday 

Once again, our morning began with a trip to the gym! Call me crazy, but getting a good workout in before putting a bathing suit on for the day always seemed like a good idea! 

When we were nice and sweaty, we threw our suits on and decided to bring our cameras out one more time, walk down the beach, and snap some pictures! 

And then we turned around and saw this coming at us: 

And fast... 

It started to drizzle, forcing us to sprint back down the beach with cameras in tow to our hut, packing all our stuff up, and made it back to the suite right as it began to down pour! We hung out in the room and ate lunch while waiting for the storm to pass, which took about an hour. The weather for the rest of the day was beautiful, so of course, we spent it by the ocean/pool, not coming up to shower until after 6. Since we got a late start on the evening, we decided to stay on the resort for dinner and chose to eat at Calypso once again.

On the balcony of Calypso. 

After dinner, we decided to make the most of the casino on our property and try and win some more money! Over a span of 4 hours, we somehow managed to only lose $10 that night! For the amount of entertainment we got in that time, I'd call that a win.. although it would have been better to make some money! 

The legendary Blackjack table! 

Day 7- Friday 

In order to make the most of our last day on the island, the Smith's headed back into town to pick up the last of our souvenirs and FINALLY check out a highly recommended local restaurant, El Fredo's.

At El Fredo's!

We had some great meals on this vacation, but this one took the cake! Everything they served was grown (or raised) on the island. Ryan and I both ordered the creole red snapper and shared the sides, which were "corn meal", coconut dumplings, green banana (which tasted like potatos), potatoes, corn on the cob, and a pumpkin specialty which the highlight for me!

Before heading back to the car, we stopped outside the restaurant to snap a couple pictures!

After lunch, we headed straight back to the hotel to put our bathing suits on and soak up as much sun as possible on our last day! Ryan's cousin, Tina, goes to school on the island, so she and a friend were able to come hang out with us by the pool later in the day! We ordered pizzas in the evening and ate by the pool before showering and heading back to, you guessed it, the CASINO to try (and fail) to lose money! Ryan and I ended up leaving the island with an extra $70! Success!

We called it a night a little early since we had to be packed and out the door by 6 a.m. Saturday morning.

Day 8- Saturday 

As I just mentioned, we wrapped our trip to St. Kitts up bright and early, saying goodbye to the beautiful island around 8 in the morning.

Boarding the back of the plane.

Ryan and I were supposed to land in Boston around 6:50, but due to some bad weather in Miami and a couple incompetent luggage loaders, we didn't touch down until 8:40. The only perk to a two-hour delay was flying into the city during a beautiful sunset.

Boston welcomed us back with open arms. 

And that just about does it for the Smith family vacation 2013. As you can see, we had an absolute blast and have already started thinking about our next trip together! 

-Sarah 

St. Kitts: A Smith Family Vacation {Part 2}

Happy Monday, ya'll! I'm back with the next couple of days from our St. Kitts vacation!

Day 4- Tuesday 

Tuesday started with another trip to the gym. After a good workout and some breakfast, everyone headed back down to the beach for a day of fun in the sun. This time around, we brought our cameras down to capture some of the beauty of the island and take a couple family pictures by the ocean!

We really wanted to get a picture of the entire group, so we set up one of the pool stools, turned my camera to a 10-second timer, put everyone in position, and snapped this picture below! I think it turned out awesome! 

After our mini photo shoot, we spent the rest of the day lounging and throwing the football before heading up to the pool around 4 for pool bingo! 

We played three rounds of bingo and on the last round, Brandon won! His prize was a Marriott Vacation Club drawstring bag and a yellow t-shirt! 

For dinner Tuesday night, we drove down the street to Ciao, an Italian restaurant where, once again, dinner was DELICIOUS! After dinner, we ventured back to the casino for the rest of the night! At the end of the night, Ryan and I both left up $20! 

Getting ready to play some blackjack! 

Day 5- Wednesday 

On Wednesday, we celebrated Rachel's birthday! In the morning, she opened birthday presents from me, Ryan, Brad and Susan! Since Brandon, Rachel, and I all have birthdays really close to each other, we all exchanged birthday presents with each other so that we could celebrate together! After our first birthday celebration, everyone got dressed and we decided to drive the entire island.

St. Kitts is 10ish miles long and there is one road that we took all the way around the island. First, we drove down the peninsula to Cockleshell Beach, where we ate lunch at Reggae Beach Bar and Grill. On the way to the beach, we drove past tons of wild monkeys! *Here's a little trivia for you: There are more monkeys on the island than humans and there are roughly 36,000 people living on St. Kitts! 

Right when we walked into the restaurant (or more appropriately- shack), we stumbled upon a Georgia Tech flag hanging from the ceiling. The waitress brought us a sharpie and Ryan, Brad, and I were able to sign and leave our mark in St. Kitts! The restaurant also had a UGA flag that Brandon and Rachel were able to sign.

Once our bellies were full, we left the shack, walking by a cage holding two monkeys. They were loving the attention but I couldn't get over how sad they looked to be locked up on the beach. Let those monkeys back into the wild!! 

LET ME OUT!!  

Our trek around the island took about 4 hour, including a couple stops. We stopped first at the top of another small mountain overlooking the area we had just come from and took a couple pictures!

The Smith Men! 

We continued our drive around the island, detouring again to see Brimstone Hill Fortress (which we drove up to and quickly turned around after realizing it cost money to tour!) and Ottley's Plantation on the east side of the island. 

Ottley's was seated on top of a mountain, and it was an adventure in itself trying to reach it in our rental van. On our drive up to the plantation, we came across an extremely steep section of the road. In order to lighten our load, Brandon, Ryan, and Rachel hopped out of the van and walked up the hill. Brad decided to gun it to get enough power to get all the way up, but didn't realize quite how steep it was and almost bottomed out the car! It was quite the adventure and definitely made for some entertainment! Luckily, we made it to the top because the plantation was beautiful and actually had trails that put you right through the heart of the rainforest! 

The Beautiful plantation

Down in the rainforest

After our little trek through the rainforest, we hopped back into the car and finished our drive around the island. We got back to the Marriott around 6 and quickly got ready for Rachel's birthday dinner at Bombay Blues, an Indian restaurant down the street! This was most of our first time trying Indian and we got an order of the butter chicken and the chicken tikka masala (both were SO good!).

At Bombay Blues! 

After dinner, we came back to the room, ate some DELICIOUS birthday cake, and spent the rest of the night playing Telestrations! 

Can anyone guess what Ryan was trying to draw in the picture below?!

And with that, our vacation was more than half way over!

-Sarah