Antigua - A Trip Report About This Page:

[disneydebk]

Those pictures are gorgeous! Thanks for sharing them.

[crystalloubear]

[ QUOTE ]


Wow are all Sandals like that? Our resort in Negril doesn't keep quite as late hours.

So unless you specifically went to Bayside dinner was a sit-down affair?



[/ QUOTE ]
When we stayed at the Sandals on St Lucia, it was open until 2am. So I'm guessing it depends on the resort. We could get 24 hour room service because we were in a suite.

The Bayside was the buffet, the grill was fast food, then Il Palio and OK Coral were sit down open air restaurants and Kimons was sit down inside for the main dinner and dessert was in their Japanese gardens.

[chezp]

I love your report Crystal - it sounds like paradise and just as well after all the problems you had getting there!

[BritDisFan]

Oh my goodness Crystal, I really really want to go to Sandals Antigua, it sounds fabulous!

Karen

[crystalloubear]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm foaming at the mouth thinking DH and I have to go! Can you tell me how much this was? You can PM me if you want to!

[/ QUOTE ]

Depending on what room you pick, you can spend anywhere from $4000 to $7500 not including the airfare. We got a deal on ours with a special sale that they were offering for repeat guests to Sandals. We paid about $6500 including the airfare. I don't think that is too bad considering all food, drink, snacks, watersports, aiport transfers and tips are included. Sandals resorts are a little more laid back than other all inclusive resorts. I think the fact that they are a little more expensive draws a little more mature crowd. The room we picked was also one of the best they have - it was a seaside rondoval with concierge and butler service. We were literally steps from the beach which you can not find at alot of resorts.

[crystalloubear]

Day 5 - Part 1 - A Day tour of the Island

Today, we had signed up for a tour of the island. It was described as a VIP tour in an air-conditioned SUV. That is my speed of excitement!! We were greated at 8:45 am by our driver Simon. Our group was 6 of us plus Simon. The SUV was a Nissan Patrol. I was a little worried at first when I saw there were 6 of us, but there was plenty of room inside the SUV. SImon took us all over the island. We saw places of historic and cultural interest. Simon is with a company called "Classic Safari" and we booked it thru our resorts tour desk. I think Simon must know everything there is to know about ANtigua. Any question (However bizarre) and he could answer it - beleive me. The one guy in our group worked for CBS News and he asked some off the wall questions. Either Simon really knows his stuff or he is one heck of a BSer!!
We saw so much that day. I'll just stick to the highlights and things that I took pictures of!! Our first stop was at the Interpretation Center. This was an old fort way back when and now it is a visitor center where they have a multimedia presentation on the history of the island. We watched the show and walked around.

The View from the Interpretation Center looking west onto the Caribbean Sea
From the parking lot of the Interpretation Center looking southwest, this was the view

All those houses on the far off hill are famous people. The entire right side of the hill is Eric Clapton's. The other houses to the left belong to Whitey Houston, Morgan Freeman, Timothy Dalton and some other famous guy that I can't remember
Next we went on to Shirley's Heights which was an old look out. It is one of the best views on the island.

There was some kind of yacht event on New Years Eve so there were a lot of boats out there in English Harbour.
Next we went down to Nelson's Dockyards where we had a historical tour of the old dockyard. They showed us where and how they repaired the old boats and sails. There was also a museum to look around in.

The cluster of white buildings in the middle is Nelson's Dockyard.
It was getting kind of warm so next Simon took us to a near by beach to take a dip. It was so refreshing. Antigua claims they have 365 beaches - it would be fun to try them all!!

Pigeon Beach - known as a Children's Beach b/c it is so calm

Next up Day 5 - Part 2 - the rest of the tour

[crystalloubear]

Day 5 - the rest of the island tour

After the refreshing swim, we got back in the SUV and headed off for lunch. I was already starving and it was 1:30 pm - way past my lunch time. We arrived at the headquarters for "Classic Safari" where they had a nice buffet set up for us. There was native vegetables (not sure what some of them were, but they tasted good), mashed plantains (I think - it was potato like but definatly not potato), rice and beans and 2 kinds of chicken - BBQ or Curry. Everything was delicious. We ate and had some dessert and were on our way again. As we were leaving, I spotted this by our SUV

I thought he was cute. There were goats wandering around all over the island. Simon said they do that during the day and go home by sundown. Pretty smart, eh? I thought goats were fairly dumb.
Next we went up the road a piece to an old church. It was so pretty inside.

Stained glass window at St Peter's Church.
The inside of the roof looked like a woven basket. I tried to get a picture of it but it didn't come out. We left the church and traveled on.
Next we went to Devil's Bridge. It is where the Atlantic Ocean slams against the island. Hard to describe so here's some pictures.








There was a hole in the rock where the water came up through sort of like a geiser. Anyway, it was breathtaking!
Next, we left Devils Bridge and headed to Betty's Hope, an old sugar plantation. Most of it was just ruins. I guess some people found it interesting.
After leaving Betty's Hope, we drove through the rainforest and Simon showed us some different things growing. It was raining (duh) so we didn;t get out anywhere, but it was neat to see. Simon did pull over and pick some grass for us to smell. It was lemongrass - it smelled NICE!!
From here, we drove back to the resort up the western coast of the island. We passed some beautiful resorts and went through St John - the island's capital. There were 2 cruise ships in port and all the cruisers were rushing back to the ship as it was almost 5 pm. We finally got back to the resort. Thanked Simon for the great tour and headed back to our room.
After resting for a while in our room, we had a dinner reservation at Il Palio - the italian restaurant. It is an open air restaurant just off the beach. When you were seated, there was some nice Foccacia bread, black olive spread and herb butter. The menu had some nice choices. For your antipasto, you could order off the menu or make your own at the antipasto bar. We elected to make our own. Lots of nice meats and cheeses, lettuce, fresh mozzerella and tomato, a few things I couldn't identify so I left them behind. The next course was the pasta course. I had a penne pasta with a spicy sauce that had some kind of bacon and olives in it. It was quite good. DH had plain old tomato sauce on spagetti. For our main course, I got a steak with anchovy butter on it and DH got lamb chops. The main course was just average - nothing to write home about. Dessert was excellent (good thing I didn't eat much of the main course). I got Tiramisu and it ROCKED!! YUMMY!!
After dinner, we met up for a little bit with Jay, Sandra, Alan and Ann. We had a few drinks and danced a little, but excused ourselves early because we were beat!!

Day 6 - A New Year's Eve Celebration

[Tara O'Hara]

Wow! What an awesome tour Crystal! That is one gorgeous island!!

P.S. A plantain is a type of banana. It is only grown in tropical regions.

[GoofyMom]

Wow!! Those are awesome pictures!!! I think your tour sounded like a wonderful experience. Looking forward to hearing how NYE is celebrated in Antigua!

[Tink and co.]

Enjoying your report and all the pictures! Thanks for sharing!

[loobyoxlip]

Wow, how beautiful. Sounds like a nice vacation Thanks for sharing!

[crystalloubear]

Day 6 - New Years Eve

The early part of the day, all we did was lay around!! At 4 pm, we boarded a catamaran for a sunset cruise. I had never been on a catamaran before. It was really fun. We sat way up on the front part of the boat with our feet hanging over the edge. They came around with drinks and hordeurves. The sunset wasn't much to see as it was overcast, but the scenery around was beautiful.

A View of our room from the ocean - its the green one on the right

A little island we passed


The Rainforest (never mind the beer bottle in the foreground!)

The Sunset
The cruise was over at about 6:30 pm so we went to get ready for the New Years Eve Party. I had arranged with the concierge that we would have a reserved table for the party which was really nice b/c there were people everywhere!! There was also food everywhere. There were 6 meat carving stations, 2 cold buffets, 3 hot buffets, 1 seafood buffet, a teppanyaki chef cooking shrimp and chicken, and 2 dessert buffets!!

Here's us right after dinner - too bad we weren't both looking at the camera!! BTW, I realize that by this point I have spent almost a week on an island and I am WHITE!! No tan for me - I use lots and lots of sunblock! I don't tan anyway - just turn red and back to white!
We had dinner with 2 couples that we had met during the week. I invited them all to join us at our table and they were all so happy that I had this idea. The seats were really good and we could see and hear the band from where we were. During dinner, there was a steel drum band playing. They were pretty good but after about 1 hour - it all starts to sound the same to me. They played for 2 hours and then the dance band came out and played awhile. People weren't really dancing yet. They played for 1 hour and then took a break. During their break, the Antiguan Dance Academy performed. It was a group of girls (high school age) doing native dances while 3 guys played drums. It was very interesting. The dances looked like something between a belly dance and a hula. After they were done, the dance band came back out.

We danced

Here's our new friends Jay and Sandra
At midnight, they dropped balloons and everyone had champagne and there were even fireworks!


By the time Midnight came, we were all exhausted!! Everyone called it a night shortly after the fireworks were over. We went back to the room and called home to wish everyone a happy new year - we beat them to the New Year by 1 hour!!

Next up days 7 and 8 - Rest up its time to go home!!

[luvnwdwgal]

What an awesome vacation you had!! Love the pictures!!

[chezp]

Great installment - it sounds like you had an awesome New Year's Eve!

[GoofyMom]

Wow - New Year's Eve island-style sounds like it's fun!