2nd already posted some pictures of our honeymoon, but I wanted to put a more detailed summary of our adventures, since not everyone has heard all of our stories yet.
For our honeymoon, we went to Grenada (the island in the Caribbean, not the city in Spain). We got a lot of odd reactions on telling people about our plans. Most people older than us asked if that was where the US had invaded in the early '80s. Yup. In October of 1983, a communist coup killed the head of the government. The US invaded six days into the coup, allegedly at the request of the Governor-General, and the government of Dominica. However, all of the travel guides indicated that Grenada is safe and friendly to Americans these days. And although it was hit hard by hurricane Ivan in 2004, Grenada is widely reported to be recovering rapidly.
Grenada is referred to as the Spice Island. They are the largest producer of nutmeg in the world -- they even have a nutmeg on their national flag -- but they also grow many other spices. We decided it would be a good place to soak up culture and food in addition to the beaches.
It took a little bit of traveling to get there. First, we flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico. From there, we changed carriers and took a prop plane to St. Vincent, which had a tiny, tiny airport. Then, we connected to Grenada. We arrived late Sunday night, and, after the local who rented us our jeep for the week crazily drove us to our hotel (little did we know, everybody on the island would be driving crazily!), we checked in for the night.
We decided to sleep in a bit on Monday. We eventually got up and checked out our view from our balcony!
If you look closely, you can see a pair of cruise ships across the beach -- that's St. George's, the capital of Grenada. From our hotel, we could see straight in to St. George's harbor. Incidentally, that would be our first stop.
We headed into town and walked along the harbor. The road and sidewalk were only a few feet above sea level, and waves occasionally splashed up on them. While in town, we booked our ferry tickets to Carriacou, a smaller island to the north, still part of the nation of Grenada. More about that trip on Day 3. We checked out the local shops, and we gathered ideas for where we wanted to eat and what we wanted to do with our week.
We spent a good part of the day exploring around the streets and shops, and we stumbled upon a good place for lunch -- it looked more like a home than a restaurant! We had some nice fried chicken. (More chickens were just wandering around the street.) We also had a great lime-squash drink!
Then we visited Fort George. This is where the coup and assassination took place. Strangely enough, that was the first time a shot was ever fired at the fort.
Late in the afternoon, we headed back to our hotel and Grand Anse Beach, the most popular beach on Grenada. And would you believe we had it all to ourselves! It was just downhill of our hotel room.
In the evening, we headed out for dinner. I can't remember the name of the restaurant we ate at, but we had a nice banana split for dessert, with a local twist. Nutmeg ice cream!
