The first week of July, Matt and I were lucky enough to join five other couples for an adults-only vacation in Jamaica. To say we had excitedly been counting down would be an understatement!
We booked this trip back in January and it has been so fun having something to look forward to. The group emails started almost immediately and got more frequent as the trip got closer. Of the 12 girls in my group of friends from college, it got whittled down to just 6 of us (and our spouses) that were able to commit to the trip. (Maybe everyone will get to go in a few years when there aren't so many new babies!) A lot went into our destination choice (that I won't bore you with) and we ended up staying at a freshly renovated, all-inclusive Hyatt resort in Montego Bay. Most of us had been in Ocho Rios, Jamaica this same time of year just six years prior for a destination wedding. The couple that got married then was on this trip too so we got to celebrate their anniversary with them.
The Hyatt used to be a Ritz Carlton property and just re-opened last December. The bulk of the resort was pre-existing buildings that were completely renovated and a brand new building was added on. There are two properties that sit side by side, the Zilara (where we stayed) is for adults-only and the Ziva is family friendly. We were able to easily access the Ziva property which was good because they had a lot of good restaurants! If you are looking to book a trip to Jamaica, I would recommend this property.
I mean, when this is your first view after stepping off the hotel shuttle, you know it's going to be a good week, right?
Three sets of couples arrived at the same time and since our rooms weren't quite ready yet, we enjoyed a late outdoor lunch. It was a good kickoff to the relaxing days ahead. When our rooms were finally ready and we had access to the wifi, I snapped this view from our balcony to send to our parents to let them know we'd safely arrived.
I was thinking this post was going to be quick and easy to write because I didn't take my real camera and only have a few pictures from my phone. Then I realized those "few" pictures from my phone total 233. How in the world?! I won't bore you to death by narrating the whole vacation, I promise.
Here are the six couples that were in attendance.
Sarah and Charlie
Jenny and Darrin
Emily and Andrew
Darbie and Kendall
Chris and Roxy
Matt and Me
This is the only picture from the whole trip that has all 12 of us in it. (Thank you, selfie stick.) Fun fact: I crammed a whole roll into my mouth right before smiling for this picture. It's just hanging out in there while I try to look normal.
So the gist of the vacation went like this: get up whatever time you feel like it, do whatever it is you want to do during the day, and then we all meet up for dinner. Matt got up early every morning and worked out. (I know! What in the world?!) When he came back to the room, we'd suit up and head to the beach to claim our spots for the day before grabbing breakfast. Then, for us, pretty much the rest of the day was spent at the beach. There were actually three couples that seemed to prefer the beach and two that preferred the pool and one that flip-flopped back and forth. We all met up for dinner every single night though so we still had lots of time together!
Our first morning on the beach, I thought it would be cool to walk out on these rocks for a picture. Turns out that's not really allowed and I got in trouble. Not really, they just told me not to come back off the rocks and not go out there. I'm kinda glad because once the waves splashed up on my shoes, my feet started slipping around and it got a little scary. I made it almost to the end before I realized they were trying to get my attention. I was happy to turn back around!
You may be able to tell from the picture above that this beach was not like the white sandy beaches in Florida. This was a rocky beach that they had poured sand over, so there were still plenty of rocks around. The water was really rough and the sand stopped just a few feet into the water and it became rocks again. You can see, too, that there was lots of dark seaweed at the edge of the shore. I actually didn't touch the water at all except for when we were out on the boat. (The weather was so perfect and there was so much wind that there was no need to get in the water to cool off!)
Ok, here are just a bunch of random beach and pool pictures.
There were quite a few of these enormous bed cabanas and they got snatched up so early every day! Matt and Andrew made it out to the beach at 6:30 one morning to claim two of them for us and we laid on them all day long.
View from the cabana bed.
There were catamaran sailboats that you could ride out on with a guide. Matt and I went on a ride one morning with the Thompsons and our guide was awesome! He kept us out on the water for far longer than any of the other rides and he told us all about Jamaica and pointed out houses and buildings to us, including the property where Queen Elizabeth stayed when she visited and the house Johnny Cash owned. The terrifying part of it though was that he asked if I had a camera before we went out on the water - I told him I did thinking he was just going to take our picture before we left. And then he tucked my phone into his life vest - not in a pocket or anything, just between his life vest and his chest, and carried it out on the boat with us. I had only had my new phone for a little over a week and I was a nervous wreck he was going to drop it in the ocean! He didn't, though, and I'm very thankful that we have these pictures from our boat ride.
When we got out far from shore, our guide stopped the sailboat and made us stand up to take pictures. There was NOTHING calm about the water or steady about the boat to make standing up easy. I'm pretty sure I screamed a hundred times trying to stay upright. And then he would tell us to "prove that we belong together" so that we'd kiss for the camera.
We had breakfast and lunch outside everyday. It was so nice to be somewhere that wasn't unbearably hot and humid!
And for dinner each night, we showered and put on real clothes. All of the food was really good! We ate somewhere different each night - everything from Brazilian steak house to pizza and pasta to pub grub.
We were there for the fourth of July so we hung out around a fire pit to watch the fireworks. The Jamaicans put on a pretty good show!
And then we danced the night away under the watchful eye of Uncle Same.
I think when we were out on that dance floor is when I was the very hottest for the entire trip!
More evening photos. One thing we noticed is that it got dark quick there! It would still be light outside as we walked to dinner but as soon as we stepped inside the restaurant it seemed like someone would flip the light switch.
Our last night together, we hung out on a rooftop patio for after-dinner drinks. They had these huge light-up eggs scattered around that changed colors. I loved them and would love to have a bunch of themm for our backyard. Wouldn't that be fun at parties?!
While we enjoyed being on our adults-only vacation, we really couldn't go the whole time without seeing our babies! We are very, very thankful to Matt's parents for A) keeping our kids at our house so that we could go on this trip and B) face-timing with us while we were gone so that we could see them.
We all departed at different times on our final day. We left, though, having made the decision that these trips should happen every two years at least. We've got start scoping out our next destination. Anyone have any suggestions?