We decided we wanted something all inclusive, because you don't want to be stuck on your last day with 8 bucks for dinner. I always lean towards the vacation with a lot of authenticity - where you really get to experience the place you are, see the culture, eat the food, see the history... I wanted to go to Thailand and hike the rainforest and eat the cockroaches and sacrifice virgins into volcanoes (...or something like that). David wanted to eat, drink, and lay on the beach at a resort. So we had to find some happy medium.
So here is my advice for places to look for cheap honeymoon destinations - first, look on Groupon Getaways and Living Social Escapes. They always have great deals, although you have to check the restrictions on travel times, what the trips include, etc. We ended up booking our vacation on Cheap Caribbean, which I would definitely recommend to anyone who is finding the process a little overwhelming. This site is great not only because the prices are so low it's just plain stupid, but also because you can take care of everything with one click. We booked our trip at an all inclusive resort that included taxes and gratuities, our flights, and our transportation from and back to the airport, all at once. It was five days, for two of us, and for everything I mentioned, it still came to under $2,000.
I was nervous looking at such cheap packages, because I thought there had to be something wrong with the place to have prices like that. We were looking for places in Jamaica, and I became obsessed with reading reviews on Trip Advisor, which is helpful and useless all at once, because really you just read a bunch of glowing reviews and a bunch of terrible reviews about every single destination you look up. And you never know who's writing them - maybe it's just a person who is generally unhappy and wouldn't be pleased with anything. But I didn't want to go somewhere where there were a bunch of hidden costs, or our passports would get stolen (I know, I'm high maintenance like that), so I was vetoing a lot of places we initially liked after I read reviews.
Finally we found the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort and Spa in Montego Bay. All inclusive with multiple bars and restaurants that were open at all hours of the day, taxes and tips included, lots of activities each day, and pretty good reviews. For some reason the fact that it was a "Holiday Inn" put me at ease... just because of the familiarity, I guess. Any bad reviews weren't for anything major - they were more for things like, a lack of variety at the buffet, or a line whenever they wanted to sign up for a snorkel, or something like that. Which I would kind of expect when paying what we did.
It was a really exceptional trip. The flights were nonstop which is nice. I am extremely afraid of flying, but thankfully my mom gave me some Xanax and I did pretty ok (I mostly slept and only ended up grabbing David's arm once during takeoff). When we got to the airport in Jamaica we got onto our Jamaica Tours Limited shuttle to the resort, which was actually like a little orientation to the island. The driver told us what certain words and phrases meant (for instance, if someone told you you looked "trash," that was a good thing, and a "tough bumper" means a nice butt). We drove through the countryside where people's homes were made from pieces of wood and sheets of aluminum and what looked like ruins of previously beautiful homes, and he explained to us that most of the people who live there squat in their home while they work on building it, because to get a mortgage in Jamaica, you have to pay something like a 30% interest rate. While it was kind of depressing, it was interesting to learn about the country.
The resort was great! Our room was big and clean, and the water was clear and warm and amazing. The main buffet, where you had your breakfast lunch and dinner, was really good. I thought there was plenty of variety and the quality was above average. The drinks were super strong, which I didn't expect at an all inclusive. You also got to have one dinner at one of their fancier restaurants, and we chose the seafood one that faced the ocean. It was a nice change of pace.
It took a minute to get used to not tipping, but they even gave us a paper when we checked in that told us it was not necessary to tip since it was all already included in our package. And if we wanted to tip, we were supposed to go to the front desk and get an envelope to put it in and leave it there, instead of giving it directly to the person. Once I saw that nobody was tipping, I felt better (I didn't want to be the only asshole there that wasn't tipping, which was my fear).
We spent five amazing days eating and drinking (I swear I gained 10 pounds), snorkeling, kayaking, sailing, laying out on the beach, playing bingo, hanging out in the adult's only pool (with the swim up bar), having the most amazing jerk chicken and pork, and just having a fantastically relaxing time after the six months of chaos we had just been through.
I have to say the big highlight for me was the one thing that we actually did pay for while we were there - they had all kinds of excursions you could buy, and one was horseback riding. We paid $75 each, and a shuttle picked us up and drove us the 40 minutes to the stable. It was interesting to again see some of the countryside that we were so removed from at the resort. When we got there, some Jamaican cowboys (oh, it's a real thing, and it's just as cool and sexy as you would imagine it to be) got us set up on our horses (David was TERRIFIED, which was quite funny). We took a 30 minute ride through farms where they were raising goats and growing onions and hot peppers, and we had to keep our horses from eating the marijuana on the side of the trail (maybe the guides were kidding about that?), and then we rode along the beach and to the water, where we got our bathing suits on and then hopped onto our now barebacked horses for a short ride in the Caribbean. At the end, we stood up on the horses back, and then jumped back into the water. It was seriously magical.
We rode back a different way, seeing more farms and a private jet landing strip and some beautiful privately owned homes (quite different from the squatter's village we had seen coming in). And then we were shuttled back. It was just what I had wanted - to really experience the country and see more than just the other tourists drinking pina coladas and singing karaoke (not that that's not also fun). So we ended up having a perfect balance.
There was also a show the last night we were there called The Michael Jackson Experience, where they had dancers and a Michael Jackson impersonator that was so spot on it was uncanny. David is obsessed with Michael Jackson so this was a very nice surprise, and a perfect way to spend our last night on the resort. We returned fat, tan, and happy and it was a great first week of being husband and wife.
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