St. Barth's

I probably should've written this as we were down there.  Because 3 days later, it already feels like it never happened.  But it was heaven.  Bliss.  Amazing.  A second honeymoon but with the knowledge of what life is like after marriage and kids so you sort of can enjoy it just that much more. 

The funny part was that it was hurricane/off season and basically everything was closed.  Unbeknownst to the entire party there.  Autumn and Andrew had never traveled down there during that time, and neither had Andrews parent's who owned the villa we were staying at.  St. Barth's is a French island, and well, the French know where it's at when it comes to maximizing pleasure.  Especially through the taste buds.  So Mike and I had envisioned 4 nights of babysitting free luxurious French meals.  And essentially every place we wanted to eat at was closed. 

But not to worry.  We had a wonderful time.  The island was ours to own.  All four of us careened about the island in the tiny 4 seat island car as if on an amusement park ride, hopping from beach to beach, privately ours due.  Literally.  I think most of the beaches had one if two people on it.  Although mostly no one other than us.  There were hours of endless floating in the clear, fresh, absolutely prefect temperature Caribbean Sea.  Rolling on the beach in the waves.  Enjoying my French lover Michele.  Lovely time catching up with our friends without kids screaming at our ankles.

Don't take that the wrong way.  I cried twice on the plane feeling guilty for leaving our kids behind.  Which was relieved in about 36 hours, and by the time it was time to get back on the plane there, well, I thought one more day would have been fine. 

Many thanks to our parents who watched the kids for us.  We clearly couldn't have gone without their help. 

In the commuter plane from St. Maarten to St. Barth

Coming in for a landing looking over Gustavia

Villa Letchi

Not a bad place to enjoy your morning coffee

I believe this was Flamond beach--it's so hard to tell the were all so gorgeous!

Lunch at La Plage

All of the beaches had sign like this.  St. Jean was the beach where the airport landing strip extended into the water.  You could lie there and watch the planes come in and take off.

Our favorite.  Just a few smattering of houses on the mountains, nothing on the beach and gorgeous water

In heaven in the middle of nowhere

The water was actually quite rough at times near the edges. 

Autumn and I enjoying some swimming.  The beaches were quite steep.  You can almost see the beach edge in the foreground and we were standing.  Where Andrew was you can't touch the bottom.

Saline beach

On our last full day.  We thoroughly enjoyed Saline.

I bought an itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny-St. Barth-polka-dot-bikini.  Although the women go topless in St. Barth.  Love it!  I don't have anything to keep up with a top anyways. 

We had grand plans for a sunset on Colobier beach which is usually favored because it tends to be more quite and private because there is about a 20 min hike to get to it.  Surprise--we were the only ones there!  Somehow we got a little behind in schedule and barely made the sunset.  It was a great hike, but it gets dark very quickly there, so we basically chugged our wine and headed back. 

Enjoying our five min on the beach

I am not sure what happened to the Flamond.  You can see that it was dark out when we got back from our sunset hike.