Gabrielsen's in Paradise!

Well, I'm two months behind in my blogging, so I'm sure I've probably forgotten a lot of the details of our fabulous Gabrielsen sibling trip to St. Kitts, but I'll do my best. 

We all (well except for Kay and Ken who are amazing Japanese missionaries)

arrived in St. Kitts on Thursday, some more directly than others.

I took the route through Phoenix with a 10 hour layover and then a red eye flight to Miami and then we all met up in Miami and flew on the same flight to St. Kitts.

We were all pretty excited to arrive in paradise.

We got all checked into our resort at the Marriott Beach Club and began to relax.

The free fruit smoothies didn't hurt.

I think this was dinner the first night.

I know most everyone ordered lobster.

On Friday, the guys golfed, the girls hung out at the resort.

We walked

 

and then lounged on the beach and by the pool

We had a pretty amazing view from our balcony 

 

Friday John took us on a tour of Basseterre, the city on the island.
He is quite a history buff so knew all the inside info.
 

We also found some delicious Johnny cakes.
John and the Johnny cake

Tom really wanted to try some of this grilled meat

Downtown was hopping with lots of kids just out of school and some crazily clad "Carnival" style dancers prancing through the street.

We ate Chinese food for dinner Friday night overlooking the town square.

Saturday was more golfing and hanging out on the beach.  Not a bad life.


 
We ate more seafood for dinner at the Shiggidy Shack right on the beach.

Sunday morning we went to church at the St. Kitts branch.

Sacrament meeting was great and the Sunday school lesson was as good as any I've heard on the "scattering and gathering of Israel".

I can still hear the Sunday school teacher saying that with his Caribbean accent.

After church we hired a cab and took a tour of the island.

This picture of egrets is just for Ken.

 We visited a few old sugar plantations.

I just remember that it was so hot out in that jungle!

I felt so bad for the plantation workers.

 

 

 

 

 John was our tour guide

 

 We then went to a fort built up on the top of a hill.

 

 

The English used it to defend against the French, the Dutch and the natives

 

 

I learned that John has an obsession to feed stray animals.

The gates to the fort were pretty narrow back then.

Our taxi barely made it through.

We stopped and took some group pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

We had a Sunday buffet dinner that night that featured Caribbean food

and got to watch the sunset on the beach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We all really liked the Caribbean food.

Monday, Tom and I shared a cab with some other people from our resort and we went to Reggae Beach on the other side of the island.

See it way down there?

We stopped on the top of the hill for a photo op

 

Can you see the Marriot resort?

 Reggae beach was gorgeous!!

We were dying to do some snorkeling and we finally got our chance.

 

The sand on the beach was so hot, it was hard walking out of the ocean to your beach chair.

I know 1st world problems.

Selfie time :(

 

They had this Clemson sign in the beach bar, we had to get a picture for Devin.

Tom liked this sign in the bar

For dinner Monday night we ate at Chinchillas.
Who doesn't want Mexican food in the Caribbean? It was actually really good.

Tuesday was Sister shopping day! Yay!!

There weren't any cruise ships in the port so we had the shops to ourselves. 

Every shop keeper loved us and tried to sell us their wares.

We ended up buying sister necklaces and we each chose a perfume.

We ate lunch at Sweet Cane and ran into the missionaries.

We had delicious fish sandwiches.

We stopped at the grocery store on the way home to buy groceries and in true Gabrielsen fashion,

Pam and Patty hosted us that night for a hamburger fry (although it wasn't Saturday).

We took lots of walks on the beach

This little horse shack was just down the beach from our resort. I call it a horse shack because there were horses wandering nearby.  I think the owner did horseback rides.

 

 One of the days we made our own lotion at the resort.

It was Hal's birthday on Wednesday so John reserved a room at an Indian restaurant.

The chef was so thrilled to have us eat his food.

He even took a selfie with us and posted it on Facebook.

They made a special sign for our reservation.

I think we were the only diners in the place.

But I have to say the food was delicious.

Tom didn't think he liked Indian food but he loved what he ordered.

On Thursday John and Cindy and Tom and I took the ferry

 over to St. Kitt's sister island,

Nevis.

The port and cruise ship harbor.

 

Nevis was a little bit more tropical than St. Kitts, and very humid.

After a cab driver competition, we started on our tour.

Our cab driver drove us all around the island.

Our cab driver John with our John.

Our first stop was an old tavern and hot springs.

Right up Tom's alley.

I wanted to buy the old lodge and renovate it and turn it into a bed and breakfast.

We stopped at a couple of old sugar cane plantations.

The grounds were beautiful.

Can you tell we are really hot?

Gorgeous right?
Can't you just see Mick Jagger wandering around.
It was a totally reclusive movie star resort.

We had a hard time finding a place for lunch, but settled on this little kitchenette.

Surprisingly the food was really good.

Eating adventures!

This Rastaman on our ferry ride back to St. Kitts was interesting

We ate dinner at Sweet Canes that night because we wanted the guys to try it.

We spent lots of time walking on the beach and lying on the beach.

The resort pool was beautiful!

On Friday night, Tom walked down to the strip to get some pics of the sunset.

 

Then we had a delicious dinner at Cathy's.

The place was packed and we had to wait but the food was so good.

Good southern cooking with barbecue ribs and seafood.
I think it was my favorite meal.

Cathy herself.

Our pool all lit up at night.

Our last day, Tom and I walked the golf course and took some pics.

We wanted to snorkel one last time so on Saturday afternoon we took a cab down to the strip, Tom got in a little snorkeling and then it started pouring.

It rained for the next 3 hours, so we sat in the cafe and waited and then just headed back to the resort.
Can you tell that it is pouring. Not a very good picture.  Tom was supposed to look sad.

Dinner that night was Italian food.

It was delicious and the owners were so thrilled to have us.
They also took pictures to post on their Facebook page.

We were quite the celebrities on the island.

 

Sunday morning we headed to the airport for our 6 am flight back to the US. 

What a treat it was to spend vacation time with some of my favorite people. 

Can't wait for our next Gabrielsen Getaway.