Caribbean family holiday

With the forecast of a wet and gloomy summer we decided to take a week off work and head to sunnier climates and chose to spend a week in St Lucia. We flew out with Virgin Atlantic from London Gatwick and after a 9 hour flight landed in the South of the island at Hewanorra airport, then had a taxi waiting for us to travel upto the North of the island which took approx 1 hour 30 mins. Our drive was through the countryside allowing us to get a feel of the 'real' St Lucia, seeing the small shacks selling bananas and melons to the 5* deluxe villa complexes that are being built on the East coast of the island.

We had a night in the resort of Rodney Bay in the Coco Palm hotel, a lovely B&B hotel with just 83 rooms. Being the Caribbean the staff couldn't do enough for us, the room was on the 2nd floor overlooking the pool and sea in the distance and was classed as a 1 bedroom suite. If you fancy it though you can always stay on the ground floor and have a swim up pool room!! We ate at the restaurant in the hotel in the evening we were there and the food was fantastic.

After having spent one night in Rodney Bay we then travelled south down to the capital and checked into the Almond Smugglers Cove hotel in Castries. We were met with cold drinks and cold towels as we were checked in and then taken by golf cart to our 1 bedroom suite located in the new part of the hotel. Located at the top of the hill, the views were amazing (see photos attached). The rooms were large, modern and had the most comfiest beds ever, a large 3 corner jacuzzi bath in the bathroom with overhead showers, and plasma TV's in both the lounge and bedroom. Excellent quality and I would definitely recommend the upgrade. The hotel had fantastic sports facitilies - gym (with personal trainers) - tennis courts - aqua aerobics daily - golf taken at a nearby course - watersports galore! We did pretty much all of these throughout the week that we were there, the staff were friendly but safety conscious and we were able to hire equipment out or book onto lessons at most times of the day, even waterskiing lessons were included free of charge. There was a separate company working on the beach who hired out Jet skis and also did boat trips - we were spoilt foe choice!

The hotel had a variety of eating venues - breakfast was served in 2 restaurants with either waiter service or buffet style. We were able to take lunch from the daily beach BBQ or be treated to waiter service at one of the restaurants. Dinner - was all waiter service and a reservation had to be made at one of the 4 restaurants - The Palm (Continental) - Bambu (Fusion cuisine) - Morgans Pier (Fish) - Le Jardin (French - adults only). There is also the snack bar Plumbe tree bar and grill which serves snacks during the day and then on top of this if you can face it... the Palm offers afternoon tea!!. The food served in each of the restaurants was excellent and there was enough choices even for the fussiest of diners.

Kids facilities were available at the Almond Morgan Bay but as Chloe (12) and Alix (9) made lots of friends around the pool they didn't attend these. There was also a large varitey of trips available to us and we were able to pre book these through our tour operator at the hotel. We decided to head into Castries independently and have a wander around the local market and then went over to the duty free village near where the cruise ships dock. Just a pointer here - if you go and buy alcohol then it is delivered to the airport for you for your return journey home so make sure that you have enough time for this to be done.

Going home - well all good holidays have to come to a end and this was no exception for St Lucia, we were sad to leave the resort and all the friends that we had made but would love to go back, one thing I would do though is book the helicopter transfer for the return journey to the airport... WOW factor or what.