Honeymoon Take 2, or This Chicken is a JERK!

by Mara @ What's For Dinner? on January 3, 2010

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Did you catch Part 1 of our honeymoon update? I’m trying to come up with more fun names for each part than “part 1″ and “part 2″, but this is most definitely part 2.

Where’d we leave off? Oh right, we’d landed in Jamaica, gotten cold drinks at the Sandals lounge, I’d changed into flip flops and we got into a bus to take the 90 minute ride to our resort. I tried to get pictures out the bus window for you all, but only managed a couple of random ones:

The bus ride was bumpy, and in Jamaica, they drive on the “wrong” side of the road, so picture-taking wasn’t faring well for my slightly travel-upset stomach. I decided to just sit back and enjoy the fact that we were finally there!

When we finally arrived at the resort, our bags were taken directly to our room, and we were asked to fill in some information on a form. We were then handed our keys and escorted to our cottage room. The resort was interestingly laid out. There were two sides: the Manor and the Riviera. The Manor was the side that had the main pool, and the Riviera side had the beach…and we were on the Riviera side! The rooms were in two main types of buildings: typical “hotel” types and the cottages. Each cottage had 4 rooms separated by hallways; two upstairs and two downstairs. I loved how tropical our room was!

We got a different towel sculpture on our bed each night, but this was my favorite. Once we got the air conditioning going, we both realized exactly how hungry we were for dinner! We quickly changed and went to the nearest and most easily accessible of the 8 restaurants in the resort. There was a little bit of a wait for a table, so we enjoyed our first piña colada and waited while watching the ocean.

Since it was 80 degrees outside, we got to eat outside by candlelight, which made for great atmosphere, but as was the case the rest of the trip, I would find, made for terrible food pictures! I had to use a flash a lot, so please excuse the über-bright pics.

The restaurant was lovely

and had a 5-course menu… but we didn’t figure out until our 3rd night that we were supposed to order one of each course for EACH of us, not to share. The appetizers were about 3 bites! We shared this shrimp spring roll:

Then Adam got soup and I got an “antipasto salad” which had one of my favorite presentations of the whole trip:

That’s onion, lettuce, eggplant, zucchini, fresh mozzarella, yellow squash, and tomato.

Adam’s entree was herb-crusted lobster with ravioli, and mine was a mini rack of lamb on ratatouille:

Both tasted quite delicious, especially in our super-hungry state! We topped off the evening with desserts. I had a piña colada cake, and adam got a pineapple upside down cake:

Then it hit us… we were exhausted! We went back to our room, and after emailing to let our families know that we’d made it, we passed out!

We awoke the next morning bright and early (8 a.m.) and went in search of breakfast. I have to say, the breakfasts were one of my favorite food things at the resort. There was a fresh fruit bar, omelet station, hot dishes, and a porridge/oatmeal bar complete with toppings. Regrettably I never got a picture of it… but trust me! It was stellar.

After breakfast our first full day, we spent most of the day outside looking at this:

and this:

And when lunch time rolled around, we were treated to a special Christmas lunch (oh right, it was Christmas day!) full of local foods, including Jerk Chicken.

That was my plate, which had (from the bottom left) jerk chicken, jerk beef roast, sweet mashed yams, chicken skewer, and this stuff called “fried festival”. It was all fantastic! Expect to see many jerk-seasoned dishes on this blog in months to come!

Dinner was delicious and served out on one of the piers on the beach. It was a Mexican/Southwestern themed restaurant, and I ordered a grilled sirloin which was cooked to perfection… but one candle on the beach didn’t make for enough light for a picture… So I’ll leave you tonight with pictures of Adam and I AT dinner on the pier: