Max and I traveled to a brand new (for us) location for our babymoon: the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands! Their high season doesn't start until mid December, so in addition to lower rates, we also enjoyed a gorgeous, almost empty island!
Our second full day there was also my birthday! My husband was so sweet and woke me up to see the sunrise over the ocean (we actually just peeked at it from bed, then went back to sleep!). After breakfast at the hotel, we headed out to look for Smuggler's Cove beach. My view from the passenger seat leaving the hotel:
Riding/Driving in Tortola was a bit of an adventure. In addition to driving on the left, the roads are super steep, super windy, and oh yes, they have no names. Max kept singing the U2 song Where the Streets Have No Name. We lost our way to Smuggler's Cove, but just-so-happened upon another beach called Long Bay, a mile-ish long stretch of sand that was pretty much empty. It was the perfect birthday find!
Here's Long Bay from the road:
See those rocks in the ocean way to the right of the picture above? Well, when we spotted them my husband suggested that we snorkel out to them. I replied "No, thank you" as they seemed really far out. Somehow, though, Max got me out there!
We also spotted huge schools of tiny fish and ginormous three and four foot long Tarpin when we got close to the rock.
For a teensy second I thought the Tarpin were sharks as they are quite large and had dorsal fins. I wrapped my arms and fingers around myself which is what I did when we dove with sharks in Bora Bora (you don't want anything flailing about that can be bitten), but since they weren't sharks Max was confused and thought I was cold.
Tortola definitely had character. Here's one of our favorite finds: a local beach bar! (Yes, it's literally that hut under the tree.)
We had gorgeous weather for my birthday! (And actually every other day we were there, too!)
We found a little beach restaurant called Islands down the road for birthday lunch. Conch fritters and fried fish = a happy preggers!
Plus, I had the best company in the whole entire world:
We spent the birthday afternoon exploring our darling hotel (more to come on this "boutique resort" later!). Then it was off to birthday dinner at The Sugar Mill! I was super excited for this because 1. The Sugar Mill was one of the top restaurants on the island and also named most romantic in the Caribbean, and 2. The restaurant was actually inside a 370+ year old Sugar Mill! (Bonus points that my nickname from my sweet high school friends is Sugar!)
In our villa before heading out:
Here's an image of the candlelit restaurant from their website:
And my personal birthday menu!
The food was delicious:
And the whole restaurant sang when they brought out homemade ice cream with a birthday candle!
I kept telling Max over and over that it was the best birthday, ever! I couldn't have imagined a better, more special or more perfect way to kick off my 30's!
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