Southern Comfort

I am getting so excited about going to St. Lucia in October!! For those of you who don't know me well, I'm a planner. Unlike my sister Nat, who can jet off to Africa for four months with next to no plans, I need to be an expert on where I'm going. I haven't even been to St. Lucia and I'm already answering other peoples questions on the St. Lucia forum on Trip Advisor. We've still got three months before we go, but I've already picked out which restaurants we should eat at, which day trips we should go on, who the good cab drivers are and where the best snorkeling is.
I'm pretty sure this need to make sure everything goes perfect comes from my OCD, but it doesn't really bother me when it comes to planning trips. We went to Disney last October and pretty much had the best vacation ever. Why? Because I spent 6 months reading The Unofficial Guide to Disney 3 times. I spent at least an hour a day researching the best hotels, restaurants, parks, shopping malls etc. I spent hours talking on forums and getting all the info I needed for Orlando. In return for all the hard work I did, we never waited in a single line at Disney, never ate at a bad restaurant, never spent an exorbitant amount of money on something I could get for half price somewhere else and we kept a journal to make sure we remembered the whole trip!
The advice you can get from others is invaluable. These people aren't paid to write reviews for books or magazines or Disney; and therefore aren't biased on what they say.
From the great advice I got on the St. Lucia forum on Trip Advisor Jeff and I have decided on the following day trips while in St. Lucia.

Serenity Tours: Helicopter Flight from airport to Marigot Bay (where our bed and breakfast is located)
Serenity Tours: Land and Sea Tour St. Lucia (We get to visit the banana plantations, the Governor's house, Castries (capital city), Sourfrieres and the volcano's, lounge in the mud baths, swim in the healing sulphur springs, swim at Diamond waterfall, snorkel at the base of the Pitons and catamaran back to Marigot Bay, while drinking rum punch and Piton beer!)
Serenity Tours: The Magic of the Grenadines (we fly from St. Lucia (in an eight seat airplane), over St. Vincent and to the Grenadines Islands. We take a catamaran and visit Union Island, Palm Island, Mayreau Island and Tobago Cays. We swim, snorkel and relax at each island, then fly back to St. Lucia at sunset)
Scuba Steve: 5 hour snorkeling trip in the south end of St. Lucia. We visit Anse Chastanet, Piton Wall, Superman's Flight, Devil's Hole, Turtle Reef and Coral Garden's.
Serenity Tours: Kayaking tour from Rodney Bay to Pigeon Island. Snorkel at Pigeon Island for two hours, then Kayak back to Rodney Bay.

All these tours come highly recommended by everyone on Trip Advisor. I'm definitely most excited about the Grenadines trip! How cool is it that they fly you from Island to Island then take you on an all inclusive boat trip for the day? Pretty cool!

Anyhow, I thought I'd write something a little lighter today! My next post is going to be a breakdown on how I'm going to reach my new goal! Friday will be my weigh-in day again!