If you've read the reviews, I am not your typical East Winds Inn guest- I'm 26 and from Texas. That being said, I think I can give East Winds a fair review. I would be HAPPY to reply to any questions honeymooners (or others) have. So send me a message any time.

My husband and I arrived at East Winds after the long drive from the airport. If we wanted to spend the extra money, we would have taken the helicopter transfer, but the drive was not as bad as I expected. After reading reviews, I was expecting a scary road that leads on forever and ever with scary locals along the way. Yes, it took an hour and fifteen minutes, but the taxi driver was very knowledgable and we enjoyed the route. And the St. Lucia locals were some of the nicest people we've met. We arrived to the wonderful girls in the reception area and were immediately taken to our deluxe room. It was really beautiful. It was so quiet that we thought we were the only people in the resort. We were a little worried because we although we wanted to relax, we're both active people and wanted to have some fun too. We quickly found out that there WERE other guests there, we just needed to enjoy the peace and quiet everyone provided each other while in our cottages. Once you make it to the pool/beach/bar- you'll find people.

Here's a break down of the resort from my eyes:

Rooms: We stayed in the deluxe room. It has air conditioning and a ceiling fan, which we used the whole time. Yes, St. Lucia has a great breeze all the time, but I love to be cold. It wasn't the 69 degrees I usually sleep in, but it was definitely comforatable. There is not a bathtub, but we really enjoyed the huge shower. The beds are very big and comfortable. We sometimes took naps in the room or watched a DVD on the televsion. It's tropical and open and very nice. We loved the front patio and sat there with a beer (provided in the fridge within reach of our chairs) and watched the gardens.

Pool: We LOVED the pool. We enjoyed the extensive bar and made all kinds of drinks while floating in the pool with the other couples. We met so many friends hanging out in the pool. There is always a lounger available and always more drinks being poured.

Beach: It's small, and just what we wanted. Kayaking, view boards, snorkling... it's all there. I don't scuba dive or anything, so I'm not the right person to ask about the beach, really. But I loved laying on the loungers under the thatched roofs and watching everyone else snorkle.

Food: AMAZING. Breakfast- eggs to order, toast, fruit, bacon, sausage, etc. Lunch- different fish and meat, vegetables, and there's always fruit and cheese. We also got a different flavor of ice cream each day for dessert. The best part- dinner. We really enjoyed getting dressed up each night and heading to dinner at 7 to meet our new friends for drinks. Then, we headed to the restaurant for our sit down dinner around 7:30-8. 4 courses, wine, amazing staff, it was perfect. The restaurant is open-air so you can hear the waves and get a good breeze. There's always candles and it's so romantic. There are multiple options for each course and we never had a hard time finding something to eat. I don't eat meat and my husband doesn't eat fish and we had no problems. We would often skip courses just because it's so much food that we couldn't make it all the way through. Some of our favorites:

Tomato capaccino (the best soup!)
Mushroom risotto
cheese pasta

steak with blue cheese sauce
pan fried red snapper
vegetable stir fry

chocolate tart
apple crisp
ice cream souffle

Oh! There's too many to remember. Hats off to Vincent!! The best French chef around!!

After dinner, some of the guests would always gather at the bar til 10 or 11, trying to stay awake. The bartender, Titus, would make us the BEST drinks and keep us laughing. We are pretty young and like to stay out late, but had a hard time staying awake after 11. It sounds crazy, but we really enjoyed it.

Staff: Best staff I've ever encountered at any resort so far in my life. They are so happy and became our friends. We wanted to bring so many of them with us to visit us in Texas!

Excursions: We didn't book anything until we got to the resort. We told the girls at the front desk what we wanted to do and they set it all up for us. They just said- be here tomorrow at 9 am and everything else was handled. Very easy. It was billed to our room.

Gareth sat and talked with us a lot and always said hello. He was so friendly and always available. (Thanks, Gareth, for taking the time to talk with us about East Winds, baseball, and everything! It's great getting to know you.)

We had such an amazing time and made the best memories. It was a great mix of relaxing, enjoying the blue water, drinking too much, eating too much, making new friends, and being romantic. I can't imagine a better honeymoon. A quick hello to all of the wonderful people we met while there! (Stephen, Tina, Richard, Carla we miss you guys!! See you next year?? )

We have recently returned from a two week stay in St. Lucia at the East Winds Inn. We have been to a few Caribbean Islands and so far have found St. Lucia to be the most scenic with the friendliest people.

Having done extensive research before our trip, East Winds was everything we expected. It is a very quiet idyllic setting for those looking for a very relaxing laid back holiday. Our days were spent lounging on the beach and taking the occasional excursion around the island.

Although people talk about "Caribbean time" (where things happen much more slowly and late in comparison to western time) our experience in St. Lucia was that everything was on time or early. This included meals at the hotel and various excursion activities.

The meals were fabulous and varied, well mixed with local ingredients. There was a very well stocked bar and champaigne was served every night with a lovely selection of wines for dinner. There was a variety of entertainment from local folk singers to a steel band which we thoroughly enjoyed (having bought a few of their CD's).

All the staff were exceptionally friendly and helpful and unobtrusive. The rooms and grounds are very well maintained and clean. We used the free WIFI on a number of occasions and there was computer internet access for the guests at reception, which was useful as well. The beach is fairly private and we were never bothered by beach traders as there is a subtle security prescence on the premises.

There were a lot of really nice touches around the hotel which made the place special, and explains why we met a number of repeat visitors; the guests seemed mostly to be made up of repeat visitors and honeymooners. Therefore if you are looking for quiet romance in a very beautiful setting this is your place. Saying that, this was our first visit and we were not on our honeymoon.

Just one last note, if you have the chance to take the helicopter transfer from the airport we highly recommend this as you get gorgeous views of the island scenery.

We arranged our wedding at the East Winds Inn based upon many things, one of which was the comments and reviews from trip advisor. The East Winds excelled in everyway possible.

We wanted a place that was quite and romantic, intimacy was essential and it delivered in everyway.
Everything about our day was amazing the staff were fantastic and couldn't do enough for us.We were relaxing in the pool 2 hours before the wedding while the gardners and staff prepared the beach setting, which was stunning.
Our photographs were taken by Bill Mortley, a local photographer whos work we found to be very proffesional, he captured the occasion perfectly. If you are considering a wedding here you will not be disappointed.

Away from the wedding, the hoilday/honeymoon was outstanding in every sense. Everything was just amazing the food, the room, the staff ,the grounds and gardens.
We also met some great people whom were very friendly, this contributed to a relaxing happy atmosphere.
We loved the East Winds so much we will be returning at the same time next year to celerbrate our 1st anniversery.

We stayed at Eastwinds for the second week of a 2 week visit to St Lucia in March 2008. Our first week was an active walking holiday so Eastwinds was intended as chance to have a completely lazy week. It completly met this objective for us.

We stayed in one of the Deluxe villas, which was clean and comfortable. The 'outside' shower is an interesting idea but if the bathroom is used at night with the light on the screen doesn't provide much privacy!! Our only negative comment on the room is that the TV (and DVD) picture quality was very poor, although we spent very little time watching television so it really wasn't an issue. As mentioned by other reviewers we were disturbed occasionally by dogs barking in the vicinity, but there is little the management can do about this.

The grounds are very attractive and well maintained, the beach areas were clean and provided with plenty of good quality loungers and shade. Eastwinds offers a few facilities such as snorkels and kayaks on the beach, which in our week were little used and always available if we felt like being slightly energetic. We were however surprised to find that there was no waiter service to the beach areas, not a big problem as it's only 50 yards to the bar, but given the number of staff around we thought this could easily have been provided.

Overall we found the food to be good but not great. In general the barbecues were very good, in particular the fresh fish that we had watched the fisherman land that morning was always good. The dinner menu was a bit limited, offering only 3 choices for started and main course, but with one exception all the food was very enjoyable. The exception was one beef dish that definitely used the wrong cut of meat.

We found the staff to be courteous and helpful without being overly friendly, which given the style of the resort we felt just about right.

The only other point to note is that the resort is just round the bay from Windjammer Landing so there is a steady stream of water skiers and jet skis in the bay, however the area off Eastwinds' beach is cordoned off and no one seemed to encroach on this while we were there. At night the music from Windjammer Landing can be heard but this was seldom intrusive and always seemed to finish by 11:00pm.

Overall we thoroughly enjoyed Eastwinds which hit the mark as a place to relax and do as little as you want.

Liz & Pete
Bath, UK