So here we are, a year after Antigua having booked both a follow-up holiday which didn’t happen and this holiday. Now this time we had done a little more research into the butlers and what we could ask of them, we didn’t want to ask for things that shouldn’t be expected.
As the previous year we decided to travel down to the airport the night before, this is to avoid a really long travel day! After all, it’s about 4 hours to the airport and you need to be there 3 hours before you fly, so that’s 7 hours before take-off not factoring in any buffer for traffic etc. That means leaving the house at 3am……….I don’t think so!
Back to the Hilton (or the past as it felt), this time the AC was working! The hotel itself is nice, easy to find and the staff were really pleasant and helpful. Then there was the room, it looked clean until we went into the bathroom and I noticed the large amounts of long black hair all over the shower cubicle – 1 fiery redhead and a Shrek tech with no hair meant it wasn’t ours!
Ignoring that we ordered room service hoping for an improvement on the previous year, nope, that didn’t happen. “No-one likes the tuna here!” Yeah, Vince from the Fast and Furious was right. I had a tuna sandwich which I can only guess was made the day before and left in the fridge, the bread was hard enough to be used as a weapon and yeah the tuna was crappy….
Fast forward to the following morning, bag drop, through security and the lounge enjoyed. Off to the gate and as we’re about to board….beep. We both stopped dead in our tracks, then the most unexpected thing “Oh, you’ve been upgraded” – yes, we had somehow been upgraded from Premium Economy to Club World so we had to ‘turn left’ when boarding the plane! This unexpected upgrade was probably the best start to the holiday and made me forget about the tuna death blades. 10.5 hours of Club World awaited!
British Airways don’t fly direct to Grenada, they do a stop-off at St Lucia, so it’s around 8.5 hours to St Lucia, we stayed on the plane whilst they did a tidy-up and new passengers jumped on ready to go to Grenada – it’s then up and down almost a hop from one island to the other!
Into Grenada airport we land and yes you can see Sandals Grenada from the airport it’s that close…..but don’t let that put you off at all. For the whole week we were there we didn’t hear any planes at all! Grenada immigration is a slow process, lots of desks but only a few open and yet again people not completing their forms on the plane…..you had 8.5 hours to fill this form in whilst sat around doing nothing, don’t wait until you’re at the front of the queue to fill it in! You’re holding up your own holiday and others!
Outside to the Sandals desk, quite a bit smaller than Antigua but still the same style of setup, lots of desks for each of the hotels etc. We quickly found the desk but waited for about 20 minutes or so for other couples to arrive, I didn’t think too much of this as my brain at this point didn’t consider the transfer time…..less than 5 minutes from the desk to the resort!
Arrived at the resort and this time I didn’t try and grab my luggage as I didn’t want to be told off, simply pointed out our bags when requested. This time we both had a checked bag and a carry-on, this is just in-case our checked bag gets lost so we have at least a day or so worth of clothes and swim-wear with us.
Over to the Sandals Club lounge to check in and meet our one of our butlers, quicker than you can say “Rum punch please” and we were checked in (I’d pre-checked in via the app so this was simply a formality) and our butler was taking us on a quick tour of the resort before taking us to our room.
What a room! We’d booked the swim-up for both the room design and also the semi-private pool, it’s shared between the small handful of similar rooms on that floor and only once did we see someone else in the pool when we were there.
After what was still a long travel day we decided to order from one of the restaurants, something we learnt we could do with the butlers – in Antigua we assumed we were limited to the room service menu for in-room dining. Learning this simple thing for us became a game changer, just for the simple thing of having breakfast of our choice in the room (well on the outside terrace by the pool) each morning. This meant our morning didn’t feel rushed, there was no need to get up, get ready, go for breakfast, go back to the room and lotion up and then find our loungers on the beach or pool. This was so much better and has become our go-to breakfast experience.
Our first day was spent at the ‘party pool’, which we found wasn’t really for us, not because we don’t like music or people having fun but it simply didn’t work for us because we were looking to read or listen to our music. The other reason is slightly down to me and noise, I only have one working ear, the other decided when I was a child to implode and destroy itself so it doesn’t really do much other than balance my head and stop it from tilting to one side. It does mean in loud environments when I don’t have my hearing aids that I am pretty much unable to hear anything buy noise.
I did feel bad because one of our butlers surprised us with lunch, jerk chicken and fries for me and shrimp for Mrs BtG – She loved hers, I enjoyed my fries……not because I don’t like jerk chicken because I do, but I am fussy with chicken and hate chicken on the bone so only eat breast (yes my team in work keep telling me I’m missing out on flavour and so on, but I like what I like….we’ll talk steak shortly).
The other days we spent at the beach which was nice and quiet and meant we could go into the sea and snorkel, or float around like a whale (that was me!) – expect 1 other day where we ended up back at the party pool because it became the quiet pool for the day, we were there when Grenada was celebrating Emancipation Day (1st August as of 2025 but was the 1st Monday in August previously). There was a lot of happy dancing people celebrating, although one of the staff did tell some people off for getting paint on the seats!
We had the beachside romantic meal, this was postponed because of some rain but actually worked well as we had it in the beach gazebo which was nice. The only slightly off putting this was being told by our waiter at the start of the meal “I don’t work for Sandals so you can tip me at the end of the meal” – yes I’m from the UK and yes we aren’t a tipping nation, I understand how tips work and when they are deserved in the UK. I also understand how tipping works at Sandals and who is/isn’t allowed to receive tips (butlers for example can and I make sure they are tipped for the exceptional service they provide), however, being told this at the start of what should be a romantic experience wasn’t great…..no tip for him.
Of course you’re probably wondering about the steak comment above, well I like steak but I don’t order it in the UK because I like my steak well done and this seems to annoy every chef, ever. It’s how I like it, it may not be how others like it and it may not present the beef at its best, but it’s my choice and my preference! That being said, this wasn’t a problem in Butch’s Chophouse this wasn’t a problem and I had the best steak I have ever had, so good we went back a second time so I could get more steak!
The food for the whole holiday was amazing, every meal was something new and with the exception of the surprise jerk chicken lunch, I can honestly say I loved every meal. Then I discovered Mango Shortcake on the room service menu, is there a limit to how many pieces 1 person can eat?
Mrs BtG decided to try Snuba, something I can’t do due to lack of a working ear so Snuba and Scuba is out of the question for me. Off to the underwater sculpture park she went to do her Snuba, I relaxed on the beach and watched the rain come in and actually didn’t notice everyone else leave the beach! It’s just rain! Speaking of which we were by one of the pools one day and it started raining and I saw 2 of the strangest things ever, people getting out of the pool cause it was raining (erm….) and then there was a fellow Brit, who was sat in the pool whilst it was raining……with an umbrella.
Then suddenly the week was over, such a relaxing week, now Antigua was an experience in relaxation but this week was even more relaxing, this was partly due to a huge relaxation in some of the rules surrounding Covid but also because we’d learnt some things following our previous Sandals holiday – breakfast in the room was the perfect start to the day, plus having a swim-up room meant we could go back to the room after a beach day and relax some more enjoying the pool and out the outdoor bath (it has curtains). And yes, this time we spelt the holiday location correctly!
We stayed in an Italian Swim-Up Bi-Level Room – S1B Category for the week, flying from Gatwick with British Airways (complete with a free and unexpected upgrade outbound). Once again using the long stay carpark and our last stay at The Hilton Hotel.
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