Sarah and William’s Laid-Back Honeymoon in the Bahamas

Sarah and William Smith, of Thomaston, Georgia, married on September 28, 2014, in their adopted hometown, where Sarah, a wedding photographer, and her engineer husband stood ankle-deep in the Flint River as they said their vows. The next morning, they jetted to the Bahamas.

Length: 10 days 

Breakdown: Seven nights on Long Island, two in Nassau

Flight time: Two hours from Atlanta to Nassau, one more to Long Island

Snacks! “There’s very little stocked at the grocery stores on the island, and what they do have is unfamiliar or marked up,” Sarah says. “I’d pack some granola bars and cookies in your bag.”

The couple spent a week on Long Island at Bahama Dreamin, a beach house that they rented (complete with a Jeep) through VRBO. “Our place was on the water, so we spent several mornings snorkeling, fishing, and climbing Chimney Rock, the island a few yards off the coast,” says Sarah. On either side of their trip, they checked in for one night at Meliá, in Nassau.

The pair brought back sea glass and shells they collected on Long Island.

“We had the best lobster at Kenny’s, a restaurant in Deadman’s Cay on the west side of Long Island,” Sarah says. (The official name is Seaside Village at Jerry Wells, but everyone calls it Kenny’s.) “They bring your food to you while you watch the sunset.” Adds William: “I could have eaten there all week!”

“Stone canals link the sea to salt ponds, and they’re like bathwater rivers that run for miles,” William says. “We floated down them for a couple hundred yards.”

“Dean’s Blue Hole is the deepest saltwater sinkhole in the world,” says Sarah. “The water suddenly goes from crystal clear to dark blue as the sea floor plunges to 663 feet deep. Locals won’t go near it because of a legend that they’ll get sucked in, but there’s actually no current. We jumped in from a cliff!”

“We picked up fresh fruit at the Saturday farmers’ market at Salt Pond, then drove to Columbus Point on the island’s northern edge, one of the explorer’s first stops in 1492,” Sarah says.

“Don’t make one!” advises Sarah. On 80-mile-long Long Island, one road runs from top to bottom and smaller ones split off. “No matter where we turned, it always ended at a beach we had to ourselves. It was like Candy Land.”

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