Earlier in February I took a trip to West Palm Beach Florida with my brother-in-law... he was there on business, and I was just sharing his hotel room at the Hilton enjoying the beach FOR him...

FLORIDA:
I've got to say, I don't know if it was the time of year or what, but I really was not impressed with Palm Beach whatsoever! It being only the second time that I've been to the ocean, one would think it would have really amazed me... but no, it really didn't. The place was boring, and extremely plain! Maybe if I was a golf nut (there are like 50 courses there) or loved fishing, then perhaps... but I brought my camera down thinking I wouldn't be able to stop taking pictures only to find myself not wanting to take any photos at all.

I took a few... but gosh it was all so plain. Iowa would've been more interesting. But for 5 days I did enjoy some warmer weather, and did some swimming (in the pool, not the ocean, there were tide advisories and sharks) and ran 3 miles up and down the beach every morning (except the morning that I was extremely hung over).


CARIBBEAN:
So my wife and I, having been married last September and waiting for my service in the Army to end AND for the right season, took our long awaited honeymoon trip to the island of Nevis (nee-vis), part of the St Kitts & Nevis federation, I guess like the tiniest country in the world or something.

Anyways, we flew into Sint Maarten/St Martin (theres like 5 different spellings) for a connection flight on a MUCH smaller plane into Nevis. We had a layover for 3 hours, and totally made the wrong decision to go straight into the Gate area after deboarding. Once you are in there, there's no way out, and there's only so many times you can walk up and down past the duty-free shops before going insane! However, on the way back, we had a 5 hour layover and managed to leave the airport for several hours and enjoy the last bit of island life before going back north to snow and cold.

Nevis was EXACTLY what we wanted... super quiet, non-touristy, very lovely and very warm. The people were awesome and VERY polite, the beaches were lovely and not crowded at all (we were alone many times), the restaurants were AMAZING... all and all everything was great!

Except... at night, wild donkeys would roam around, and since everyone had a dog, the dogs would bark incessantly at them... and at about 4am ALL of the roosters on the island spent the next 3 hours trying to outdo one another with their cockle-doodle-doo's. We might not have heard them so well, but our private cottage had no windows, and closing the shutters helped a little, but not completely. But they only distrubed my sleep a little...

Well I have had my Canon Powershot SD1000 for about 2 years at this point, and I RARELY ever used it... and when I did I only used the 'Auto' setting... so frankly I had spent over $400. on something and barely utilized all of its capabilities... UNTIL the honeymoon.

Frankly, not only was this a honeymoon with my wife, but it was also a long overdue honeymoon with my camera! I used about 90% of it's various settings, took well over 1,000 photographs in 7 days, and learned so much about it! It is SUCH an awesome camera!!! No wonder I read reviews about it even being better than the newer SD1100, this thing is a power-house!

It will take me a long time to go through all of the photos, and I have a feeling that many of them can be presented in more than one way... I am really thrilled about it, and I hope more people really get a chance to see them!