BVI Vacation

(This from the balcony of our house - no joke)

My husband had surprised me for our 2nd Anniversary with a trip that he had fully planned & booked to the British Virgin Islands - specifically Tortola - with our good friends for the Thanksgiving week.

I mean, clearly he's the best (and I really hate the planning & logistics/flights part of it). I was shocked and suuuuuuper excited.

Anyway - it was amazing, obviously... the weather was incredible, it was soooo relaxing, and it was a really beautiful island.... but I wanted to talk a little about eating gluten free in the Caribbean. Let me just say, it wasn't that easy.

We were staying in a house - which was great, so we did quite a few meals there. I went down there with a loaf of Udi's, a bag of Tinkyada pasta, a handful of Luna Protein bars and LaraBars, and I brought a bag of Better Batter flour just in case.

Good thing too! Tortola doesn't exactly have a huge selection of groceries. We were shopping first in Road Town, and the pickin's were slim. Although, when we were in Soper's Hole Marina, we found a grocery store there that actually had a few GF items - but if you're going, it's really best to just bring a few staples.

I tried to stick to simple easy items - grilled fish, salads with no dressing. But somehow - I got sick a few times. I ordered fish with rice one time, and I'm pretty sure most places use a packaged rice mix that contains gluten - so I stayed away from that. We were on a full-day sail, and we docked near this permanently anchored boat/restaurant called Willy T's for lunch - I had a great piece of tuna, and it came with rice, my husband figured he'd go ask the chef if he knew if it was GF or not, sure enough - he came back fuming, he got in a fight with the dude because the chef said "what's with this trendy shit"... nice. Whatever though - I was on vacation, on a boat eating lunch and wasn't really phased. I told my husband to calm down. it was fine, I didn't eat the rice.

We did one other 'fancy' night out at this really cool restaurant called The Sugar Mill, actually, we did Thanksgiving there. I didn't opt for the turkey - it came with stuffing & gravy - who wants turkey in 85 degree heat anyway -- but went for a grilled fish option and salad. For some reason, I was really sick after eating. ANNOYING. After that I vowed not to eat out anymore.

It was semi-pathetic, but I was fine, when we were out to lunch one day I ordered a plain salad, and had a pb & j udi's sandwich in my purse that I ate under the table! Ha! I really didn't care, I was so happy to be in the sun and not at work! Ahhh, gluten free travel.

I mean, look at our sunset:


And my husband in the water:


Yeah. Who cares about food really? And rum punch by the way - is gluten free ;)

We had to head back to St. Thomas for a night because of flights - and we stayed at the Marriott Frenchman's Reef - and I had an easier time eating here, although, it was only 2 meals, but the place we went for dinner - Havana Blue, knew what gluten free was and they were on top of it.

**UPDATE: Kate commented below and let me know there is a store in Road Town called Nature's Way that offers many gluten free products, open every day except Saturday.