I hate coming home from vacation! It's so depressing when you've done nothing but lie in the sun and swim for 10 days, to come back and have to do laundry and other tedious household tasks Oh, and get up early. And answer email. And cook. Ugh.
We had, however, a fantastic time. The hotel more than met my expectations. It was a 4 / 5 star huge hotel and comprised of 5 pyramids. Upon arrival, after fairly uneventful flights, we were checking in and they told us they'd be upgrading us to an area of the hotel that comes with private pools, nicer sun loungers, pamper service to the pool side etc. Result! The room was also really nice, clean, with marble floors, a wonderful marble bathroom, terrace overlooking the ocean, plasma TV, etc.
We were somewhat horrified by the prices of the minibar ($7 for a small bottle of Evian!) and the food in the hotels various restaurants was also extortionate but we vowed to mix it up and eat out, etc, plus stock up on water / snacks for the kids from a local store.
We ended up spending 10 days literally doing very little, which was exactly what we wanted and needed. There were a couple of shallow pools which suited the kids perfectly as Harry could toddle around in the water and Dylan could swim without fear, and swim he did! Non stop, for 10 days. I spent much of my time in the water with him and he really did brilliantly. We developed a routine of get up, go to the pool, spend a couple of hours swimming / relaxing, then come back for Harry's nap and all have a rest out of the mid-day sun, then go back for a few more hours before coming back and showering and going to dinner.
One slight disappointment was that the sea was too rough for the kids to play in. It met expectations colour wise and white sandy beach wise but the waves were just too mad and it wasn't possible for Dylan to go and swim in it. Oh well, the pools were so nice they more than compensated.
Harry slept in his travel cot in our room for the duration which he thought was brilliant and consequently didn't go to sleep too early as it was too fascinating to be able to shout at Mummy and Daddy. Dylan adores hotels in his bed beside Mum and Dad so he was in 7th heaven.
We had great Mexican food in the hotel and we also took a bus into town on occasion and ate at a couple of nice restaurants plus went on a Pirate Ship boat for dinner and a show one night which the kids loved. Harry soon picked up saying 'Arrrrrr' with his pretend sword in hand. We also discovered some nice shops which we went to once or twice when it was too hot to be outside (air conditioned bliss indoor mall!) and didn't buy much other than a few prescription drugs which you can get OTC there!
Both boys really benefitted from having non stop attention from both parents for 10 days. Harry's speech came along in leaps and bounds. Dylan managed to wind us up a fair bit by arguing and not doing what was asked of him until asked 10 times but such is to be expected when in close quarters for 10 days I suppose! Nevertheless he had a great time.
The weather was HOT. Very hot. This was the 'off' season and combined with the fact that some of Cancun is still being rebuilt after Hurricane Wilma it was fairly quiet at the hotel. Which was fine by us!
On the way home we had an horrendous flight - Harry threw up on the plane and then Dylan threw up in Sympathy. People around us were less than impressed, as you can imagine. We had a connection at Salt Lake City and by the time we got there with 1 child (D) still feeling rotten and the other (H) wearing a zip up sweater and a nappy after chucking up on everything else he owned, we were pretty exhausted. It was 7.30pm and the flight was leaving at 9pm. However, it turned out that the flight was overbooked and they were asking for volunteers to stand down until the morning. They were offering $400 each worth of travel on Delta anytime in the next year ($1200 for the 3 seats we'd bought) plus hotel plus dinner & breakfast..... so we jumped at it, bought some clean t-shirts (luggage was already en route to Seattle), washed undies in hotel sink and got the kids to bed!
We returned to the airport the following morning with everyone in better form and they were once again offering people to stand down. Another $400, and this time a flight 3 hours later 1st class! G and I grinned and went for it again... so we now have $2400 worth of free Delta flights and were able to spend 3 hours looking round Salt Lake City and the crazy Mormon stuff it's got going on.
Back to the airport we managed to get on the plane home this time (they were offering again but we felt we really should get back!), 1st class much to Dylans joy "I'm a first class kind of boy Mummy" and we finally arrived home a day later than planned, tired but happy after having a great holiday.
Now have Mt Rainier size pile of laundry to do, bah!
Posted by katie at July 10, 2006 11:10 AM