Just Some More Pictures

Here are just a few more pictures from south of the border.

Today in Minnesota it is approaching 80 degrees. We had a planning meeting to talk about our summer trip. We will fly into New Orleans and eventually make our way to Jackson, Mississippi and Montgomery, Alabama and Gulf Shores where we will meet up with the Bergs of South Texas and the McCumbers of the Greater Houston Megapolis.  We will probably pass through Kiln, Mississippi where I will be wearing a Vikings shirt.

 

Here I am looking toward Cuba. I figured out today that I have personally traveled to or stayed overnight (not just passed through) 25 states plus the District of Columbia. Sue has been to 37 states. Louisiana and Alabama will be 26 and 27 for me. Mississippi and Alabama will be 38 and 39 for Sue.

 

The obligatory pointing picture

 

Clean and clear water

 

Me: “Sue, what should I say about this picture?”

Sue: “It’s a picture of the hotel from the beach.”

The cool and comfortable fifth floor Aqua Club Lounge

 

Nice

 

Walking out of our room we had this view of the back bay.

Morning pool scene

 

Does Sue look relaxed and happy here?

Suite Sue

On day one after the great Mexican meal with live music we stopped at the 5th floor Aqua Club Lounge for an after dinner digetif.  Instead of a small drink to help with digestion, Sue requested a small sampling of some tequilas.

Said (sah-eed), the bartender was eager to bring out all of his tequilas and even a bottle of mescal with the worm in the bottom.  I didn’t look real close at the worm because I did not want to know if it really was real.

Somehow, Sue did not wake up the next day with a headache like I did.  The dark red drink is a palate cleaner made from a variety of juices and other mysterious ingredients. Said said the tall bottle is $90 a bottle while the cheaper ones are more like $30. There was a difference in taste but they all basically tasted like tequila.

 

This must be the next morning in our cabana after a swim in the ocean.

 

This was a chicken concoction that chef Frank in the Azur restaurant whipped up for Sue.

I was not sure this drink contained any alcohol. Some people complain that the drinks are “weak” or “watered down” at resorts in Mexico. To these people, mostly from Milwaukee, I say, “how much booze do you need at 1030 on a Tuesday morning?” If you want a strong drink, you can basically tell the bartender how strong you want it. You would say something like, “In Wisconsin, we usually use an 8 ounce cup as our measuring device instead of a shot class.”

Sometime on Monday, our name placard appeared in place of our room number. No longer were we in room 5030 but instead Suite Berg-Williams.

Here are a couple of our new Ohio friends Darla that we kept running into on the terrace, in the elevator, at the bar, on the beach, etc. Sorry about the blurry photo.

 

This is the Hidden Garden restaurant where we did our 730am yoga.  Look how relaxed Sue looks!

Cancun Favorites

I thought I’d pick out a few of my favorite photos to share. Doug may have included some of these but it never hurts to take a second look at the beautiful ocean view.

One afternoon, the waiters came around with drinks served in hollowed out pineapples. Some of the pineapple faces were really elaborate. This one was very cute!

Doug mentioned the fantastic Chef’s Dinner we were invited to. The food was incredible and I even ate some tuna! Every course was terrific.

There are seven or eight pools, most are interconnected and different temperatures.

This iguana was even lazier than we were. He sat on his ledge all afternoon. He had a couple friends too.

We had a couple big “rice art” designs in our room during our trip. This one was amazing! I wonder how  long it takes to do and how they do it. Is it freehand or do they have a pattern. 

Close up of the rice

I enjoyed the “futbol” button on the remote. The Mexicans are as serious about soccer as the Europeans are.

This is my favorite dessert – a molten chocolate cake with ice cream. There was a hibiscus leaf on top so we ate them!We enjoyed watching our waiter Marco make “Mayan Coffee”. Basically he set some alcohol on fire and poured it back and forth between two boats. He made it look easy but I remember our friend Pete trying this once and it wasn’t as easy as we thought. I asked Marco how you practice this and he said you watch others do it and then just start doing it yourself.

The ocean was incredibly blue and the water was perfect. I talked to a friend today who had been in Phoenix for Spring Break. He said it was in the 60s and rainy…in Phoenix. I’m going to stick with Mexico to guarantee good spring weather.

When I couldn’t sleep this week, I tried to picture the ocean and count the number of blues I could see. It’s beautiful all day but the midday sun makes it incredible.

After a long day of relaxing, swimming and eating, everyone needs a complimentary poolside massage, right? 

We like talking to the waiters and I think they like talking to and getting to know us. For our final lunch, our favorite waiter Mauricio had a special fish prepared for Doug. The whole fish… teeth and all.

The chefs were really into the sauce dispensers this year.

This was the final course of our final lunch. I didn’t think we could eat another thing until we polished off the two desserts that were presented to us.

1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 75, 1970

Here are a few more photos. We left Minneapolis on a Saturday morning not too early from Terminal 2, aka the Humphrey Terminal, aka the smaller and reasonably sized terminal. We woke up at the normal time for work so for once it didn’t feel like day 1 of our trip was a marathon. Sue posted a similar selfie from the airport and when we checked in to the resort, the Guests/VIP Manager Monica Madrid said she had already seen the selfie. Sue had tagged it Live Aqua and she is well known in the Live Aqua social media world.

We were whisked upstairs to the 5th floor lounge for our early check in. Up to that point, we didn’t know for sure if we would be upgraded like we were last year. You can tell by Sue’s smile that we were upgraded. I was reading some reviews on Trip Advisor of Live Aqua and someone actually said the 5th floor lounge is not worth the extra cost. We beg to differ. We ate breakfast here everyday as well as having a sunset happy hour drink on the terrace before going to dinner and we also stopped in for a chocolate martini before bedtime. Reviews are subjective.  Speaking of reviews, go to Tripadvisor.com and type in Cancun for the location and Live Aqua for the hotel name. Both of our reviews are posted. This was my 2nd review ever and I kind of liked writing it. We posted some pictures with the reviews, too.

Our room with the colored rice art on the bed. I would like to know how they do this so quickly and how they clean it up without making a huge mess. They cleaned it up during the nightly turndown service when they set up the aromatherapy for our relaxing / sleeping pleasure.

There was champagne at the ready. Don’t ask me what the star shaped fruit is or I’ll have to Google it.

Sunset on the back terrace. Sue introduced the highly exotic drink French 75 to three different bartenders. It involves champagne and lime juice and maybe gin and a whole lot of fanciness.

Here we are on the terrace of the Aqua club. This is the hotel zone, a narrow strip of land between the ocean and the back bay. If you follow this road, they tell us, it’ll take you to downtown Cancun. Cancun was built up from nothing back in the early 1970s. There is so much tourism in this spot that I cannot imagine a time when there was nothing but beautiful beaches and jungles here.

This is the restaurant called Siete which means Seven. On one side of the curtain is the buffet which we did not eat at this time and on this side of the curtain is Siete. I rated this meal as the second best of the trip after the eight course Peruvian Chef’s dinner.

 

This is a tortilla soup I’m staring down and that’s probably a Margherita being quaffed.

 

There was some traditional Mexican music performed by a singer and two guitarists—very good.

 

 

Delicioso!

Livin’ La Vida Aqua

Here is the view from our cabana on Friday. We rented a cabana on three of the days and this was the best location of the three. From here we could take a dip in the ocean or the pool and walk a few steps to our lunch restaurant, Azur. Of course there was waiter service o’ plenty.

This is inside the cabana. You could close any of the curtains to keep out the sun. We did a lot of sitting around just looking at the blue Caribbean Sea.

 

Here in Azur we got to meet the chef, Frank on the left and the executive chef, Cesar Germain and Mauricio our waiter for three years running. Chef Germain has worked in Spain, Venezuela, Puerto Vallarta, and Riviera Maya. Sue will write some about the 8 course Peruvian chef’s dinner we had created by Chef Germain. For most of our lunches and dinners the chef would come out to help deliver the main course or the dessert. Chef Germain was just out and about glad handing everyone and handing out business cards.

 

Who likes fruit? We weren’t sure what the mysterious thing in the middle with all of the seeds was but it was tasty.

 

Here is the view from our 5th floor room which was just a couple of doors down from our room last year.

 

This shows the wind and the red flags advising extreme caution when swimming. There was a pretty good undertow but it seemed pretty safe.

 

Selfie

 

We asked someone to take our picture and they didn’t warn us that a wave was about to crash around our feet.

 

We had a good time. There will be more photos to follow. . .