Jess and I decided that we needed a vacation so we scoured the internet for the perfect place to stay and to find the perfect deal. We found it, booked our vacation and began to daydream about our trip...and two days later we all learned about swine flu, the H1N1 virus!!
Needless to say, the swine flu pandemic never materialized as it might have and actually had a beneficial effect on our vacation. We planned on it being slow because of the season, but it was vacant in Mexico. It made for the perfect relaxing vacation we were looking for with lots of personalized service. We stayed at the
Golden Parnassus, a perfect choice for what we were looking for.
I tried to journal each day we were there so my memories were fresh. The following is an edited version of my journals.
5/29 - We had great flights, made it to the airport on time and were in and out of customs. Jess woke up with a crusty red eye that morning, so he was very worried that he might have pink eye...then we had to fill out a health questionnaire to enter Mexico, and one of the questions was whether you had red eyes. Jess soon forgot his eye had ever been red or crusty. We had lined up transportation on-line so we just had to walk out to the van and head from the airport to the hotel. One of the van drivers told me to watch out for my skin. We had a very fast driver (all drivers were fast) but this driver had a particular disdain for the lanes as well...like he thought the center line was a guide to follow. Check-in was smooth. They gave us cool towels and pina coladas when we arrived. Our room was beautiful! It was on the Lagoon side (which we soon realized was better since we did not plan on staying out at the parties all night on the ocean side) but had a great view.
The view from our balcony.
Each day we had a surprise design in our room.
Once we were settled in, we went down for lunch. We ate at the buffet which was good. Then we were ready to hit the beach.
This is my corona moment...except they only served Dos XX.
There was a fun bartender at the pool bar named Alfonzo. He identified us to another group of Nebraskans by my pale skin. It was very windy so there were lots of big waves. We had a delicious dinner at the Shangra-la. I had 5 spice chicken and french onion soup. Jess had oysters my way and stuffed grouper. It was all very delicious.
5/30 - We ordered room service for breakfast. Yummy!! We walked to the malls that were about 20 min. away. We passed the designer mall and headed to the more mainstream mall. It was really big and a little like a maze to figure out where we had and hadn't been. We came back to the hotel by bus. (It is really easy to travel to the tourist places by bus because there is one every few minutes. It was about a dollar for us to ride on the bus each time, the cheapest way to travel other than our feet). Once we were back at the hotel we had lunch again on the buffet. I had fried rice but it was with peppers so it tasted like Spanish rice turned into fried rice - Fusion.
We headed to the beach to spend our afternoon. It was very windy again. We relaxed at the beach but I began not to feel well and headed to the room.
We took a nice nap and headed for dinner at the Old Barn. The food there was not what we were expecting. Jess ordered enchiladas verde but was surprised to find that the verde was not only green chili, but mint...not what he expected. We had a quiet evening since I wasn't felling the best.
5/31 - This morning we had breakfast in the dining room. There were so many options to chose from and it was very good, but not as nice as having our breakfast brought in. I was feeling much better than the day before.
After breakfast, we hopped the R-1 bus all the way south and then into downtown. We looked around a bit and hoped another bus to Playa Torgtugas to catch the ferry to Isla Mujeres. I had a Coke in a glass bottle and Jess had a huge Corona. We rode the ferry to the island and rented a moped.
On the ferry to the Island.
This is the view of the island from the ferry.
The moped and golf cart rental shop was right off the pier.
We rode south to La Casa del Tikinxik. We were starving when we arrived. This was a cute little palapas restaurant on the beach. We ordered nachos, fish tacos, and chicken mole. It was such good food it made me so sad that there was so much extra and we couldn't take it with. We know next time not to order a third thing and just to split two.
These birds were helping themselves to someone's burrito right through the tin foil.
After lunch we continued to tour the island. There are some ruins at the very south tip, supposedly the place where the sun first shines on Mexico each day. Eventually we headed back north to Playa Norte.
After the first 100 feet Jess and I really had the hang of the moped. So much that I was even able to take some picutres while we were riding around.
There were some spectacular views from the road that wound along the beach.
It was fun to see both the Playa Norte and Playa Tortugas because they are public beaches so they were full of locals. It made us miss Jack because there were so many families there enjoying their Sunday. We had planned to take the last ferry back from the island so we could see the sunset but it clouded over even earlier than the previous days that afternoon.
We turned in our scooter and headed for home. We were able to take a van to the sister resort and eat at their restaurants too, so we decided to check it out. The
Great Parnassasus was a really neat resort. They have a water-park for kids along with the regular pool and a separate pool for adults only. There were several restaurants at that resort to choose from too. We ate at "Samurai" the Japanese restaurant. They brought us an appetizer platter when we sat down. It had chicken, steak, and shrimp kabob's, spring rolls, and mozzarella sticks (weird for an Asian restaurant, but delicious!). We had salads and tempanyaki, I had chicken, Jess ordered shrimp and the waiter said "you wanted steak too
didn't you?" So Jess had steak and shrimp. It was good that he had both because the shrimp were rather small and it only included a few of them. The food was good; we had the fusion fried rice again; good but different.
There is no particular reason why I don't have picutures of all the food we ate, sometimes I remembered to take the picture.
This was the first time we really felt like dessert. One really nice thing about all the restaurants is that the portions are designed for an individual no matter what you order, so appetizers and desserts do not come out for four people (I'm sure you could order lots if you wanted to though). We ordered a single fried ice cream because we were pretty full, but it looked so good when it came out to the table next to us. It was delicious even though it lacked whipped cream.
After dinner we just looked around the rest of the resort, it was really beautiful and somewhere we would stay if we came with Jack (and possibly the rest of the family at Christmas or Thanksgiving...HINT HINT mi famiilia!!). It made us really miss Jack though to see families with their kids.
The mini-golf course looked really fun at this hotel.
I had been to Mexico before and it was really simple to buy a phone card and call home...it was less simple in the hotel district of Cancun however. We hadn't been able to check in to know what he was up to; (our parents kept saying, he's fine, he's in good hands, etc.) but we were not worried that he wasn't fine, we just wanted an update. Finally we were able to call home, it made our day to hear him say "dup you!"
Our hotel had a miniature golf course in it too, so we played a round when we got back to the hotel. It was a terrible course and the holes are really small, but it was still fun. We also enjoyed being able to jacuzzi every night right by the ocean.
6/1 - We had room service breakfast again. It was so nice to sit at our little table and enjoy the view from our room. It was funny to order the same breakfast and receive something quite different each day. It seemed like about half of our breakfast was missing this time. What we did have was delicious. We decided we needed a little more so we headed to the buffet. A piece of toast was just what we needed.
Jess wasn't feeling well after reaching his vacation fun quota on the moped the day before so we took it relatively easy. We headed back to the Great Parnassus for lunch. The night before we discovered that they have a much better buffet than ours for lunch. There were so many choices and it was all delicious. We really enjoyed fried fish from their seafood station, lettuce salads and had really wonderful desserts from their deli. I didn't take pictures of their dessert case but I should have, so many beautiful desserts.
We had to wait for the van to pick us up... as always we were able to enjoy a great drink while we waited.
We went back to our hotel and enjoyed another afternoon on the beach. We sampled from the snack bar that afternoon and enjoyed the nachos. It was interesting to see who would be at the beach with us each day... 20, 30, or 40-50 somethings?
Jess enjoyed a couple Cuban cigars while we were there. I posed with one for a picture.
We were sad to leave the beach, it was such a wonderful time.
This video really portrays what we did on vacation.
We cleaned up and headed to the flea market. Jess was a little unsure about having everyone ask us to buy things and approaching us but we managed. I was looking for a ceramic cross and some "designer" sunglasses. We found the cross and the glasses. I really used my bartering skills to drive the price down, I maybe could have gone a little lower, but you really do feel sorry when it is so slow down there and this is their livelihood. But I have genuine authentic Prada
knock off sunglasses and a ceramic cross. We picked up a few other things from the mall and rode the bus home.
We enjoyed our last night at our hotel. We had dinner at Pier 21. I had calamari tempura w/curry sauce and Jess had the salad bar for an appetizer. I orderd the pasta carbonara and Jess ordered the fussili with pesto and shrimp. We ate a few bites and switched plates, we each prefered what the other had ordered but they were both very good. Jess had fish and shrimp en papillote with mashed potatoes. We really enjoyed the mashed potatoes the whole time we were there, I'm not sure what it was but they were delicious! I had blackened chicken and shrimp skewer. It was not blackend like I expected, just griled but it was delicious none the less. It also came with a delicous suprising side...rice - but wait - it was not the fusion rice we had been having, it was just nice buttered rice with no peppers.
6/2 - We ordered room service breakfast again...even if they didn't get it perfect, it was just soooooo nice having it in our room! Again, it was funny. I had ordered a fruit plate and requsted watermelon. This confused them this morning because when the server brought the food, he made a point to show me the drinks. "Water - melon." Gracias...it was a glass of water with melon juice in it, we think.
The view of the lobby from right outside our room. This statue is a mermaid and a dolphin.
We were ready to head home but had thoroughly enjoyed our stay. We didn't have any problems getting home and were so excited to see Jack. He was mad at me because I woke him up but he liked Jess. He likes me again now too.
Thank you to everyone who helped watch Jack while we were gone, he had a great time and so did we knowing he was so safe and loved!
One fun Sunday afternoon Cori came to play with us. Steph visited her friend Steff Roach and helped her run some errands. Steff's daughter Caeli played with us too. 
We headed to Oak Lake Park to try to feed ducks and geese...but they were not to be found that day. Jack and Cori had a lot of fun running around the open spaces there though. 
The kids also had fun playing on the playground equipment. 
After the park we went for a tour of the fountains at UNL. It was fun to take Caeli somewhere she had never been before. We all thought it would have been more fun to be able to swim in the fountains, but they frown upon that. We headed back to Steff's so Caeli could check out her new swingset and then went for dinner with the Barwicks...it was an awesome Sunday afternoon. 
