Mexico May 2016: Our first big all inclusive holiday

After doing a couple of very independent trips I wasn't sure how I'd take to an all inclusive break... As it happens I took to it like a fish to water! I think the fact that we did some independant trips out of the complex helped (which you can read about here) but it was a big enough complex with enough going on that if we'd gone with my original plan of a lazy week by the beach and pools we'd still have loved it!

Anyway, from the beginning... On arrival at Cancun airport, the 'shark tank' of timeshare people wasn't as bad as expected after reading the trip advisor stories and we emerged into the baking Mexican heat unscathed. We booked through Thomson and flew direct from East Midlands airport. After a 1.5hr transfer to our hotel (the Grand Sirenis hotel on the Riviera Maya), it was about 5pm but we dropped our stuff off and headed straight down to the pool bar to grab a cocktail, marvelling at the warmth of the pool warter, and then continued on our way to the lazy river, cocktail in hand, and did two trips round  the river checking out the hotel grounds and wildlife. There are some incredibly beautiful birds here but very difficult to photograph! Coatis and racoons and sereques were also spotted on day 1 as well as an abundance of various members of the lizard family.

        
Day 2: We found ourselves a nice spot on the beach and spent the day there, sunbathing, exploring the area, and a doing bit of snorkelling, getting Aaron used to a snorkel as it was going to feature heavily in our plans for the rest of the week.

 It was a nice chilled out day to recover from the long journey. Also another trip round the river, just because. We went to the steakhouse a la carte restaurant in the evening and I tried tenderloin for the first time, it was beautiful.

Days 3-5: Trips! For more info on the trips we did see here
We had an early start for our trip to the Mayan ruins in Tulum.  We got a little bit lost in the hotel grounds but that allowed us to see parts of the hotel we wouldn't have otherwise seen.

 After our Tulum day out, we headed down to the quiet pool and watched more birds and lizards, and spotted racoons and coatis in the trees surrounding the pool. We thought we'd jump in to cool off but no such luck- by mid afternoon the pool was like a warm bath!

The 4th day of our holiday was our first wedding anniversary. We headed out to Akumal and spent the entire day there, and it was perfect! 
The next day we were out and about again, this time visiting Playa del Carmen and a cenote. The heat broke me a bit that day so when we got back to the hotel at about 4.30 I just flaked out in the room for a bit until we went for dinner. On the way back from dinner we got a close up sighting of an, until then, elusive raccoon right outside our hotel block! So cute! Walking around the grounds of the hotel in the evening was lovely.

Days 5-7: After lots of exploring we enjoyed a couple of full days around the pools and beach. Thursday morning I participated in "body pump" which I understandably misunderstood as being the les mills class I do at home... nope! It was more like an hour of circuits. There were two members of staff and two participants, the other participant had come along in her bikini and flip flops so was even less prepared for what was to come than I was! It was fun working out whilst lizards basked around the edge though, and at one point the instructor had to chase one out of our way as it skittered in just as we lunged across the space towards it, they also had to kick some kind of racoon or coati poo out of the way haha not your standard fitness class! The other lady dropped out partway through, which prompted my first experience of Mexican bluntness- they referred to her as the 'old lady' (she was probably middle aged). The second came later when we went on the snorkel tour and the guy asked if 'the fatty guy' had done the fitness class with the other instructor (and yes, he had, but still!) After a quick shower by the pool I was ready to jump in to the pool with Aaron and cool off.

We swam over to the in-pool loungers and waited for the swim up bar to open. We dried off in the sun and headed round to the beach to take the free snorkel tour which was hard work swimmingwise as the sea was quite rough, but worth it as we swam in shoals of beautiful fish.

When we got back to the pool we grabbed an ice cream, and ended up sharing the cones with an iguana a lizard and a bird! We both handfed the iguana although Aaron tried to feed too small a piece and got bitten, it actually broke the skin a little bit!

Later a coati came by Aarons bed and I'd saved a bit of crust from my toasty earlier so gave it to Aaron so he could hand-feed the coati! So much cuteness.
 

We got back into the pool as the sun started going down and stayed there until it was time to get ready for dinner. Towards the end of the day a pack of coatis descended on the pool areas to raid the in and plates that had been left out and generally causing adorable chaos. We even saw another sereque lurking in the bushes just as we were packing up to head back and get ready for dinner.

 

 

 

Our last full day was sad- I really regretted not having booked longer- I would have liked to do the Chichen Itza excursion and to have had a few more days by the beach/pool. We wanted to make the most of it so bagged a lounger by the pool and spent a while there before moving to the beach. We went up to the Mayan ruin, then we had a snorkel and saw a turtle right off the shore of the hotel!

It definitely made my day getting a last surprise turtle sighting so close to the beach of our hotel! After a lot more sunbathing and swimming we headed back to our room fairly early as we had a reservation at one of the a la carte restaurants in the hotel complex, a teppanyaki hotel, so we managed to bring a little bit of our honeymoon into our anniversary holiday! It was confusing though- I couldn't work out whether to say gracias or arigato, or si or hai!

On the way back to our room later we saw a couple feeding a raccoon just outside the entrance to our hotel block! The guy gave me some cracker to feed it and after a little adorable negotiation (it wanted me to put the food down near it and made this clear by patting the floor in front of it and doing some enticing wiggling) I convinced it to take the cracker from my hand.. its little paws were so cute!

Our last day we got up really early (actually set the alarm for 5am but when I woke it was still dark so we ended up getting up at 6 instead!) to make the most of our last few hours! For starters we got lost again trying to find a nature walk that you could do around the complex, through jungle and mangrove.

We found it eventually and it took us by a cenote which was on site, and to a pretty beach we hadn't seen before. We then had breakfast, a couple of trips around the lazy river and a swim in the pool where we experienced a tropical rainstorm- warm air, warm pool, pelted by hard cool rain. It blew over after 15mins or so and then normal awesome weather resumed. We dried off and then had to head back to the room to change and then check out :( The only thing of note after this point was that we continued our accidental world tour of TGI Fridays (in order: Prague, London, Leicester, Tokyo, and now Cancun) in the airport. It was rather expensive but then it would be and the waiter was really friendly and they had the Champions League final on so it was all good.

Mexico, I'll be back! Currently thinking for my 30^th…

Mexico May 2016: Sightseeing

Trips!

The flight to Mexico was 10hrs from East Midlands airport, so although we'd booked an all-inclusive which was big enough and had enough activities to keep us going for more than a week easily, we decided we wanted to get out of the resort and explore a bit too. As it happened our week was almost exactly split in half with 3 and a half days at the hotel and 3 and a half days out and about. Tip 1: don't just go for a week! It was not enough to take full advantage of both the resort and the surrounding area!
We went to Tulum Ruins, Akumal beach, Playa del Carmen, and Cenote Azul, and did it all ourselves using colectivos and handy maps drawn by our hotel concierge. If we had found the time we'd have done a 'proper' excursion to go to Chichen Itza, but it was a bit far to go when we were only there for a week. There was no need to go on an organised excursion to the places we went to- it was easy and cheap and we got a bit more of a local experience finding our way around.

Colectivos

I got to put together my first Spanish phrase when we were trying to leave the hotel complex to get to the main road to catch a colectivo for the first time (it was a biiig hotel!). Donde esta colectivo para Tulum: where is the colectivo to Tulum. Pretty sure it wasn't grammatically correct but it did the trick and we were sent off in the right direction.

Our first colectivo experience. We didn't get a seat and they really aren't designed for standing!

These little mini bus things were how we got about. They travel up and down the highway between Playa Del Carmen and Tulum (the Sirenis was on the highway pretty much in the middle of this route), you just stand on the edge of the road, which is a reasonably busy dual carriage way which you have to cross to head to Tulum or Akumal, wait for a minibus to flash its lights at you, flag it down, and hop on and ask for your destination. They do stop at bus stops, but you don't have to wait at one, however if you spot one you at least can get some shade whilst you wait as it's hot!

We had very hit and miss experiences with this; not getting a seat so just having to kind of crouch between the seats, scary drivers who go 50kph over the speed limit whilst drifting between lanes taking a phone call and watching videos on a tablet attached to the dashboard, but we also had good easy cheap safe journeys too, so I guess it's a bit of a lottery!

Tulum Ruins

Colectivo: about 20mins, less than £1.50 each
Entry: less than £5 each








Our first trip out was to the Mayan ruins at Tulum. We didn't use the little tram up from the main road because it was less than 10minutes walk and entirely in the shade at 8.30am (you might want to get the tram if you went later in the day, but just don't go later in the day- busier and too hot to walk around!). We decided to get a tour guide because although I'm generally all for self-guided visits we didn't know anything about Mayan history which we felt would probably enhance our experience here! Our private guide cost 545 pesos, and we tipped at the end, but it still worked out a pretty cheap- 545 is £20ish and it was an hours tour.

We spent an hour or so looking at the ruins with the tour guide, learning about Mayan Gods, ritual sacrifices, and about the Tulum site itself (it was the only Mayan settlement with a port and was the last site of the Mayan people).

I was grateful that this particular group of Mayans had the foresight to settle on the coast, after the private tour ended we got into the sea to cool off because even in the morning we were pretty much melting- there isn't a lot of shade there! Thankfully the backdrop of the Caribbean sea doesn't just make for pretty pictures, there are steps down to a little beach (or you can walk to a bigger beach further along but we didn't), where you can put your stuff on the rocks and jump in!

 

Found this little guy looking after our stuff when we got back out of the sea!

After we got out of the sea we put dry clothes over wet swimstuff and still dried off pretty quickly having another walk around the ruins this time on our own, and then we headed back to the highway to grab a colectivo, this time to head into Tulum itself.

I neglected to do much research for this trip; having decided that the hotel had more than enough to keep us going should we completely fail with the exploring, I decided that it was the perfect time to try a make-it-up-as-we-go-along type of trip. I'd had a bit of a look at things to do and came up with the list of places we did end up visiting, but beyond that I hadn't investigated further.

I don't like this approach, it might work for some people but not for me! We found a few shops, some dodgy side streets, and a bar where we stopped for giant fizzy drinks before heading back to the colectivo. We also did some accidental haggling- we hadn't taken much cash as weren't planning on souvenir shopping yet, but found a shop selling wrestling masks which we'd said we'd pick up for my brother in law... the shopkeeper saw us looking and we explained we didn't have enough. Long story short we showed him what we had and he gave it us for that- which was less than half the asking price! I'm not sure if there was more to Tulum that we just didn't find, or if that was it (in which case we probably wouldn't have bothered!). Good to get a look at 'real' Mexico, but it was too hot to wander aimlessly so back on the colectivo for an afternoon by the pool :)

Big fizzy drinks in the bar in Tulum

Akumal

Akumal was our second day out, and we spent pretty much the whole day there. It was our first wedding anniversary and I can't imagine a more perfect place to celebrate an anniversary! It was only 5 minutes from our hotel by colectivo, and the beach was a long stretch of white sand, lined with palm trees, and covered in beautiful little butterflies! Before I'd even hit the crystal clear sea I was in love!
 

We went with another early start which seemed wise- it was a longish walk through the hotel grounds to the main road and hard in the heat, so we hopped on the colectivo about 8am. We got off at Akumal but then realised we had no idea how to get to the beach! Just as we were reaching for our map from our concierge the colectivo driver jumped out of the beach and pointed us in the right direction!

I knew that we didn't actually have to join an official snorkel tour, we just needed to hire life jackets, but we decided to get a guide anyway and I'm so glad we did as our guide took us out via turtle hotspots to the reef and then back. We would definitely have found the turtles by ourselves, they were everywhere, but I'm not sure we'd have got to the reef or had the confidence to explore.


We saw 8-10 turtles on the way to and from the reef, and 2 rays. The fish out at the reef were beautiful, so I was completely in my own paradise! The turtles were not at all bothered by our presence which suggests to me that tourists generally follow the rules and respect the turtles- don't try to touch them, hound them, etc. They came quite close to us, I actually thought I was going to end up on one at one point as it swam up from beneath me to surface a short distance away.

We did an hours tour, and then went to Lol-Ha (a bar/restaurant) for a drink, before hiring a life vest and fins each from the dive centre to head back out by ourselves. We had an incredible time and were out for another hour, by now nearly midday, and burnt our backs in the shape of the life jackets... whoops!

View from Lol-Ha, quite a nice spot for an anniversary lunch...

We went back to Lol-Ha for lunch (I expected extortionate prices given the prime spot but not at all), then spent some time walking on the beach and sunbathing whilst our dinner went down, before heading back out for one last snorkel and then back to the hotel. After a busy day we were exhausted but very happy- swimming with sea turtles in their natural environment was a dream come true.

Playa del Carmen

After getting some hefty sunburn on our backs with a white patch the shape of our life vests the next day we decided to do something that involved remaining fully clothed. So we hopped on another colectivo and set off to Playa del Carmen. It was a somewhat scary ride- the driver was speeding and drifting between lanes, and quite often didn't pick a lane just straddled both. We were relieved to be there in one piece! We came into Playa through the outskirts which looked much like Tulum- run-down and a bit rough. The colectivo dropped us near 5th avenue though which is the tourist area and this was clean and looked nice and well cared for. Aaron did get asked if he wanted to buy drugs though from 4 separate people in the street (my favourite line being "time to get high?".. it was 10.30am! Even if we did smoke it really wouldn't be time to get high!), usually after trying to sell us a tour.

Playa has a lovely long white sand beach as far as the eye can see, lots of shops including loads of tourist souvenir shops and also your standard high street stores from H&M to Mac. If you were staying along this stretch of coast and needed to buy anything, this is where you'd go. We did some mooching around the shops and got a few bits, including some really expensive tequila for Aaron and randomly a couple of baubles! The tequila was good though- it was just from another of these big touristy shops but they let you sample the tequilasmso Aaron tried some mezcal (the stuff with the worm in or in this case a scorpian) and some tequila and settled on the tequila. By this time we were absolutely melting so went into a bar and had a cold drink before heading back to the colectivo. We didnt spend long there, and wouldn't bother going again unless we needed something, but nice to know what's there and I can imagine it'd be fun in the evening.

Cenote Azul

The colectivo from Playa to the cenote was if possible more terrifying than the one to playa! We were in the front which meant I could see how fast he was going and he was consistantly averaging 50 to 60kph over the speed limit (which was usually around the 80 to 90 kph figure). He had a tablet propped up on his dashboard so he could watch music videos, and spent some time talking on the phone. He also did the drifting between lanes business and made such a sharp last minute turn off the highway into Puerto Aventuras that I'm surprised he didn't flip us!!! I was so relieved that we came back on to the highway behind the police as he then had to drive legally! Anyway, defying the odds we got there in one piece. I'd asked the driver to drop us at the Barcelo hotel, which is the closest place to stop if we were coming from the hotel because there are no places to stop on that side of the road outside the cenotes. However we were coming from the other direction as we were coming straight from Playa, so we should have asked for the cenotes and saved ourselves a hot dusty walk. Hindsight is great!

There were 4 or 5 cenotes in a row- tripadvisor recommended Cenote Azul, our concierge recommended Cenote Eden, and the couple we spoke to in Tulum said Cristalino was good. We went with the tripadvisor recommendation as it was so highly rated by lots of people. It was lovely, and only 80pesos each to get in (just over £3 at current exchange!). The negative- there wasn't really anywhere to lay down and dry off between snorkels- we just had to walk along the path until we found a little shady dead end where we could leave our bags with a couple of rocks to sit on whilst we suncreamed and had a drink. Oh! And had the chocolate bars we picked up in Playa, I'd picked up a Milky Way which was not packaged like our Milky Way at all so I wanted to see what it was.. turns out in Mexico they call a Mars bar a Milky Way! It was even made by Mars, so it really was just a Mars bar, I wonder why it has been rebranded...

Anyway, whilst refuelling we watched the many fish in the shallow water next to the spot we'd chosen, and had a good look around at the scenery. It is basically a lagoon, surrounded by trees and rocks, and absolutely full of fish. The water was freezing (not what we're used to in Mexico where the pool is like bath water and even the sea is mild) but that was so welcome after our very hot morning. It was also freshwater so a: different fish, and b: no saltwater in our mouths :D. The water was so clear and there was a brilliant variety of fish. The underwater rock formations looked cool but I'm incapable of diving down. There was a high rock to jump off into the water, which Aaron did, giving our go-pro-type-camera a new  challenge, normally I would too but I had the beginnings of a headache so chilled under the rocks instead whilst he jumped.

After spending some time snorkelling and cooling off we decided to try another cenote- one with an underground river. I had tried to book a tour of an underground cenote but didnt get a response before we left and a quick search hadn't found an alternative that was easy to access without hiring a car or going on a big expensive all day excursion. We picked one and after a confusing lost in translation conversation with a girl at the entrance, embarked on a long walk down into the park... only to find when we got there that it was expensive (being an eco park not just a single cenote- probably very reasonable if you planned to stay the day) and it closed in an hour so we wouldn't really have much time to explore. So we gave it a miss, headed back to the colectivo (which thankfully had a sane driver this time) and I flaked out in our room- the heat had really battered me!



Krakow Feb 2016

Krakow

My reasons for booking a trip to Krakow were the following:

1. It was a destination I could fly to for very cheap from a local airport (like £30 return) in early Feb
2. There seemed to be a decent chance of snow there and we like snow
3. Someone at work had mentioned it was nice a few years ago
4. One of the top attractions on tripadvisor was Lost Souls Alley, which appealed to our love of being scared

Not the most solid reasons, and if I wasn't going holiday-booking crazy (this was booked shortly before we were heading off to Japan, and we already had Mexico planned in the same year too) then I probably wouldn't have done it. I am so glad I did though!



Main Square at night, I knew we were in for a good trip as soon as we got here!

Getting there:

We flew into Krakow, and unfortunately exited the airport, leading to some confusing wandering aimlessly in the street before realising that I'd read that the airport was right next to the train station so they were probably linked in some way. A minor detour through a carpark later and we were back on track and in the train station! Turned out you didn't need to leave the airport- there was a walkway into the train station, but hey ho! New cities are for getting lost in!

The train was ridiculously cheap, it cost about £1.50 each to get the direct and comfortable train 25mins to the city centre! The ticket machine had an English language option, and we knew we were headed to Krakow Glowny so it couldn't have been easier.

We got a little bit lost again trying to get from the train station to our hotel as we were staying just outside of the old town, foolishly we'd thought it would be ok to find as it's just the other side of a little park thing... except the little park thing surrounds the old town! With some map checking we figured it out and tracked down our hotel, an easy enough walk once we knew what we were doing and less than 10mins from the door to the main square.



Food and drink

Sampling the beers

I wasn't sure what to expect, but everything I ate was tasty, generously portioned, and cheap as chips even in the tourist trap of the main square! There was a variety of different restaurants to choose from so plenty of choice when it came to menus too.

Beer was the cheapest thing to drink, but not being a beer drinker I mostly hit the cocktails (still cheap by UK standards but pricey compared to other drinks on the menu) and sampled a couple of vodkas. One night we decided to drink in the hotel instead of heading out as my friend wasn't feeling great, and there were 'alkohole's everywhere so finding places to acquire booze was easy-peasy for an even cheaper night of drinking!

My fancy vodka

Things to do

Our itinerary went something like this:

Day 0: Find hotel, dinner, and then bed

Day 1: Head off early to Auschwitz & Birkenau. Get back to the hotel mid afternoon, chill, and then head to the main square to do a free walking tour (the Macabre tour) in the evening.

Auschwitz

For Auschwitz we did a tour with Escape2Poland and whilst we could have done it a bit cheaper ourselves were really glad we paid a little bit extra as we got picked up from our hotel, driven to Auschwitz (a documentary video was played on the minibus which filled us in on the history), then we were taken on a tour of Auschwitz before being driven on to Birkenau, a tour there, and then back to our hotel.
The girls found it quite an emotional experience, our partners with their hearts of stone just found it interesting. I think it's a must-do experience, it felt huge and important whilst we were there and the memories will stay with me. Don't be tacky and take selfies, like one woman we saw posing against an execution wall. Whilst we were walking through Birkenau it started snowing and it just felt even more stark and even more difficult to imagine living there in weather like that in the conditions they lived in.

Entrance to Birkenau

Fortunately when we got back to our hotel we'd got free donuts in our rooms! Turns out we were there on Fat Thursday, which seems to be a Shrove Tuesday kind of deal! The sugar was welcome :)

The Macabre walking tour, through http://freewalkingtour.com/krakow/ was really good fun and some much needed light relief after a heavy day. Our tour guide was really entertaining and we were happy to leave a good tip at the end. The tipping thing wasn't pushy at all, the tour is free so it's up to you if you tip, but if you enjoy it you should, I searched on tripadvisor to get an idea of what's a good tip as it's tricky when you're tipping in a foreign currency and you don't have a base price to work out a percentage of!


Demonstration of a medieval punishment
on the Macabre walking tour

Day 2: Foods of Krakow walking tour, Rynek Underground Museum, and Lost Souls Alley

Random guy on our walking tour getting some pierogi to try...
I was too busy eating to get pics of my own friends/husband!

Another free tour from freewalkingtour.com (you'll notice a trend here!) and this one was just as good! They aren't kidding when they advise to ensure you have plenty of change on you- at each place you stop you only spend 1 or 2 zloty so it's much easier to have lots of small coins! We tried a variety of things from the parent of the bagel, through pierogi, and soup, to a kind of stew. Mostly little sampler sizes though which is perfect otherwise you'd be stuffed before you got halfway! My highlight of the tour was the vodka & herring bar, which does exactly what it says on the tin: you do a shot of vodka, and follow it with a small portion of herring (and there are as many varieties of herring as there are of vodka, the one with sour cream was really nice).


Vodka and Herring bar

We had some time to fill so we headed to Rynek Underground Museum, which we'd liked the sound of when we read about it online. It was an interesting place to visit but we didn't spend ages there, we were definitely in and out in less than an hour.

In the evening we did Lost Souls Alley. It wasn't as scary as I'd hoped (tripadvisor reviews had me thinking I'd be in tears!), but still sufficiently scary that for a good while afterwards I felt like I was still trying to catch my breath- I must have been holding it all the way round! It felt a little like we were being rushed at times, but I would still recommend it. I'd liken it to the saw attraction at Thorpe Park, but with a problem solving element and they will touch you!



Lost Souls Alley... sooo dark!

Day 3: Old Town and Jewish Krakow tours

More tours from freewalkingtour.com! By this point we felt we'd covered the old town ourselves but we actually still learnt lots, and we also went up to Wawel on this tour which was good as it was somewhere I'd wanted to go. After this tour we nipped back to the hotel (not far from Wawel) and then headed back into the main square to catch the Jewish Krakow tour.

This tour was really informative and we covered lots of ground, I wouldn't recommend doing both tours on the same day as we were quite shattered after this one, but that's just the way it fell.

In the evening we'd planned to head into Kazimierz to drink (so far we'd only had a couple of drinks in a little cocktail bar near the main square, and wanted to sample the nightlife in Kazimierz which sounded great), however it wasn't to be, so 3 of the 4 of us tried our hand at another escape game (Challenge Accepted) and the 4th went back to the hotel room poorly :( . We did not do well at Challenge Accepted but we enjoyed our first attempt at a proper escape game and I'd do it again!

Day 4: Wieliczka Salt Mine & St Mary's

We checked out of our hotel and headed off to the salt mine! An easy train ride from the centre out to the salt mine, unlike Auschwitz I'd definitely recommend going by yourself rather than paying for a hotel pick up etc. You join a tour when you get there, and English language tours leave pretty frequently (timetable on the Wieliczka website). It was an interesting tour, the highlight of which was the chapel of St Kinga, it was breathtaking!

After we got back to the city we had some lunch and then went to check out St Mary's, which we hadn't planned on visiting, but the guide on the Old Town tour had recommended going inside so we did, and wow was I glad we did: I've never seen anything so ornate in my life!



St Mary's from outside, I didn't get a photo pass to take pics inside unfortunately, but google it!

Sadly then our time was up so we had to head home, but we started planning our next Polish trip before we even left the country!

Overall impressions

I'd heard Polish people could be cold and unfriendly (even from one of our Polish tour guides!) but we only experienced that in one bar, which could happen anywhere! Generally people were friendly and we felt comfortable there.

I'd heard the food was stodgy, and yes there was stodge available, but everything I ate was great and there was lots of choice!

The city was beautiful, and there was more to do than we could fit into our 4 day break, so I would 100% recommend it to anyone!