My Honeymoon Review
My husband (Jeff) and I stayed at the Villa Del Palmar in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico. We loved every second of it!!
Sunday: We woke up the morning after the wedding at 7am in order to catch our flight. The town car picked us up at the hotel and he already had Starbucks waiting for us! For having to get up that early, this was a really nice surprise. We got to the airport and asked if there were any upgrades – since we were on our honeymoon! They didn’t have anything in first class, but they moved us to the exit row. WOW!! So much leg room! I loved it! After we had reached our “cruising altitude” the flight attendants came over the intercom and said “We have some very special people flying with us today.” I am looking around thinking there is a celebrity on the plane! She goes on to say “Please congratulate with me, Mr. and Mrs. Rice who were married last night!” Then they brought us a bottle of champagne and the whole plane clapped for us. It was perfect. The other best part of the flight was when we had to fill out our customs forms and we got to check the ‘married’ box. It’s the little things! We got to Puerto Vallarta (PV) and thanks to my LIW ladies I knew to just run out of the airport and not stop for any of the timeshare people. We jumped in a taxi and headed to our resort. OMG! It was gorgeous! When we drove up, the sun had already set and it was all lit up. We got to our room and ordered room service which we ate on our terrace looking over the ocean – it couldn’t have been more perfect.
Monday: We went down early in the morning (thanks to the time zone change we were up SUPER early!) and sat by the pool. The pools are all “beach entry” style so its about 6” deep and then slowly gets deeper towards the middle of the pool. The best part is, they put chairs all around the edge of the pool so you can tan and have your feet in the pool. Simply heaven! We stayed by the pool all day and when we went back to our hotel room, there was a bottle of champagne and a gift certificate for a couples massage at the spa downstairs sent from the concierge. I was really excited!!
Tuesday: We had a full kitchen in our hotel room and I wanted some snack type of foods so we decided we would go to the Wal Mart in PV. When we went outside to get in the taxi, the bellboy told us that there was a Mega Store just a couple miles away, versus the 10 miles to PV. So, not even knowing what a Mega Store is, we jumped in the taxi and went. We had a great time!! Nothing is in english so we just started making guesses to what everything was. We needed laundry detergent since we had laundry facilities and we had no idea what was laundry soap from dishwashing soap. It was purely comical. When we got back to the hotel, we had a very romantic dinner on the beach as we watched the sunset. It was so nice just having a quiet dinner and listening to the waves. After dinner we sat in the huge hot tub just a few feet away from where we had dinner. The best part of the hot tub was a HUGE fire pit in the middle of the circular hot tub so even if there were other people in there, it still felt very private.
Wednesday: I like to call this day “sit by the pool and get lots of sunshine” day! We ate breakfast and lunch while sitting by the pool and learned about the “drink of the day.” Everyday there is a special drink and you get 2 for 1. Wednesday’s drink was mango margaritas and this was my favorite drink for the rest of the trip! We took advantage of the entertainment provided by the resort and Jeff played water volleyball and I played Bingo. Why not? We went to downtown PV for dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Pipis. Lots of people at the resort were talking about it so we went. We were not disappointed!! Pure entertainment!! The food was great (we had enchiladas) but the people that work there are singing and the margaritas were as big as our plate of food! We had a great time there and then just did a little shopping and went back to the hotel.
Thursday: We woke up at 7am and took a taxi to the Vallarta Adventure Center. From there, they put us in this CRAZY truck type of vehicle to the marina where we boarded a 50 ft sailboat. There were just 8 of us and we went sailing all day long. I tried my hand at steering and helping raise the sails. Overall, it was just a wonderful experience and I highly recommend Vallarta Adventures for any excursions you go on. When we got back to the hotel, we quickly changed clothes and went down to the beach for the FIESTA! Our resort puts on a fiesta twice a week (Sunday and Thursday) so we went! When we got there, the activities staff met us with a drink and showed us to our table. Wouldn’t you know, we got seated at the 75+ table! The man sitting next to me actually chastised me for not eating everything on my plate. Hahahaa!! Imagine having dinner with 4 sets of grandparents. That was our night. However, the food was outstanding and the show was amazing – they have singing and dancing and live music – definitely worth going to!
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Friday: We woke up at 7am again and went to the Kontiki Tours Center. We had signed up for a snorkeling/kayaking trip and when we got there, we showed them our tickets and we got in line to get on the boat. There were a lot of older people on our boat but we really didn’t think anything of it until we got way out in the middle of the ocean and the cruise director starts talking…in great detail… about whales. Again, we didn’t think anything of it until we asked the guy sitting next to us when we were going to got snorkeling and he looks at us,
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with a puzzled look, and said “what snorkeling?? This is a whale watching tour.” Yes, friends…we were stuck…on a boat…in the middle of the ocean…all day…watching whales. It was very boring. When we got back and complained they offered to let us go on Saturday on the correct tour, but we didn’t want to waste our whole last day doing that so we just passed. Overall, pretty disappointing. My advice is don’t go on Kontiki Tours.
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Saturday: We sat by the pool and played in the ocean all day and then went out for a last night dinner. We went to a place called Mark’s and had the most wonderful seafood and champagne and dessert. The whole thing was so nice and amazingly romantic. It was truly the perfect end to the perfect honeymoon.
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