Part 5 (Finally!!
Vacation!)
Hopefully this installment won’t be as long as the prior ones, and after this one I can start working on things that have happened since we got back from our honeymoon. We’ll see I guess.
So, I wake up in the back of a limo just as we’re crossing the I-64 bridge into Louisville. I go ahead and try to shake the cobwebs, because I’m still exhausted. I wake Adrianne up and tell her that we’re not too far from the hotel, so we should try to get our stuff together.
I’m looking out the windows, and being familiar with the airport area of Louisville, I notice that the limo driver has already passed the Airport (where our hotel is supposed to be) and is almost to Bardstown Road. Now, I’m no genius (well possibly?), but I can tell you this… Holiday Inn Airport is not going to be 6 to 8 miles away from the airport.
Actually, there are two Holiday Inn’s by the airport and they, commonly, get confused, but, back to the limo driver. He rolls down the partition and tells us that he missed his turn and is looping back around. I kind of wanted to say “No, really?” but I didn’t.
Finally, we reach the hotel at close to 3:30 am, EST. I have no clue how it took so long, but it did. I’m guessing he was driving 45 miles an hour on the interstate or something, because not once in my many trips from Owensboro to Louisville did it ever take longer than one hour and forty-five minutes to get there. Any time over two hours is just unacceptable. Oh well, we got there safe and alive, so I can’t really complain.
So, it’s 3:30 am, and we pile out of the limo. We’ve got a couple of bags in the back with us, along with at least 4 plates of food and cake. One of the plates is piled up with chocolate covered strawberries (Adrianne’s favorite), but the juice is running all over everything, so we immediately toss them. Them I’m trying to hold my backpack, and three plates of food, when I drop one of them. Obviously I expected the food to go everywhere, but I did not expect broken glass. Our caterer gave us glass plates to travel with? He also gave us a piece of Tupperware. I sincerely hope he wasn’t planning on getting any of that back?
We finally drag our carcasses inside, where there is one receptionist and a security guard. That’s it! We give her or information and she starts hunting and pecking for our names, either one of them. Nothing! She calls the other Holiday Inn to see if we’re supposed to be over there. Nope!
By now I’m beyond tired and can’t even get mad. I just want to lay down in a bed. Supposedly our travel agent set all of this up and it was part of our honeymoon. I guess a wire got crossed or something?
Finally the receptionist finds our reservation. She prints out the necessary documents and asks “And how will you be paying for this?”
“Huh?” We both let out at the same time. Again, we thought that this was all part of our package, but we were just too tired to argue about it. “Here’s my credit card, just put it on there. I’m too tired to think about it right now! I just want some sleep.” Adrianne said.
“We’ll call the travel agent when we get back and see what was up with it” I reassure her. Next we ask what time the shuttles leave for the airport.
“Well, they run every 30 minutes, what time is your flight?”
“We’ve got an 8:55 am international. What time should we leave?” I respond.
“You’d probably better be safe and be on the 6 am shuttle, in case there are any problems.”
“Uggh!! Less than two hours of sleep?” I’m thinking to myself. Adrianne was also thinking the same thing, but didn’t have that expression on her face like I did. We walk around the corner to the presidential suite, which was really nice, but not worth $90 for 2 hours. We basically took our clothes off, turned on the TV, laid down, and then the alarm went off.
Really, the next thing I realize we’re sitting at our gate in the airport (I must have been asleep while getting our tickets and going through security) and I’m writing out a timeline in my notebook. I had fully planned on just typing it out on here, which I still may do, because it’s much more detailed (since I tried to write it as things occurred, so I wouldn’t forget. Remember, I’m pretty much just in a sleepless haze after the reception).
Somehow we get through security with our pieces of wedding cake (we left all of the rest of the food at the hotel) and we decide this will be breakfast. Well we each take a bit or two of each of the three different kinds of cake before we decide that this is way too sweet to be eating, especially when we haven’t really eaten anything good for over 24 hours. So, Adrianne heads back toward the main concourse and stops in a Starbucks. She picks us both up a banana, an apple, some juice, and a muffin for me, along with a hot chocolate (or was it chai tea?) for her. Yes, much better.
We both scarf down our food (well, I didn’t eat the muffin) and she decides it’s nap time. We’ve still got nearly an hour and a half before boarding starts. She lays her head in my lap, so I grab my Ipod and my notebook. I write for about 45 minutes when I decide to just listen to some music and relax before our flight.
I made sure not to fall asleep, since she was asleep on my lap. I was afraid I’d fall deep asleep and wouldn’t be very nice when I woke up. I may have “rested my eyes” once or twice though, I can’t remember!
Promptly at 8:30 they begin boarding. Since we were in first class, we were the first people aboard the flight. We got priority overhead bins and everything. I’ve been spoiled now, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to fly coach/economy ever again. I’ll pay an extra $50 each way for that option any time! For once I actually had the necessary leg room to keep me comfortable. Also, we were already being served drinks before anyone else even thought about getting on the plane. The FA’s (remember from my prior post?) were constantly checking on us and making sure we had everything we wanted/needed. Now this was the proper start to a vacation!!
Once off the ground Adrianne was quickly asleep again. I maintained consciousness until we touched down in Memphis. I found it relatively amusing that we had to stop in Memphis in order to get to Cancun. If we had known this, then we could’ve just driven down to Memphis, or something like that. We stop in Memphis for just about an hour and pick up a ton of people. The flight was relatively light coming out of Louisville, but once we picked everyone up in Memphis, it was a full load. Even the rest of first class were filled up. Most of first class was filled up with people from Jonesboro, Arkansas. The only reason I know this is because they were all wearing Arkansas State shirts and hats. It appeared they were on their way to Mexico for a golf trip. I don’t know what their wives were going to do though?
I looked over to Adrianne and just kind of smirked. She asked me “What?” I reply “Yeah, we beat that ass in basketball every year!” She gets “that” look on her face and says to me “Keep your mouth shut!” I did.
The flight was completely uneventful. I fell asleep about 10 minutes into the two hour flight and woke up when they wanted me to put my seat back in it’s upright position (or was it when Adrianne needed me to help fill out our customs info? I can't remember). It felt like I had just fallen asleep. I did feel a little rested though.
Unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the plane, so all I got to see was barren fields and a couple of ponds. The other side of the plane got the great view of the Gulf of Mexico. Damn those peasants!
Just before touch down the FA’s talk us through our custom’s papers and what will happen. Adrianne fills them out for us, and we’re ready to hit the ground running. To both of our surprises, the plane doesn’t taxi anywhere near the terminal. Instead, buses come out on the tarmac to pick us up. We are then shuttled to a huge room with (probably) 50 carnival lines, filled up with fellow tourists. We move toward the back of the room, hoping that the line will be shorter. It also didn’t hurt that it was nearest to the bathrooms.
These guys had it down to a science. Our gentleman was very hospitable (much better than most of the people that work at our US airports) and even lets me practice a little espanol on him. He wishes us “Buenas Dias!” and we’re on our way to pick up our bags and then on to customs.
I will say this right now… Customs down there is as absolutely random as possible. You walk up to a line. The person there says “Push the button”. Once you push the button a light comes on, either Green or Red. If it’s Green, you cruise right past. It it’s Red, you get checked. Beautiful, isn’t it? Adrianne pushed the button and we got the Green light. Onward we go!
We were told to look for guys in gray shirts with blue pants. I did my best to ignore all of the other people trying to get us to do things, like get in their cabs, buses, etc. A guy in a white uniform comes up to us and says “Which company are you looking for?” I wanted to say “We’re okay, thanks!”, but instead “Vacation Express” came out of my mouth.
“Damn you sleeplessness!!!”
It’s okay though, he actually works for the airport to help tourists miss all of the crazy stuff. He grabs a couple of our bags and gets us down to our spot. A little guy is standing on the corner with a clipboard and quickly finds our name. He tells us (in broken English) “You’re ride be here shortly. We wait on others too.”
We start talking to another couple that is waiting next to us. They were on the flight with us, but several rows back. They were newlyweds also, as were at least three other couples at our spot. Our van is there in no time, and we pile in. We’ve got a total of 5 couples in our van, three of which are newlyweds. One of the non-newlyweds are going to the same resort as we were. They were quite grumpy, and EKU grads at that. Again, I just kept my mouth shut. Adrianne didn’t have to say anything to me this time, she just gave me “The Look”.
It took about 30 minutes to get to our resort from Cancun. We stopped at one resort prior to ours in order to drop one of the other couples off. Once we got out of the van, Adrianne pulled me aside and said “Let’s do our best to avoid that couple all week. They are so negative!” Which they were. I guess they were just tired and worn out like we were, but didn’t take it as well as we did.
We go over to check-in, and they don’t have a room available with a King Size bed, like we were supposed to get. They put us in a room with two doubles, but it’s not ready yet either. Instead they asked if we’d like to go get some lunch and come back in half an hour. “ABSOLUTELY!!” is the only thing that came out of our mouths. This would be our first “real” meal in nearly 36 hours.
We walk up to the first restaurant we can find, La Isla, and find a seat (it was nearly empty, since they were just about to finish serving lunch). I order a cocktail (I don’t remember what it was though), and we quickly both order Club Sandwiches. How sad is that? Our first meal on this beautiful resort is a club sandwich? Oh well! It was awesome!
Okay, so I’m pretty much done for today. I’m not going to tell about everything we did while we were down there, but I’d like to start writing about some of the happenings afterwards. I may, occasionally, make inserts about our honeymoon, because it was absolutely wonderful. The resort was beyond magnificent. Think about your ideal paradise, and then multiply that by 10, and that’s where we were. They have seven restaurants at the resort, and each and every one of them are 5 star spots. The food is insane. Not only does it taste great, but the presentation is out of this world.
The best part of the resort is that if you want to have fun and party, you can (there are tons of scheduled activities for everyone to partake in), but if you were like us, and just wanted to do your own thing (and relax by the beach or pool, or just walk around), you could do that too. We left the resort a couple of times, once to go snorkeling at a reef offsite, and the other time to check out some shopping in Playa Del Carmen (on the coast where Cozumel is). All of those are options available at the resort. All you really had to do was hit up your concierge and he/she would schedule it for you. I will try to post some honeymoon pictures soon.
However, this is (possibly) the end of THE NEVERENDING STORY, so… I guess it does actually end, or does it?
