I feel like I never have much to share on these beachy vacations, so consider this a quick update on our trip thus far. 🙂 Things are going well! The GR Solaris continues to be a good resort (and definitely continues to be better than the Oasis Sens!) and we’re all having a good time (and aren’t getting sunburned TOO badly). The weather hasn’t been as consistently sunny and nice as it was on last year’s trip though. We experienced some pouring (but short-lived) rain sessions on Saturday morning (our first full day here), but that was while we were having breakfast, so the only thing we had to worry about was our stuff getting wet because it was already outside. The great thing about wet towels is that they dry out pretty quickly, so the only real casualties were the magazines that got soaked. Ah well! We also had some clouds roll in for awhile today, but they rolled back out again pretty quickly. Let that be a lesson to everyone who may be planning a first-time trip to a place like Cancun – you may get rain, but it will likely be short-lived and won’t ruin your day. We did have one day of rain last year, but it was a fairly quick shower in the middle of an afternoon. I still feel great about the weather we’ve had so far and I feel confident that we’ll continue to have good weather for the rest of the week!

Resort-wise, I’m still impressed by this place overall. Food-wise, things have been decent, but not amazing. The breakfast buffet is solid, with lots of options and GREAT maple syrup (take note, Oasis Sens). During the day, we’ve just been grabbing food from the snack hut, which is conveniently located by all the pools. Unlike the Sens, this place is a serve-yourself setup, so you just go up and grab whatever looks good. They have everything from burgers to hot dogs to grilled chicken to nachos and chips and guac, so it’s a pretty good selection. It’s definitely convenient to just walk over there, grab what we want, and then go back to lounging by the pool. One of the restaurants (right by the snack hut, actually) has a lunch buffet, but we haven’t gone there yet and I’m assuming we won’t because we would have to dry off, get dressed, and go sit down for a meal. That sounds like too much work when we’re all enjoying relaxing by/in the pool (or ocean). 🙂 The dinner options haven’t been that great, so that’s been the only real food downside. We did two different buffets on Friday and Saturday nights – both were okay, but neither were spectacular. Last night, we went to the nicer dinner option (ie – you have to wear pants instead of shorts) and the food was okay, but again, not amazing. They had a Caribbean menu that night and, while nothing was disappointing per se, it was also not impressive. Still, the food isn’t like to make or break a place like this for me, so I’ve been generally happy with it.

The one bizarre/frustrating thing has been the whole chair reservation process. We continue to struggle with it! Last year, it was easy – some of the group would get up really early every day (by 5a) and would put our towels on the chairs we wanted. We would check them when we got up, then have breakfast, and then lounge for the rest of the day. Easy! We’ve been following the same routine here, but something keeps going wrong with the process. On the first day, Scott and I got up around 415a, laid the towels out, and went back to bed. When we went to check on them when we woke up, two chairs on each side of the seven we reserved had been taken, with the towels we laid out just thrown on the chairs that weren’t taken. No one was using the chairs yet, so we took the ones back that we needed. Later in the morning (around noon actually) a man stopped by and said he had reserved two of the chairs (which we had taken back) and he said there was nothing on them when he reserved them. While that may have been true, it seems weird that our towels were just conveniently thrown back onto our chairs, so we didn’t give the chairs up and he eventually found others elsewhere. On Sunday, Scott and I again held seven chairs, but this time it was at the slightly-removed adults-only pool. Same drill – seven towels on seven chairs. Once again, we came down later and discovered that, not only had two of the chairs been taken by other people, but three of our towels were completely missing. In this case, the two chairs that had been taken were being used by two nice older women who swore there was nothing on the chairs when they came down around 6-7a. We didn’t think they were lying, especially since our towels were gone altogether. Since the towels that went missing were the towels some of us brought with from home (designed by our friend Nick, who is here with us), we were hoping they would turn up, but we’ve checked the lost and found a few times with no luck. We figured the third time might be the charm, but we had problems again today. This time, two other people from the group held the chairs (again, around 4a) and when they checked on them around 730a, all the towels were gone (at least this time they were all hotel towels). Someone who was laying in one of the chairs said the hotel had cleared out all the towels around 630a so they could take pictures (presumably for their website or something). It wasn’t a problem to get seven more towels from the hotel and we were also able to find seven more chairs, but it was still annoying! Maybe I just got spoiled by how easy the process was last year. Still, I’m holding out hope that the chair gods will smile upon us for the rest of the week!

We still have three full days left, so I’m looking forward to the rest of the week, though I suspect it will be much of the same. 🙂 We heard there’s supposed to be a snowstorm back home tonight – sorry Twin Cities friends! We’ll raise a glass to you and your shovels at dinner tonight!