[Shootingstar]

Sunday Oct 31<SUP>st</SUP> – Day 2

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The beds are amazing, I know other reports have said they were horrible but I loved them. After breakfast we hit the beach, got the mandatory 1<SUP>st</SUP> day burn and lunch at JoJo’s again. Drifted around in the shops on-site for a little while as we are going to Playa tonight and I wanted to have an idea on the differences in prices.

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Oh before we went for breakfast I pulled out the trusty little Spanish/English book and tried to figure out a way to leave a note for the maid. We had been told by a friend who did <ST1:pCancun</ST1:p last year that getting coffee is almost impossible after breakfast so had brought our own as we knew there were coffee makers in the room. Unfortunately we didn’t realize that they only put 4 small (500ml) bottles of water in the room each day. It takes 2 just to make a small pot of coffee, so I wanted to figure out how to ask for extra. Couldn’t find how to say extra anywhere in the book. After looking everywhere I put together a sentence using “many” instead of extra and I’m sure the grammer was wrong but hoped it would be understandable. Well after the room was cleaned I checked and go figure no water all all…geez did I screw it up that bad??? But later about 6 waters magically appeared in the room, I eventually figured out that the fridges get stocked by different people at different times. Ultimately, we got wise to the game of hiding all the water early in the day so we would get enough over all. Stupid game, you can get all the beer and drinks you want but getting water is a chore?? Speaking of stupid games the towel game ranks very high on my list and I simply refuse to play, even though I was up by <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:time Minute="0" Hour="6">6 a.m.</st1:time> every morning. It’s just too friggen childish for me. If you want to sit find an empty chair and sit in it…but to think you have the right to “save” one for the whole day just in case you may feel like sitting in it later is really unbelievable. One day we were walking along and went to sit in a lounger and this woman comes running over and says “oh, we were just planning on moving there, well I was speechless, and she gets all indignant and say’s “I was up before 8:00 to save this spot…and I’m thinking… and that supposedly includes all 20 chairs? ….we took two steps over and sat in an empty set of chairs and thought wow it’s really sad to see someone get so freaked out over a stupid chair when there are empty ones as far as the eye could see. This resort never feels crowded. Not once did we have a problem getting a seat anywhere we wanted to sit.

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We played in the surf and crawled around on the rocks/coral and saw a bunch of neat little critters in the little tide pools. Had a swim in the salt water pool and generally just relaxed and hung out for the afternoon.

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At <st1:time Minute="0" Hour="18">6:00</st1:time> we took the shuttle to Playa and were dropped off at corner of 5<SUP>th</SUP> and Constituyentes. We did a stroll up and down a bit of 5<SUP>th</SUP> and then realized we had better find a place and grab something to eat. We ended up at a place upstairs from the street – pasta and other stuff – 2 for 1 margaritta’s, can’t remember the name but I think we have a pic of it somewhere. Reasonable meal quality wise but a little over priced I think, hard to say, it’s our first time here. We were pressed for time so of course dinner took a long time to get and we were a little late for the Playainfo meet at LaRanita. What a blast…great group of people…wish we could have stayed well into the night but we had to be back to meet the shuttle at 10. We did find out Lulu and Flash were booked on the tulum tour the same day as us so that was way kewl. Way later than we should have we said our farewells and hauled ass up 5<SUP>th</SUP> to meet the bus. We got to the pick up point with about 4 min. to spare. We were just wandering and waiting and Garth spotted an Aztec Calendar wall plaque. Of course the guy was with us in a heartbeat and said 140 us…well no way, and besides we didn’t plan to shop tonight the bus would be here any min. so I was not interested in getting into the barter game. I said no gracias and we turned to leave….
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Him – 120us

Me – no thank you the bus is due any minute

Him – 100us

Me – no really we have to go

Him- 80us

Me – we’ll come back another day, we’re not shopping tonight

Him – 60us

Me- you see we only came for dinner…not shopping…then we found a bar and had

Drinks – we don’t have enough money left to shop tonight – we’ll come back

Another day.

Him – how much do you have left?

Me – maybe 40 bucks left, it’s not enough for something so pretty…(I say with a smile now realizing I am in the middle of the game anyway)

Him – it’s enough, just for you, I wrap fast, bus coming now

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It was too funny, I really didn’t want to shop that night, didn’t want to play the barter game. I ran for the bus as Hubby paid the guy (as it should be) when he got on the bus he say’s “Damn you're good at this whole barter thing” I laughed I wasn’t trying to barter, I was trying to catch a bus, but not be rude either – then Garth laughed, wow he says, can’t wait to see how you do when you actually try. So off we went back to the resort with Garth’s calendar wall plaque. It was pouring rain when we got to the resort and it ran down the big marble staircases at the lobby like giant waterfalls. Very pretty but kinda dangerous too I suppose. We met a British couple leaving the lobby and we all ran through the rain like little kids.

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Oh I almost forgot when we were wandering down 5<SUP>th</SUP> we found a little orange stucco building with black wrought iron balcony railings. Restaurant on the ground level and what looked like rooms on the 2<SUP>nd</SUP> and 3<SUP>rd</SUP> floor. It had a for sale sign on it….I just fell in love with it and I will put it on my list to Santa but have a feeling I haven’t been “that good” this year…lol