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Hola Val and Tony
Thank you very much for generously buying us Coachella tickets for our wedding gift. We decided to spend the money instead on a holiday to Mexico. You might have been able to work that out from me starting this blog with 'Hola' rather than 'hello' but just in case you are not as fluent in Spanish as me Hola means hello.
You see, all this travelling about and doing stuff is actually really hard work and we were feeling a bit tired so we thought needed (and, when you think about it, deserved) a holiday and what better place to come than Mexico in a little town called Playa Del Carmen. We wanted one more stretch of gorgeous white sandy beaches, one more blue skies and sunshine, one more not doing anything other than sitting by a pool all day, one more attempt at finishing the book I have been struggling with for the last three countries (the new Girl with a Dragon Tattoo book), one more topping up the tan and quite frankly, we were missing that level of care and service you only get in a third world country from people desperately trying to make a living to feed their starving children.
Playa Del Carmen is near Cancun on the Yucatan peninsula of Southern Mexico. It is not to be confused with Puerto Del Carmen, which is in the Canary Islands. Which has nothing to do with the reason that we were hurriedly cancelling the first hotel we booked and hurriedly finding another one on the way to the airport. Seriously, it didn't. It was just that the first hotel had very bad reviews on Tripadviser. Luckily, for us the new one is lovely.
We are staying in a little apartment building just away from the main strip called Quinta Margarita. It is really nice with a quiet sundeck on the roof with a little infinity pool and very comfortable sunbeds (we have learnt how important this is from previous places we have stayed). All the people here are lovely and friendly and to top it off they upgraded us to a suite, which was very nice of them. This means that we have a living room and kitchen if we want to entertain, a fridge that is big enough to hold more beer than we could drink and it even has a jacuzzi bath in the bedroom.
Yes, you heard me right, a bath in the bedroom, not the bathroom. What will they think of next? This is clearly the height of sophistication because we are staying in a suite, which means it is based on what rich people do. I never knew that rich people liked to have a bath in view of their bed but apparently they do. Although this means we have to be extra careful with electrical items around the bed, it does mean that now Donna can have a bath while I have a poo without it being awkward and uncomfortable. Or let me rephrase that, without Donna finding it awkward and uncomfortable, I didn't really have a problem with it before.
We picked Mexico based more on less on the fact that Donna quite likes the food here. Although that was before she spent the majority of our time in America eating Mexican food. By the time we got here, her first words were 'I'm a bit bored of Mexican food, can we eat something else tonight' so we went for an Italian instead. However, as we are back in a land where the two for one cocktails go on all night, who cares what we eat.
Now, in a previous blog, I might have been a bit harsh on the Swiss Canadian hitchhiker we picked up in New Zealand. I would like to extend an apology. She might have been intensely annoying but she did recommend the TV show 'Glee' to us. Having run out of Gavin and Stacy, The Big Bang Theory and Horrible Histories, we have been desperately in need of some mindless TV action for those moments when we really can't be bothered to talk to each other anymore. Glee hits the spot perfectly, so thank you annoying Swiss Canadian hitchhiker, you came good in the end. Especially on the rather depressing night flight from San Francisco with United Airlines, a company doing their hardest to make Ryanair customer service look good. Thank you Glee for making that five hour flight with no food, drink, entertainment or room enough to breathe out pass by more quickly.
Here's some philosophy to finish off. Plato once imagined that the world that we live in is like a shadow of the real thing. He pictured that we were standing in a cave with a candle behind us while we watched the shadows the candle created on the wall, never being able to turn around and see the real light. Having visited the Oxo shop in Mexico, I can understand his point.
Let me explain, 7-11s in Thailand are the most amazing places in the world. You can get anything you want or need for a tiny tiny price. They are like a Tardis. They look quite small from the outside but have so much goodness on the inside. Oxo seems to be the Mexican equivalent of 7-11 but is full of wrongness. It is big convenience shop but has nothing you could possibly want in there; no tea, no butter, the only ham is a rather unsavoury brand called 'Fud', rows and rows of pork, rind based produce which even I wouldn't touch, no nice croissants which 'sir would very much like warmed thank you very much' and most importantly no beer. What is that all about? Going into an Oxo is like standing in a cave with a real 7-11 behind you and all you can see is the poor imitation of it on the wall in front of you. I now know exactly what Plato was going on about.
All our love
Jim and Donna
PS A poem
There ain't no Texicos
In Mexico
So, so
You have to get your petrol elsewhere
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