I’ve never blogged about our honeymoon before weirdly enough, but here I am; better late than never, right!?
Tyler and I got married on August 4, 2012. We stayed in a beautiful honeymoon suite near our reception site (but of course after we tried to find food after our long day of barely eating, and settling for a lunchable, Cool Ranch Doritos, and some champagne while relaxing in the whirlpool #romantic)
We chose to fly out for our honeymoon on that Monday. Cancun was our destination. We had a lazy day Sunday, even meeting my new brother & sister-in-law for FroYo before our plane took off bright and early the next morning. Little did we know, our destination was in a hurricane watch. But hey, we were married, after 3 years of dating, nothing was going to crush our bliss.
We arrived in Cancun, quickly went through customs, and then were shuttled to our resort. After countless hours of researching, we decided on The Great Parnassus. It was rated with 4 stars on Trip Advisor, and it was the most affordable place (I mean we were 21, and still in college. There’s nothing wrong with a good deal, right!?) with the best bathroom (that was a deal breaker for me!). When we arrived we checked into our “lagoon” view room. It was nothing like the pictures. We stepped out onto our balcony, looked down, and saw the “adult only” pool (aka: NUDE!) and decided, “let’s go see how much it would be to upgrade.”
The guy who we got at the front desk gave us the HOOK UP! He upgraded our room to an ocean view suite (complete with a Jacuzzi on our balcony) the beautiful bathroom I had seen online, and much more for only $20.00 more a day. (Play that honeymoon card, friends! I can’t remember exactly how much we saved doing this, but I want to say it was over $100.00/night).
We quickly moved our stuff to our new room, relaxed for a bit, and then went to explore the hotel.
The Great Parnassus was all inclusive. Their restaurants were decent, and their room service wasn’t the best ๐ (Just being honest here) but we got a killer deal, and a beautiful room, so obviously there were going to be some draw backs!
Tyler and I chose Cancun because we wanted the clear blue waters, but we also wanted some adventure! We specifically wanted to experience swimming with dolphins, snorkeling, seeing some Mayan ruins and seeing Cenotes. So we made sure to book several excursions that included that.
Our first day there, we made sure to soak up the rays. We explored the pool and the beach, and sadly that evening is when good ol’ hurricane Ernesto rolled in. That awesome ocean view we just upgraded to? Yeah, that woke us up in the middle of the night because the wind was hitting the glass doors so bad they were banging against each other? But it gets better. I woke up to see what was going on, stepped on to the ocean that was seeming to come into our roomย floor. The wind was moving the glass doors so much, that it was allowing the heavy rains to just come right on through, right to our floor, right to our belongings that we had sitting on the floor. We used all the towels we had, called for more, never got more, turned on the TV (and tried to utilize the very little Spanish we new), and even paid for internet to see how much longer we would have to endure the first hurricane we had ever experienced.
The next day was supposed to be our first day of excursions, and I was too scared the weather was going to spoil it, so we rescheduled for the following day, and boy are we SO thankful for that decision. Because we rescheduled, we ended up getting a PRIVATE excursion (No one else had booked the day we re-scheduled for!!!) ย that included driving Hummers, seeing Mayan Ruins, zip-lining through the jungle, riding 4-wheelers to Cenotes, swimming in said Cenote, visiting a zoo (complete with deer, which we thought was AMAZING) and then a nice dinner at a Mexican restaurant off the resort land. ย I think I can speak for both of us when I say this was the best experience of our honeymoon!
The rest of our honeymoon included highlights like swimming with dolphins…
Visiting Xcaret (which included more Cenotes [actually a whole lazy river of them!], snorkeling, and a Mayan show)…
And a lot of relaxing, and soaking up rays in the pool and on the beach.
We would highly recommend Cancun to any friends who are wanting to experience the beautiful blues of the Caribbean, but also wanting an adventure. We would also recommend being risky and waiting until you’re checking in to ask about room upgrades. It worked out well for us!! And be sure to tell EVERYONE it’s your honeymoon!! Milk it, and soak up all the joy of the first week or two as newlyweds!!!
