If you remember my last travel post about Aruba, you will remember that I won a free vacation, this trip to Mexico was that free vacation! I am going to share all of my photos from my trip here (mainly so I can have memories further down the road) but my travel posts get a ton of views from my readers, so I thought I would put it all in one place!
FYI: I majorly apologize for the photo orientation in this blog post. Usually on vacation I remember to take all of my photos sideways so that it will all look great in a blog post, and this trip I totally blanked and took them all sorts of ways, please forgive me!
Previous Travel Posts:
Maui, Hawaii
Aruba
HOTEL:
We stayed at The Mayan Palace on the marina in Puerto Vallarta. Overall, the resort was amazing! It was very beautiful and elegant feeling. Our room was nice and clean, but pretty basic. We were under the impression that we would have a kitchen in our room, but we didn't. If you are staying at this resort, I'd recommend calling and knowing exactly which type of room you have because our plan was to run to a store first thing and get some food for the week but we had no fridge in the room so we had to eat out every single meal, darn ;).
The hotel also had an amazing activity staff, called the Joy Squad. The guys on their team were SO nice at recommending places to go, inviting us to things and just being good friends for the whole trip! We spent most of our days hanging around the pool joining in all of the activities they had to offer. My friend Lauren is a killer volleyball player so we spent most days bouncing between pool volleyball and beach volleyball. It was such a fun part of our trip and we met a pretty fun group that would play daily together! They had blackjack, crafts, water polo, volleyball (sometimes tequila volleyball for the adults, yes!) and even bingo. Most of our days were spent around the pool doing all of these activities.
BEACH:
The beach was amazing. Our resort had it's own beach area which was really nice. There were chairs and cabanas down on the beach, and we never had a problem finding a spot to sit. The water was amazing and the views couldn't be beat. There were vendors that would come by, but we actually enjoyed them!
DOWNTOWN:
We went downtown (The Malecon) one day. It was about a 30 minute bus ride, which cost us 7.5 pesos each. We spent one day down there walking the boardwalk and going to the market to see all of the little shops. My friend Lauren is pretty fluent in Spanish so it was cool to see her talk with all of the local vendors and banter with the prices, it was a major plus having her speak Spanish! It made me want to learn more before my next vacation;)
We also got FISH PEDICURES downtown. That was one of the biggest highlights of our vacation. Lauren has had this on her bucket list for a long time but it has been illegal in the most recent countries she has visited. We walked by a place that offered it, and I swear she didn't even hesitate before saying "WE'RE DOING THIS!" I'm not going to lie, I was really scared and almost chickened out but I'm so glad that I did it. It just felt like a little tingle on your foot, almost like your foot was falling asleep. There was nothing scary or painful about it. It was so cool! We also found a spot that was offering $1 margaritas, so that was how we topped off this downtown trip!
BOARDWALK:
Since our hotel was on the marina, it was nearby the marina boardwalk. The boardwalk was just lined with cool restaurants, bars and shops. We went to the boardwalk probably 3 or 4 times during our stay, and it was great each time. There were great dinner spots which were all very affordable, it was also walking distance from our hotel.
On the very last night, we decided to eat at Victors, which everyone was recommending that we go to. Little did we know, they bring you a tequila shot about every 15 minutes! It was quite the experience, great service, and AMAZING food.
BOTANICAL GARDEN:
We met a family at our resort which basically took us in as their own children, it was the best! They really wanted to go explore the botanical gardens in Puerto Vallarta, and kindly invited us along! We rode a bus out to the botanical garden (about 2 hours total) and explored there for one day. The actual botanical garden wasn't really my cup of tea, but it lead down to a beautiful river which was really nice. From the river, we had to make our way back to the restaurant, and accidentally chose the hardest hike for our route back. It turned into a really good hike, and made our lunch much more enjoyable. The food at the botanical garden was SO amazing and the view might be my favorite view from the entire vacation. It made the entire trip to the botanical gardens worth it for me.
OVERALL:
Overall, our trip to Puerto Vallarta was very relaxing. We spent most days by the pool or beach doing word puzzles (friend goals) reading books, or just meeting new people. The food in Puerto Vallarta (around our resort) was extremely affordable, we both were shocked at the end of the vacation to discover how little we actually spent while on vacation. Puerto Vallarta also felt very safe. We walked to the boardwalk multiple times at night and always felt very safe. I think it helped knowing that Lauren was fluent in Spanish, but I never felt uncomfortable around the locals or downtown at all. I would highly recommend Puerto Vallarta as a vacation spot!
Hopefully I will be able to have another vacation post in 2017;)
As always, thanks for reading.
xoxo, Jaimie
