We spent a week in Tulum, a town on the eastern coast of the Yucatan peninsula, with my sister and her boyfriend. I put it on my wish list years and years ago and last Christmas my sister and I decided that the time was now to book a trip! And then, since we paid for our AirBnB a year ago, I kind of forgot about it. There was so much happening in the meantime - new jobs, a certain wedding, etc - that it kind of came up out of nowhere. But it was a good thing!
So anyway - here are some photos from day one of our trip!
Our flight left JFK at 8:30am, and because we're not experienced international travelers, we decided to follow Delta's guidelines and arrive 3 hours early for the international flight. Leaving the apartment before 5:00am, the morning was kind of a blur. The only thing I really remember is we bought some extremely overpriced water and a mediocre bagel out of semi-desperation before we got to our gate and then when we arrived at the gate, there was a bright shining beacon across the walkway. A Shake Shack! So I got a breakfast sandwich with eggs and cheese (and they had cheap water!). Next time, we'll know. The flights were fine - on the second leg, we had seat-back TVs so we watched half of the last season of Veep! It was uncomfortably similar to our recent presidential election, but so funny.
As soon as we stepped out of the airport at Cancun, it was suddenly summer. I've never really taken a warm-weather vacation in winter before, but it was amazing! And it only took about an hour to get used to it being warm (I still feel like I'm not used to the cold again, though, ugh). We picked up our rental car and drove south - and an hour and a half later, we arrived. It was an easy drive and the highway was really nice. In between Cancun and Tulum is Playa del Carmen, a town full of all-inclusive resorts. The resorts that line the highway all have the craziest entrances - they all look like strange hybrids of Vegas and fascist architecture.
We pulled up to our place and it was just as nice as it looked from the photos! After we threw our stuff down, we set out to get dinner. We stayed in a nice location - it was about a 20-minute bike ride to the beach and a 10-minute walk into the center of town. The restaurant we went to served Mexican and Yucatan food - we had a celebratory round of tequila shots to start. The tequila was so good and it was 100 pesos for 4 shots (about $4.75)! For dinner, I had shrimp ceviche because I figured I should start off with seafood since we were in a beach town, and it was amazing. I think Matt & I got ceviche at least once per day between the two of us and every single one was incredible, and all of it was better than anything I've had before in the US...which isn't surprising, I guess. So on the way to the restaurant, we passed a taqueria that I'd bookmarked before we came. Their specialty is tacos al pastor - the last photo above shows it. We learned that it was adapted from Middle Eastern cuisine (like shawarma, gyros, etc) by immigrants to Mexico! It's pork, roasted on a spit, with a pineapple on top that's sliced onto each taco, and the pineapple juices kind of drip on the pork and caramelize. Anyway, we decided to split an order of 5 because it was only 45 pesos ($2.10 or so) and we ate them on the sidewalk on the way home...and they were the best tacos I'd ever had, ever! Once again, probably that shouldn't have been surprising. But they were just perfect. Pork + pineapple + spicy pepper sauce. A nice way to end our first day in Tulum!
Did Matt have enough luggage?
ReplyDeleteHa-ha :) We all went carry-on only!
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