Hello! Wow it seems ages since I last blogged. Yep sadly, my holiday is over.
I am back in the UK. Well, I’ve been back since last Wednesday but needed a bit more time to normalise back into reality. You know what it’s like. Blissful time in the beautiful sunshine…then bam back to the real world.
Honestly, the holiday was amazing. And do you know what? We had half a day of rain. The rest of the time it was HOT, HUMID and sunny, sunny, sunny. So my fears of rubbish weather were unfounded. Hurrah!
Gosh, I don’t even know where to begin with my recap. I will save all the food yumminess until Wednesday and focus on what we did instead for this post. Though I will say, the food…oh wow, it was so good. So much, so good, so yummy.
We left at 5am on Friday morning to get to the airport and have some breakfast.
Very excited, but a bit tired and dishevelled looking
OK, OK I will show one meal! If you’ve been a long-time reader (kudos to you 
) then you know how I adore Jamie Oliver restaurants. So we had to go to the Jamie’s Italian for breakfast. It’s just a holiday essential in my eyes. And believe me, you cannot start a holiday in any better way.
I umm’ed and arr-ed for about five seconds before thinking “sod it” and ordering this beast of a meal. Go big of go home And how I love my husband. He got the same but he hates black pudding so I got his. Amazing. I’m not ashamed to say I cleared this plate all except a few spoonful’s of beans and a couple of fried potatoes. Embarrassingly I wasn’t hungry at all for our in-flight meal (how unsurprising) and had to have it in sat front of me on my little table for so long a flight attendant thought I didn’t want it! I was like “hold up lady, I will eat this. But give me a little time!”.
The flight was fine (movie watching makes everything good in my book) and then we got a coach from Cancun airport to Playa Del Carmen. Instantly the heat hit us. It was unreal.
The hotel was beautiful. It was just amazing. We went to bed quite early Mexico time as it was six hours behind British time so we were pooped! Then we got up early (5am!! Thank you jet lag) and decided to go for a run. Might as well!
This was the hotel lobby at 6am. It was still really hot but the sun wasn’t out yet so it was much ‘easier’ to run in the morning. Plus the beautiful sunrise along the beach definitely helps!
We didn’t do any actual beach running. It’s really not my thing. Sand in trainers and way too much hard work…so we stuck to the roads. We weren’t alone in our running – there were a fair few locals and other tourists out and about so it didn’t feel strange at all. But the heat. Wow it was oppression. Within one minute of running I was sweating and tired. It added at least one minute on to my usual running times. There was just no way I could go faster. Plus it was nice to just run at a slower pace.
You might think I’m mad running on holiday but I loved it! I feel weird not running and it’s such a big part of who I am that I couldn’t not run. At times it was tough (when is running not??) but it felt great being out so early and seeing Mexico wake up. Getting back all invigorated for the day as well was brilliant.
Ben and me enjoyed a lot of chilling by the pool time…
Chilling by the beach time…
And chilling by the bar time…
The bar was right next to the pool and a great place to take a break from the sun. I’m not a big drinker so I stuck to tomato juice (where have you been all my life??), iced coffee and diet coke (my absolute addiction). Ben enjoyed the local beer
I quite enjoyed putting a podcast on and walking along the beach as well (I’m not overly good at sitting and doing nothing for long periods of time), which I didn’t realise would be quite a work out for my calves!
And lots of swimming in the sea!
Ben and me were so cool, we had goggles (damn you contact lenses)
The sea was perfectly refreshing, not cold but not warm. And so, so clear.
We also did a few excursions. One day we went to Chichen Itza which is a city that was originally built by the ancient Mayans where we saw the Temple of Kukulkan – a seventh wonder of the world!
We had an hour long tour and found out so much interesting information – there’s a smaller pyramid inside that one! And the Mayans used to sacrifice people at the top of the temple (if you’ve seen Apocalypto it’s similar to that).
We had such a hilarious day. Our tour guide was a hoot. He wasn’t even meaning to be. He was just was hilarious. We still do impressions of him now. Yep, we’re that couple.
From there we then went to the ‘Sacred Blue Cenote’. Here we got to swim in a crazy underground pool of fresh water (there’s a small hole in the ‘roof’ and that’s it). It was freezing but so refreshing considering the humid heat.
Another day we went speedboating. We had our own little speedboat and there were about 4 others and we followed the speedboat in front but we could speed up and zig-zag which was quite terrifying. Then when we got so far out we stopped and the instructor gave us snorkels and we went snorkelling and saw some amazing coral reef and fish.
Terrible photo sorry – it’s a photo of a photo we bought
Unfortunately the afternoon of our anniversary saw a major downpour of rain. But we didn’t really mind – it was quite a nice break from the intense sun. And we had prime positions at the bar.
For our anniversary meal we chose to go to one of the restaurants that you had to book for in the morning. We chose the Steakhouse.
I enjoyed a lovely glass of Sangria with fresh fruit!
It was perfect. Not to get too mushy, but I do love my husband and it’s been such a truly amazing first year 
Right, I will leave it there. I have a few more excursions to talk about which I’ll save for another post. Wednesday will all be about FOOD (and a bit more about my running). And as an all-inclusive holiday, there was a lot of food. And puddings. 
Have you ever been to Mexico before?
Have you ever been to an all-inclusive? I had never been to one before and I was just amazed (and a little shocked) at how much food was available ALL THE TIME.
Running/working out on holiday – do you take it easy or carry on as normal? Or have a break entirely?
