Okay, so I’m home from Riviera Maya. We stayed at the Grand Palladium which was very nice … if you like walking over a gazillion very tall bridges to get where ever you need to go. Yes, it was a workout, and it was confusing at times because all the bridges looked exactly the same as the others. I don’t know how in the world a drunk person would be able to find their way back to their room in the dark, in the daylight they might be okay, but in the dark no way, and since it was an all-inclusive place the drinks were flowing — CONSTANTLY.
I couldn’t help but notice a few slightly weird things about Mexico. For instance, you know that big spoon that you get with your place settings? The one that your mother uses to serve mashed potatos to you at Thanksgiving? Well that spoon is the soup spoon down there in Mexico. Very confusing, especially when eating at a chinese restaurant, because you know when you are being served chinese they always give you a giant serving spoon. So the waiter handed me the serving spoon and I was all thinking: yum, dinner! but instead it meant: soup. And it felt very wrong to be eating what little soup I did with the big giant serving spoon. In fact, I had no choice but to the alert the waiter that it was not a soup spoon, but a serving spoon, and I kinda expected him to notice his error and take it back and bring me a real soup spoon, but instead he looked at me like he didn’t understand what I was saying.
Another thing, which my brother fully warned me about because he was at the resort the five days prior to me, was that the bed would short-sheeted. Every night he said he came back to his room and remade his bed. What? That’s insane! Yet every single night my husband and I found that our bed was also short-sheeted. Since it bothered both myself and my brother, I’m going to blame my mother for this tick that we both have because she was all about the sheets always being straight and properly tucked in when we were growing up. Imagine a mattress, and the bottom sheet is a flat sheet, not a fitted sheet, and it doesn’t stretch down to the very foot of the bed. Some nights it was only 5 or 6″ short, but one night was actually a full 12″ from the bottom. I’m sorry, but my feet totally noticed that they were not on a sheet and instead on a bare mattress, which is gross and I’d like to note a bit unsanitary because of the all the sand that is on the beach which is only about 20 yards from my room. Anyhow, each night we tore the sheets off the bed and remade it. One day we were in the room when the maid came and I did my best to convey to her through the language barrier how we wanted the sheet to cover the entire mattress. She shook her head that she understood and then made the bed with two sheets on the bottom, overlapping each other so that the entire mattress was covered. Whatever. It’s not like the sheet wasn’t big enough to cover the whole thing, because it was.
Okay, and then when we were at the airport coming home I bought a couple magazines (Time and Shape if you must know) and while I was checking out I threw a Kit Kat candy bar on there because they had the Nestle Kit Kat’s and in the US we have Reeses Kit Kat’s and this is a secret, but I’m going to tell you anyway, the Nestle ones are better. I handed over my credit card and then I noticed that the clerk was putting a price tag on the USA Today newspaper: 430 Pesos. 430 Pesos!! That’s $4.30 American!!! And the price on the newspaper says 75 cents. I rubbed my eyes, then verified the price was correct and the clerk tells me that everything in Cancun is expensive. So I had to ask, I just had to. How much did I just pay for that Kit Kat? And the clerk replied, 300 Pesos. $3.00 American, that’s how much I paid for a Nestle Kit Kat, and candy bars in the States are only something like 65 cents. And no, I haven’t eaten that Kit Kat yet. Something that ridiculously expensive deserves to be paired with the finest of wines for sure.
(My adventure continues here and here)
