all-inclusive | OUR LIFE IN 3D

12 Feb 2013

No Valentine’s Day here…

The Valentine’s Day holiday (?) is on the horizon. What are your thoughts on this? I may have a surprise for you. We really don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day here. Its true. While I enjoy trying to be romantic, from a creative point of view, I find lots of times it can catch Mom off guard and so the exercise is wasted. She never wants anything (allergic to flowers and trying to swear offf of the Christmas chocolates) would rather save some money, and so we don’t indulge.

This family tradition started off when I was a restaurant manager years ago and, of course, I had to work that day, one of the busiest of the year. Folks, don’t go out to dinner on Valentine’s Day looking for a special night. With all those other lovers out there, a romantic experience is just too hard to pull off, from a restaurant perspective. And who wants to wait that long for a table anyway? Go the day for before or the day after.

So we may do some cards, but we even decided against that this year, based on the price of cards for a piece of cardboard. Being unemployed has made us thrifty!

We have gotten in the habit of of traveling to some place warm for Valentine’s Day however, trying to escape some of the winter blues. This is our gift to each other. With both of us getting 2 paaid vacations each year we enjoy taking the nice vacay to escape the cold. Valentines Day seems like th eperfect time. The rates in the Caribbean are affordable this time of year. The water is still plenty warm to swim in and you really don’t have to work too hard to get a tan or a burn.

Our routine is to find an all-inclusive somewhere so we don’t have to worry about money or finding places for meals. We started this ‘family tradition’ a few years back when we went to Jamaica. I have an entire story about that trip. Mainly, the point is beware, although we did have a very romantic Valentines sail! But after our nice trip back to Jamaica this past fall we have reconsidered.

We also traveled to the island of Curacao, close to the equator. Hard to get any warmer than the equator! We enjoyed our trips there, going back 3 times. I actually ‘re-proposed’ one year in Curacao (on one knee and everything), being able to afford a slightly larger diamond this time. Bam! Caught her off guard again. (see first paragraph above).

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

Most recently we ventured down to St. Lucia, one of the British Virgin Islands. We stayed at a wonderful Sandals resort. The island actually had 3 Sandals resorts. We were able to spend time, eat and indulge in any one of them. Advertised as a ‘luxury included’ resort (yet still an all-inclusive – kind of a contradiction in terms), the resort was great. The food and restaurants were even greater! I actually tried caviar and escargot for the first time…at an all-inclusive (!).

We had a chance to do zip lining for the first time and even took a day trip on a sailboat to a live volcano and some Botanical Gardens in the heart of the tropical rainforest. On a funny note, if you haven’t ever been to an active volcano, think twice! The intense sulfur fumes emitted by the volcano actually makes it hard to get close enough to see the real thing. It took some courage and your Dad in the privy has nothing on a volcano!

Possibly the most thrilling part of the vacation however was the bus ride to the resort, on the other side of the island from the airport. The resort bus had to navigate around two tall mountains (the huge Pitons..really, that was their name ~ you’ll see) on a narrow road with hair pin turns and steep, steep drop offs. I wouldn’t go faster than 15 mph on some of these roads in my car, clutching the steering wheel the whole time. This old, air conditioned school bus, that can hardly make it up the one side, had us swaying and rocking and really looking forward to that first drink at the resort. We laughed about it as it was the only thing we could do. The lap of luxury!

Which brings me back to today’s blog. I was thinking about our Valentine’s Day trips this weekend. We can’t make one this year as we are squirrelling away our time and dollars for the big move later this year. So it left me with thoughts on Jamaica, Curacao, St. Lucia and Costa Rica.

Mom wants to visit Costa Rica later this year for our next trip. If any of you have been there you are welcome to offer any advice or tips.

But for those of you that are stuck in some place cold right now with snow piled up to the windows and would love to be some place warm, I offer a quick, fun picture video of our St. Lucia trip (especially if you are sitting in 6 feet of snow right now). Grab something tropical to drink, rub some suntan lotion on for that tropical smell, click ‘play’, kick back, relax and come on along with us.

I hope you all have a happy and wonderful Valentine’s Day.

We’re going to try to stay warm this year!

How about you?

What are your favorite Valentine’s Day traditions or experiences?

Posted in Valentine's Day~ We Don't Celebrate It At My House and tagged all-inclusive, Go to some place warm for valentines day. Luxury included, Happy valentine's Day, Sandals, so good!, St. Lucia, vacation

27 Apr 2012

6 Comments

WHAT WILL I DO FOR MY SUMMER VACATION?

You know….sometimes you go through those days when you are just attending to one fire, one responsibility, one obligation after another. Where you feel like you hardly have time to look up. The world is grey. No fun. The Blues! Mom’s been calling the bathroom her ‘happy place’ right now! Heck, the other day she called out four names until she got to the right one. And one of them was mine!

Then, some days, your mind gets to travel in those fun things to day dream about. The playgrounds of the adult mind so to speak, when you can escape the monthly Blues and plan some happy, fun things. Planning vacations may fall into this category. Or shopping for new houses. Planning birthday parties. Or fun things going on over the weekend?

This week has been in that happy ‘upswing’ for me because we are trying to plan our summer vacation right now. (sigh) And I need some suggestions. Wanna help? Care to take a trip down the pleasant memories of ‘vacations past’ with me?

You see, we have researched several fun resorts that are awesome for kids only to find our girls can’t go in the same ‘kids club’ with each other as one club is for ages 0 – 3 years old and the next if is for ages 3 – 6 years old. Naturally we want our kids to be happy and feel safe in a foreign land. We prefer that each is able to go to the same kids nursery if Mom & Dad want to sneak out and explore the island. Have any of you ever experienced this problem?

So far we have considered a Disney Cruise to explore the Caribbean, that looks great for the kids, but they are the source of various aged kids clubs. There are lots of fun things for the kids to do. Princess make overs! Disney characters throughout the ship. Great dining it appears, with your own personal servers for the trip. Evening movies on a large screen on the deck in front of the swimming pool and so on. But if we want to go for a swim with the fishes the kids might have to get separated. I picture having the off ship excursion all set up and we drop the kids off at the kids club and one throws herself on the floor crying and wailing. Can’t go then!

Get to play with the toys in Toy Story

We have found this wonderful resort, the St. James Club, on the island of Antigua. This all-inclusive sits in its own peninsula at the southern tip of the island, with water on two sides. It looks very nice. It has a great kids club and small water park. But the airlines make it difficult to get there, mainly leaving our air port at 6:15am and no quick layover anywhere. There’s nothing like passing 6+ hours in an airport with two hungry, tired toddlers! We’ve had that happen when we were ‘rained in’ last August in Philadelphia. It’s no vacation!

Very Tropical…once you get there

We found another resort on Jamaica where they give you a full-time nanny. Well, not really “give you”. We swore we would never go back to Jamaica again after our last trip and being badgered by the locals (Jamaica Mistaika!) This resort boasts itself as the best all-inclusive in the world on its web site. But you can’t even find what part of Jamaica its in unless you click on the ‘Brochure’ tab. ~ its not one of the best all-inclusive web sites in world!

Daddy, what’s the funny smell?

By far our favorite resort to pursue has been Beaches on Turks & Caicos. We’ve stayed with this chain before at a Sandals. The trip was exquisite! The resort and dining were extraordinary! This Beaches resort has the kids clubs, Sesame Street characters, a water park and all the great dining.

Elmo and the crew in the Caribbean

In fact, we had reservations to vacation at this very Beaches resort 2 years ago! We made the reservations. Booked the flights. Then, 3 days later we got word we were going to be visited by the child bearing stork in a few months with a new born baby girl. We had to cancel.

Bye-bye paradise

That was one airline seat ago. Now, we actually have to pay for 4 chairs on the Caribbean flight, which makes this total package a bit pricey. For what that vacation would cost, flight and rooms, I could pay someone to rebuild our patio-deck-in-progress instead of me laboring over it myself. …..plus the patio furniture….a good sound system for out there…a wet bar fully stocked…well you get the picture. Sadly, this extravaganza is not in the budget this year.

We have considered going to Disney World, Universal Studios and all those other cool parks in Orlando but the idea of paying for a daily tickets yet being some place by 2:00pm so that one or more of our girls can bed down for a nap doesn’t make much sense either.

Last year we rented a house in Ocean City, New Jersey. This was a great kids resort, in a town designed for families. We had a great time. There is a boardwalk built for kids with rides, mini-golf, arcades, bikes and crapfully–unhealthy food to eat. What could be better to a kid? Or the kid inside all of us? Moms and Dads, even got to revisit a childhood memory with a boardwalk players production of Schoolhouse Rock. Are any of you old enough to remember Schoolhouse Rock?

We even frequented Browns Donuts, which was to be my business model for my get rich quick scheme during my unemployed days. Fresh, warm donuts. Mmmmm! The vacation could have been better if our youngest hadn’t picked up an ear infection two days into the escape. The one problem was that our kids were not big enough to get on the majority of the rides on the boardwalk; another problem I see with all the amusement parks in and around Orlando, FLA.

So help us out. Where have you been to? What great ideas or adventures have you gone on, been to, relaxed at with two small children? (a contradiction in terms?) I would love to hear your ideas! I could really use your good ideas here! Or maybe just come along with us if you want to be a nanny to two sweet kids for a week! Please hurry as yesterday Mom was actually sitting down watching Sponge Bob with the kids! And she was smiling!

“What are your kid vacation tips?”

“Which do you think we should choose?”

“Where have you gone to on vacations?”