Puerto Vallarte - Picture Story #1

Hello!

After a beautiful, relaxing, thrilling and full week in Puerto Vallarte, Mexico, we have returned!  Technically this was our honeymoon although yes we got married nearly a year ago.  Some of you may remember that we took a week off after the wedding to relax in Phoenix as neither one of us had the energy to plan a honeymoon on top of a wedding.  So 9 months later, we finally decided it was time!  I love telling stories via what I call a "Picture Story" so here is a quickie picture story to introduce you to our stay in beautiful Puerto Vallarte!

 And we're on our way!  We were pretty giddy on the flight until we both passed out from waking up so early. 

 We stayed at a place called Paradise Village which is technically in Nuevo Vallarte which is the "new" part of PV.  It's pretty nice and has everything you could possibly want - seriously, everything.  Many restaurants, several pools, a beach, a pier (which is where this pic is taken from), a marina, water sports, a shopping mall (with grocery store), laundromat, zoo, spa, golf course, etc, etc...  The only thing we didn't like about it is that we felt a bit trapped.  If we should ever return, I would much prefer staying in PV itself.  

 This is the lobby...very pretty!

We loved having a full kitchen in our suite!  In fact we bought groceries and ate all of our breakfast meals in the room (much cheaper) and cooked several lunches/dinners in the suite.  The hotel had fabulous food but it was a bit on the expensive side.  Having a kitchen made things much more affordable.  Unfortunately our suite smelled like bacon the first 4 days.  :)

We loved having a separate room from the bedroom where we could watch TV, read and hang out. 

Rich in the bedroom.  We promptly removed the blanket that covered the bed.  Ick.  Remember, I'm a germaphobe!

Gorgeous view of the marina from our room.  Isn't this gorgeous?  Several mornings, I would stand outside sipping my coffee and enjoying the view.

One of the best things about this hotel is that it was on the beach!  I LOVE THE BEACH!  If I could, I would move Arizona to the coast and get a house on the ocean.  The water was nice and warm so it was easy to spend time lolling around in the ocean and then taking a nap under a little hut. 

Speaking of the beach, I got through Twilight and half of New Moon.  Yes, I decided to finally see what the hoo-ha was about these damn books.  I knew I wanted to read them a while ago but wanted to wait for beach days to have at 'em.  I whipped through Twilight in a couple days and found it to be an easy read and quite engageable.  It's no Ken Follet but it was definitely a good guilty pleasure!  The only embarrassing part about these books was having to trudge my way through to the "teenage" section at Changing Hands bookstore to buy them. 

 I wasn't a huge fan of this but the hotel did have a mini zoo which consisted of four tigers and about 10 parrots.  Here is Chloe who wasn't having a particularly happy day.  

This was my favorite parrot of them all.  She would talk to you in English and "parrot".  Very cute!  I wanted to pet her yet I was afraid of that beak.  The thought of losing half a finger on a honeymoon just wasn't appealing enough to risk it.

This guy too was pretty funny.  He kind of looks like Robert DeNiro in some kind of weird way.  He spoke in Spanish and "hola" was his infamous greeting. 

And so there you go!  That's all I have time for right now as I am uber hungry and need to eat breakfast.  Priorities, right?  I will return with more soon!

Peace,
~kavita