Friday, December 21, 2007 (Pat)

Winter solstice! A good day to honor the shortest day of the year in the sun - so that's what we did by the pool at the Mayan Palace. Our first day at the resort! After breakfast we gathered up or stuff for our trek to the pool and found some chairs on the far side next to the pool in the sun. It didn't take long reading in the sun before it got how so... in for a nice dip in the pool. Cool and refreshing. The Mayan Palace pool is made up of all these inter-connecting, multi-level pools that are all about three to three and a half feet deep. I waded around two sections during on cooling off session and got some exercise as well. By the afternoon we changed to a couple of chairs in the shade and had a chicken wrap with crunchy ranch fries for lunch. We moved onto the beach when the temperature started decreasing a bit and enjoyed watching beach volleyball, checking out the tide pools, taking photos and stayed until the sun was going down. A nice, relaxing day. We showered and decided to try another restaurant- the Havana Moon. It was a stylish restaurant with the Casablanca look - tall ceiling, colorful aqua curtains, white tables and chairs, a dance floor and big ceiling fans. It took a while for the waiter to take our order. The waiters kept cutting through between Ron and a big support beam that was annoying and we had to wait a long time trying to get some more butter for the bread. I had coconut shrimp and Ron had the roast duck. Neither were very good. When the waiter asked if everything was OK, Ron told him that the duck wasn't very good and about trying to get his attention to get the butter. He (the waiter) may have been new. Next thing we knew, the manager is there and took the duck off the bill. We left and went over to the deli to get an ice cream treat for dessert. The internet cafe was upstairs so we went up there. It was a number of slots with tables, a computer and a chair and dark - a light separate from the computer. We paid for thirty minutes each and did our e-mail. It was loud, occasionally opera music, other times rock or Spanish. Not very conducive to spending much time on the computer. Ron wanted to upload some photos but everything was taking time and the thirty minutes was up. So we left dissatisfied again. For the nice day the evening was rather disappointing. Oh well - it's still vacation time! So we had a quiet rest of the evening in the room and went to bed.