Tag: beach

I Cartel If We’re Going On Holiday

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon, The Tajin Dream Tour July 2025

I’m not one for a load of nostalgic yearning for the good old days. That sounds ironic for someone who for the last good few decades has almost exclusively spent their holidays in a place where the main currency is memories, but I am almost allergic to the boomer porn “things were better in my day” guff prevalent in most Facebook communities.

However, this week I have been looking back all bleary eyed at that time not so long ago that you could book a holiday and know, almost with certainty that it would happen as planned. Sure, the odd volcano eruption or hurricane could scupper your plans, but at least they were natural.

Since those heady days of Covid, it seems that nothing is certain until you are sat on the plane hurtling down the runway. I look back in horror at the endless uncertainty of those early post Covid months and years when trips were endlessly booked, rescheduled and in some cases cancelled.

Ever since, it seems the world has got itself into a downward spiral of uncertainty and simple things like a trip to WDW can no longer be taken for granted. Our upcoming September trip is still in pencil rather than ink, waiting to see if the US descends into civil war or indeed if World War 3 happens before we can get there.

In the last couple of weeks Mexico entered the game, with a “hold my cerveza” with cartel violence ripping through the country. As soon as Louise saw that our trip was in deep jeopardy. I did not appreciate one bit that the cartels waited until we had paid in full before subjecting their country to these horrors.

I was pretty certain it would all calm down by late April, but it didn’t stop Louise from going on a one woman mission to find us an alternative destination, less likely to see us held at gun point in my speedos. So for the last week we have been spending our evenings watching videos on You Tube of lovely looking places all around the globe.

With Mexico discounted, and the US already in our definite maybe pile, pickings were slim. I may be a working class lad from Bolton, but we soon also discounted closer countries such as Greece, Turkey and Spain as, at least with TUI who we would have to stick with to avoid huge cancellation fees, that meant flying with Easyjet or Ryanair and well, no thank you.

Having virtually visited Thailand, Bali, Tanzania and other far flung locations, we had almost settled on a resort in one of those. The search is now such a blur I cannot remember which to be honest. This search was not helped by my current working situation meaning I could devote little to no time aiding the hunt.

On Friday however, I managed to eek out half an hour over what in a normal job would be my lunch and I did one last search on the TUI site before attempting to swap us over. There it was, about half way down the first set of results.

To be honest, I had been reluctant to change our holiday at all, as I loved Secrets Akumal so much and I was very much looking forward to going back. I almost felt like I was betraying them by looking elsewhere. Having spent so long finding somewhere to compete for our US WDW holiday money, we had finally found somewhere that perfectly ticked all our boxes.

So when I saw another Secrets resort, seemingly in the ball park of our budget/spend on the Mexico trip I quickly clicked to find out more. It did seem to tick all those same boxes, and unlike the Thailand, Bali options it meant a direct flight in Premium with TUI rather than indirect flights of over 18 hours in economy with another airline.

Louise reviewed and accepted my choice and it was then down to me to do the business. Now, it starts to get interesting (I make no promises you will find this interesting, but that is sort of baked into all my posts).

Earlier in the week I have chatted with TUI to establish that we could change our trip for £50 each and whatever the difference in price was, so I expected this to be painless. Having priced up the new holiday on their site, I found the “Amend my holiday” option and off I went. At the final stage where the money became involved I thought it odd that the price I was now looking at was 20% higher than the price I had seen on their site.

I opened up another chat and to say the contents of this chat was confusing is like saying I have a restricted fringe. I explained my dilemma and shared the price differences. After a good twenty minutes I was more confused than ever, as I was told that it was both an extra £1700, or maybe £1200 to change my holiday, despite their site pricing it just a couple of hundred more than my original booking or I could just cancel my first booking for £570 and book the new one as a new trip. I declined all options as that just sounded dodgy and not right at all. Apparently it was something to do with brand new bookings getting some automatic discount but amendments did not. The insistence on companies to reward new customers over loyal returning ones baffles me.

I had another go on their site and tried to cancel my existing trip for that £570 so I could book afresh and their site then told me I’d lose £2500 if I cancelled. What the……??

At this point I resorted to the nuclear option and I phoned them. I was raging at this point. Disinformation, uncertainty, lies and an unreliable website were all in play and I just wanted to change my trip for the £100 I’d been told and move on with my life.

The lady I spoke to was awesome. She listened to me moan at length, agreed that was a shit show and vowed to help me. She also immediately spotted that my original booking had the TUI Flex option on it (I had forgotten) which meant I didn’t even need to pay the £100 admin fee.

She patiently worked through a whole range of options of dates and length of stays. We had always regretted only booking for 8 nights originally, and as this was part of our 30th anniversary tour, we figured we should go bigger as we may well kill each other before our next significant milestone. I had also had to cancel a few days off I had planned around Easter due to work being crazy so as punishment to them I figured I would tack on a few days at the start of this trip to make up for it.

So after literally hours of faff (most of which I have spared you) extending late into Friday evening, thanks to that lovely lady on the phone, all those ridiculous and confusing sums of money quoted online went away and we managed to change our booking, extend from 8 to 14 nights all for an extra £460. I was very happy.

If you feel like it was hard work reading that, imagine what it was like trying to navigate it.

Anyway, so what have we changed to?

We have secured another Secrets resort, Secrets Playa Esmeralda, in the Dominican Republic. It’ll be our first time going there, assuming we aren’t all dead as a result of a world wide nuclear escalation.

It is a direct flight, retaining our Premium cabin from the Mexico booking and all in all, if we had to change (and Louise said we did) I don’t think we could have done much better.

We will definitely return to Secrets Akumal, unless of course we like this place so much better, but even so I do feel we’d like to return as we loved it so much.

I don’t think I have it in me to rearrange another holiday so unless the US is literally on fire and/or travel is banned due to world wide conflict, I think we’ll be going. Won’t you all be relieved being spared another of these posts.

Till the next time……

The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024 – Day Nine Wednesday 5th June

by mkingdon, posted in The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024

Today’s post is for the 99% of my readers who are fed up with reading about lying on a beach and eating food. Yes, today we did something different, so buckle up for more excitement than the D23 announcements. Maybe.

We awoke with no plans, but the fact that we were too sunburned to subject our bodies to more sun forced our hands to look for a plan B. I did some googling and before too long found a suitably affordable and local activity and booked it.

We were headed for a two-hour catamaran tour around West Palm Beach. It was $50 each and came with a lot of good reviews. It didn’t start until the afternoon so we positioned ourselves in some shade around the pool for a couple of hours, and the weather was hot!!

We got ourselves ready and left around 1pm. We endured the I95 to West Palm Beach and parked in the recommended car park on the tour’s website. It was a ten minute walk down to the port/harbour/docks (I don’t know nautical stuff) and the place oozed money.

Just so you know, there will be a lot of photos of boats and houses.

Our mode of transport would be more our style/wealth bracket.

We checked in and waited about ten minutes before boarding. We cleverly found some seats in the shade to escape the unrelenting sun, but soon realised that when we set off the boat turned round and we were exposed and were both buckets of sweat within seconds.

The tour takes you along the coast of West Palm Beach island to witness some incredible monuments to wealth.

The crew do a great job of narrating the properties. Of course, it could all be made up but we saw houses owned or previously owned by the likes of Andre Agassi, Sly Stallone, Tommy Hilfiger, Vera Wang and many others that I have since forgotten. Some of the history was fascinating and the amount of dollars involved even more so.

We passed a marina/yacht club where we were told that membership was only possible for those owning a property on the island valued at more than $60m and a golf club with a membership fee of $250,000 a year.

What you need outside a $100m house of course is a boat of similar value.

There was a real variety of properties, with some smaller, cute ones too.

They were much more affordable!!

This is probably one of the most beautiful and wealthy places on the planet.

This was Sly Stallone’s and apparently it’s the one he films his reality show in.

We saw a Bond-related yacht.

Then we pulled away from the coast and took in some of the open water.

After a while we started to see some of the more industrial parts of the port.

Before quickly returning to the wealth and this was, we were told, the largest and most expensive sail boat (may not be the correct term) on the planet.

We were told how much it costs just to moor a boat in these parts and safe to say, if we sold our house and a couple of kidneys we may be able to do so for a week. It’s not cheap to be very rich.

For the last 45 minutes or so Louise was really struggling with the heat. It was brutal. We got drinks of course but the sweat was incessant and as we headed back to where we started, we were very much looking forward to some shade and air con.

We disembarked at 4pm, Louise sat in the shade and I walked back for the car and then returned to collect her.

We absolutely loved the tour and if we were to do this kind of trip again I think we’d look to do more of this kind of thing. I know anyone reading this will probably endorse those thoughts.

The I95 got us back to Delray around 5pm and we had very welcome showers and I watched some TV whilst Louise got ready. I booked what turned out to be our favourite eatery of the trip, the Mexican Roccas Tacos for 7.45 and our Lyft picked us up at 7.15. Our driver was Luigi and he was, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me saying, a nut case. He was a real character and made the short drive very entertaining. He had lived in the UK for a while and hated it. He now lived in Delray managing the eight properties his parents owned and doing some Lyft driving when he got bored.

We were seated immediately.

Once again we had our Guac made table side….

I had a beer and in a strange turn of events, driven by too much sun, Louise had a diet coke.

Louise ordered from the specials and it was an incredible Beef Fajitas that looked like this. I cannot describe how tasty that bowl of brown stuff was.

I had Steak Tacos and they were also incredible.

I think we both agreed this was our best meal of the trip. It was $113 including tip.

We were very ready for bed at this time and we ordered a Lyft. It turned out that our driver home recognised us, as he was the driver that almost killed Louise by setting off with her halfway in the car. He was still apologetic.

Bed soon followed and was very welcome.

Till the next time…….

The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024 – Day Five Saturday 1st June

by mkingdon, posted in The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024

Another lie in!? Disgraceful scenes for someone holidaying in Florida I know, but with only more lying about to do as and when we got up, why the hell not I say.

It was approaching 11am when we were up, showered and dressed. We headed down to the beach this time taking with us the beach chairs which were kindly and handily provided by the hotel. With it being only half a day on the beach by this stage we didn’t want to use up one of our pre-purchased bed days.

It was a windy one , so windy in fact that the umbrellas were not allowed to be up, making our decision to bring our own chairs even more wise.

We took up a spot quite close to the water’s edge and got battered by the breeze.

We had to retreat several times back up the beach as the water came further and further in but the breeze and cloud cover made the lack of a brolly and shade almost bearable. Nothing says “Brit abroad” more than sitting on the beach with a towel over your burnt bits to avoid further damage!

Lunch was a Publix Picnic and the beach was pretty busy today, despite the wind, with it being a weekend. Most folks were behind us, so the following photo is a little misleading!

The sea, as you can see, was pretty rough today and we saw quite a few folks underestimate it and get taken out. We decided not to test our luck. We stayed until about 3pm, at which time the need for some shade became undeniable so we headed back to the pool at the hotel for a bit.

I secured the only remaining beds by the pool today, but to be fair there were only about eight in total. Louise had returned to the room to shower the sand off her before taking up position by the pool. For someone who loves a beach holiday, her aversion to sand and the sea are confusing.

Upon her return, she decided, against my better judgement that we should sacrifice the last beds I had secured and move to the other pool, so we did. It was just a few minutes later that we returned, tails between our legs, hoping to still find our beds available as the other pool was “full”. Luckily they were and even more luckily I decided not to say out loud that I was once again correct.

We left the pool around 5.30 for showers and stuff. I watched some TV whilst Louise finished getting ready before getting into our Lyft around 8pm and heading for the bright lights of Delray. Tonight’s driver was great. Whilst we waited for the drawbridge to go up and down to let some super yacht through, he was telling us about how Delray has changed over the years. Apparently, back in the 70s, it was a very rough and dangerous place with high crime rates and lots of violence. Then in 80’s, a number of “mafia types” from Miami moved in, hoping to avoid all the killing and stuff in Miami. Their money transformed the place and then in the last 15 years or so tourism arrived in earnest and that brought more money and now it is a highly sought-after place to live. He did say that the mafia types have “mostly” gone now!

Tonight we were eating at Amar, which is a Lebanese place. Atlantic Avenue was weekend busy again and as we approached the podium, what looked to be the manager was on the phone bollocking a customer who was calling to cancel their reservation for that evening. He ended the call, took our details (we had booked) and just turned and walked away. We assumed we should follow him. Not a great start.

Once seated, our server appeared who seemed very stressed and the place was indeed rammed and incredibly loud. We were brought some bread….

We invested in a bottle of wine and ordered starters of Lebanese Moussaka and Hummus.

Both were delicious although we were surprised that the Moussaka was served cold. True to form, we quickly accepted when we were asked if we wanted more pitta for the Hummus. They never bring enough! It was clearly freshly made and it was incredible.

We ordered Shish Chicken and a Kebab for mains which were both awesome too.

The place had emptied a little by now so the noise was more tolerable and our server more relaxed. We celebrated by enjoying a rare dessert. Any place that serves Baklava is going to get me eating it.

It was coming up to 10pm now and we got the distinct impression they wanted to close up and we had very quickly become one of the last tables still eating. We paid the $168 bill and left, having enjoyed the food but probably suffered due to the busy nature of a Saturday night.

Right across the road from Amar was the oldest hotel in Delray. Of a weekend, on their porch they had musical entertainment so we wandered across the road and loitered for a few minutes hoping somebody would bugger off and free up a table. Amazingly they did and we swooped.

I went to the bar for some drinks, which was slightly delayed as the barman was having to deal with a customer wanting to close their tab, but the barman had seemingly lost his credit card, which was retained as their “tab”. The customer was delighted as I’m sure you can imagine. Slightly nervous to leave my card with him, I took our first round of two back to the table and enjoyed an excellent classical guitarist.

As the night drew to an end, a British couple a few tables away left in the most blingy golf cart I had ever seen. It even had a custom seat for their poodle which had been asleep under a chair for the evening. Clearly, these were locals and not tourist oiks like us.

We left around 11.15 and got a Lyft back to the hotel for some more sleep.

Till the next time…..

The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024 – Day Three Thursday 30th May

by mkingdon, posted in The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024

A good night’s sleep was ended around 6.30am. Rebecca phoned us around 7am to let us know Dougie and Tom had spent the night in A&E, as Dougie was having some serious breathing issues. At the risk of getting political, they left after five hours still not having seen a doctor and there was no realistic chance they would at any point. Go vote on July 4th! Someone else needs a go now.

We got up and had breakfast in our room and then I made the seven-step journey to the pool to “secure” some beds.

Being the only person at the pool, that was not too hard.

We spent most of the day in the shade due to being burned to a crisp from yesterday on the beach. We moved to different beds three times throughout the day to follow the shade!

We spent a good amount of time in the pool, cooling off and chatting. At some point, I made the long seven-step journey back to the room to get our sandwiches and crisps for lunch.

Mid-afternoon, I captured my impressive exercise stats for the day so far.

You know it’s hot when the locals can’t place all their feet on the hot floor.

At around 3.30 we decided to go for a drive to nowhere in particular. We were hot and if I’m honest I just fancied taking our lovely car out for a spin.

We got dressed and pointed the Jeep south on the A1A. Within a minute or so, as we left the area around Atlantic Avenue we started to see some of the most incredible houses we had ever laid eyes on. Louise, frankly, did a poor job of capturing them.

Delray has some proper wealth in and around it for sure. We drove south for about an hour, just soaking in the sights and at that point made the decision to drive on down to Hollywood, outside of Miami. Why?

Well, back in 1980 when all this Florida madness started for me, we stayed in Hollywood. As most of you will know, the story is that we went to AT Mays Travel Agents in Bolton, as we usually did to book our Spanish holiday and due to a dollar rate of around $2.20 to the pound, they told us we could go to Miami for less money than Spain. The rest is, as they say, history.

It felt silly to be staying so close this time without going to have a look, not that I had any real memories of the trip, which was now 43 years ago! But having lost my Dad recently, I felt the need to go and see where it all started I suppose.

With only 25 miles left on the Sat Nav to get to Hollywood, I wondered why it said we wouldn’t be there for 50 minutes. Well, the bobbins traffic in and around Fort Lauderdale soon explained that. It took all of those 50 minutes, but we were definitely in the “we’ve come too far to not complete this” territory now.

I had no clue where we stayed in 1980, and earlier in the pool when talking to Louise about it, from nowhere the name The Diplomat came to me. I was very spooked when I later looked at Google maps before setting off to see a hotel with that name in Hollywood literally be the first thing I saw when I zoomed in. This was weird.

Now, as we were finally driving along the “front” looking at all the hotels, not too surprisingly nothing really rang a bell. We did go past The Diplomat but it looked huge and it didn’t feel like the place we were at, but in 43 years they could have rebuilt the whole town of course.

When I messaged my Mum and Brother later that evening he seemed to think it was called Hotel Miami and there was one called that too, but it was closed now.

Louise needed the loo before we set off for home, so we stopped off at the nearest place likely to have one so that she could release her very own Whopper.

Whilst she did that I got us both an iced coffee to go and as I sat and waited my phone buzzed with a news alert that Donald Trump had been found guilty in his trial. This was also a bit weird as when we walked back to the car we saw that we were directly across from this.

Today felt a bit surreal all round.

We set the Sat Nav for home, this time using the I-95 rather than the A1A so the time was roughly halved. We found CNN on Sirius Radio and listened to the fallout from the Trump trial as we drove back. Again, the I-95 was busy and stressful.

Thankfully we eventually pulled off it onto the A1A again and tried to snap some more fancy houses on the way back into Delray.

We showered and got ready with a Lyft picking us up at around 9pm

and we headed for Vic & Angelos, an Italian.

We ordered a bottle of Montepulciano and some starters.

Mine was an Eggplant Lasagne thing.

Louise’s Meatball obsession continued.

We both had the same Entree. Nonna’s Sunday Gravy.

You may notice it involved another huge Meatball.

We were defeated and could not finish as of course we had also devoured the bread service.

As we were eating outside on the pavement, we were entertained by a lady pulling up and then reversing straight into a very fancy Range Rover parked behind her. She jumped out and we both thought she’d been drinking. A passerby took some photos of her and her car and they exchanged some strong words. She ended up not leaving a note and driving away. I don’t think there was any damage to be fair.

I didn’t note the price of the meal but I’d wager at $150ish due to the wine.

We strolled up Atlantic Avenue looking for somewhere to get a drink. At our age we want somewhere with something going on, but that’s not too busy and noisy. It’s tragic I know.

Right at the far end of Atlantic Avenue is the Yacht Club, a small bar that tonight had some Karaoke on. As there were no more bars if we walked any further, we decided to go in and to be fair it was good fun.

We had a couple of drinks and watched some “mixed” performances. These included an out-of-time Elvis, a crooner who may have been over 100 years old and a yacht rock guy.

We left at 12 and took a Lyft home where bed was immediate.

Till the next time…..

The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024 – Day Two Wednesday 29th May

by mkingdon, posted in The Doing Diddly In Delray Tour 2024

Sure, I’d been awake for 22 hours, but that didn’t prevent my body from waking me up at 3am. Rather than wet the bed I got up for a wee and then thankfully returned to sleep until around 5.30am.

Louise slept on a bit so I spent that time dealing with some work stuff (hey, you don’t get to be paid millions a year and then have a holiday without doing work stuff…and the same applies when you get paid buttons too it seems).

When Louise was up we finished the unpacking, I made a coffee and whilst Louise got ready I wrote up my notes for the long travel day yesterday, narrowly avoiding PTSD when it came to the drive from the airport.

We were still ready and out of the door by 8am and we strolled down towards the beach and decided upon Luna Rosa for some breakfast.

We both ordered the same thing: Iced coffee and eggs Benedict on avocado and toast. I have never been so hipster in my life!

This was the view from our table.

I think it’s a sign of having had a good holiday when looking back at photos like these causes you physical pain and a deep longing to be back there.

Yes, it was delicious.

After leaving $70 including tip we crossed the road to the beach.

It was still pretty empty at this time and we had our pick of beds.

We oiled up and lay down. We both ventured into the sea for a bit. It was not cold and very calm and clear, and you had to go a long way out to get out of your depth. It was lovely.

Knowing a chap would be coming by soon to collect payment for the bed and brolly hire I feared that I may need some cash, so I had a wander to find an ATM machine. This turned into quite the hike as the nearest one was a fifteen-minute “stroll” up Atlantic Avenue. By Jingo it was hot.

As gruelling as that walk was, it was good to have a look around and get our bearings for where eateries and bars were located.

On the walk back to the beach I called into our room for a tactical wee and to pick up some water. We got a very sad message from an upset Emily that one of her rats, Jim had sadly passed. He was old in rat terms so it wasn’t unexpected but they mean the world to Emily and losing a pet is always tough.

Back at the beach, the bed man came and I need not have worried about payment. He had a card machine linked to his phone and we negotiated a discounted rate for buying multiple days.

We read, dozed and rested for a while longer before needing some lunch around 12.30. Today was to be a big food day it seems!

We wandered up Atlantic Avenue and chose Boheme Bistro based almost entirely on its proximity to the beach.

Louise had a Chicken Caesar Salad.

I had a Turkey Baguette.

Diet cokes and a wine and it cost us $80 including tip.

Louise nipped back to the room which was just around the corner for a loo stop and I went back to the beach.

On the beds next to us (at the beach, not in our room!) were two young college girls. Their conversation was loud enough to hear in Orlando and it was a terrifying “Mean Girls” experience that made me very glad I was old.

We rested some more and then Facetimed my Mum for a bit.

We left the beach at 5.30 after a hard day. A five-minute walk saw us back at the hotel, where we jumped into the jeep and found the local Publix to do some stocking up. Cereal, milk, some sandwiches for lunch tomorrow, (this eating out three times a day was not sustainable) natural yoghurt for Louise who had of course burned herself in the sun today and some water. A terrifying $90.

Back “home”, we showered and I booked us a table at The Office for 9.30. We ordered a Lyft at 9pm and we were picked up moments later.

I had a Giant Pretzel, but I’m not one to brag.

Louise had meatballs adorned with some green crap.

Our entrees were….

A Short Rib Sandwich for me. It was awesome. That white dip is melted marshmallow!

Louise had The Office Burger

With wines for Louise and an Espresso Martini for me, all this came to $145 including a healthy tip.

We were knackered and full so a Lyft was ordered to take us to bed. I jumped in the back seat with Louise a step or two behind me on the other side of the car and he started to set off with her only half in. There was much shouting of “woah, stop, hang on etc” and thankfully no harm was done. I think he apologised for every second of the short journey home.

We were home and in bed by 10.45, deep in a food coma.

Till the next time…..