Mountainbreeze's HUGE Victory vacation review!

[mountainbreeze]

When we walked into the Dining room, the hostesses took us back to our usual table. Number 177

 

 

 

 

Our dinner was awesome as usual. We had a lot of attention from Donovan and Joyce. They really appreciated that we brought them roses, and we all had a great time at dinner.

As usual, it was empty back in their section, so they both spent a lot of time with us while we ate.

 

 

After dinner we all posed for pictures together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then............the lights flickered............the signal for the goodbye song.

It was SO SAD.

The waiters (and waitresses) sang "Leavin' on a cruise ship" to the tune of "Leavin' on a jet plane", and Christina and I were very sad. That was not a fun song to hear tonight.

 

 

Thats when the tears started.

 

 

Now.............I am not a person that cries a lot.....................but I sure did cry at the end of dinner that night.

I was really sad knowing I would never see Donovan and Joyce again. I just loved them both to pieces.

 

 

I was crying, Christina was crying..............it was ridiculous! We were bawling over our dinner servers!!!

 

 

Donovan came over and put his arm around my shoulders, which made me cry even more. He told us to stop crying , or he was going to cry too. We all laughed.

It was funny, but it was really sad too.

 

 

Christina and I composed ourselves, we said goodbye to Donovan and Joyce, gave them each a HUGE cash tip, and we left the dining room for the last time. We both still had tears as we walked out, and I wondered what the other passengers must have thought of us.

 

 

We went up to the Prominade deck and sat down on our favorite bar stools to have a smoke and calm down. We were both still really upset. I think we sat there for about 10 minutes and didn't say hardly a word to each other.

 

 

 

 

OK.............we still had a whole night ahead of us...............so we shook it off and dried our tears.

 

 

We went up to our cabin to finish packing our stuff. We wanted to see the show"VROOM" later that night, but we wanted to get our suitcases out into the hallway before the show. The suitcases would be picked up and taken down to the lower part of the ship. We would be able to get them the next morning after we got off the ship.

We kept our carry-ons and enough clothes and things to be able to function for the rest of the night and the morning.

 

 

 

 

Around 8:30, we walked down to the Caribbean Theater to find our favorite seats.

Our friends Brad and Zack joined us for the show that night.

 

 

It was a great show! I loved it just as much the 2nd time.

[mountainbreeze]

After the show, we spotted Shane standing by the stage.

 

 

 

 

We went down to see if we could catch him. We didn't think we would see him again and we wanted a picture with him.

A passenger sitting nearby took this one for us, it came out blurry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After our pics with Shane, we went to deck 5 and walked around the Promenade deck. We happened to see Marcelo and Donkey standing together by the wine bar. I asked them if I could take a picture, and I got this awesome pose from them:

 

 

These two were an awesome team. We really thought they both did an excellent job at entertaining us on this cruise.

Thanks for a good time, Marcelo and Donkey!!

 

 

 

 

We wanted to go to the Comedy club that night, but when we got there it was packed with people. Neither of us felt like standing through the whole comedy show, so we just went back to the cabin.

 

 

 

 

Carlos had left us this very cool lobster. How in the heck did he make that???

 

 

We got our cell phones out of the safe and charged them up for the morning.

We spent some time out on the balcony. We went inside and watched some TV.

We filled out our customs forms, and then we went to bed.

 

 

Our last night on the ship.

 

 

It would have been really sad, but we both knew our vacation wasn't quite over yet.

Christina and I were going to a Spa/Resort in Ft. Lauderdale to spend 3 days before we had to go back home.

[mountainbreeze]

DAY 13 - DEBARKATION DAY / LAGO MAR DAY I - Thursday Sept 12, 2013

 

 

 

 

Christina and I were both up at 5:00AM. We have no idea what woke us up so early, but we stayed up anyway. We went out on the balcony and we could see we were approaching Miami (darn!)

It was still really dark outside. We stayed out there and watched off the side of our balcony as we came closer to the port.

 

 

We thought this giant sign was kind of cool as we went past it. I ran in and got my camera and got a pic just in time.

It was really peaceful as the ship was slowly gliding through the canal.

 

 

 

The sky got brighter as we pulled next to the dock.

It was so cloudy, we didn't get to see the sunrise that morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A police boat escorted us into the port

 

 

 

 

After we pulled up to the dock, a lot of workers got busy. Trucks pulled up to the ship and did various things. Forklifts took big crates of luggage off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Miami looked really pretty from our balcony.

 

 

When it was a reasonable time in Kansas City, I called my Sweetie. It was so good to finally be able to talk to him again. I let him know we were OK and that we had pulled into Miami.

He had to work that day, so he would call me later that day and we would be able to catch up.

[mountainbreeze]

It started raining so Christina and I went back inside the cabin. We were both hungry so we went up to the lido deck to get breakfast.

 

 

Holy Moley it was so crowded at the Lido Deck buffet this morning. People had their luggage and were eating breakfast and waiting around to get off the ship.

 

 

Christina and I went to the back buffet to find Hector. I wanted to get my last omelet from him, and Christina and I both wanted to say goodbye.

 

 

Good Bye Hector!! Thanks for making awesome omelets for me every morning!

 

 

I'm going to miss having this breakfast buffet every morning. It was small, but it had everything I wanted.

 

 

 

 

We carried our plates back to our cabin. It was still raining outside so we couldn't eat on the balcony.

We sat on our beds and watched TV while we ate.

We took our time. We wanted to try to stay in our cabin as long as we could. John wasn't going to pick us up until 10:00AM so we had plenty of time.

 

 

 

 

At 9:00AM, Carlos knocked on our cabin door. He told us we had to leave the cabin, because he had to get in there.

We knew we had stayed in our cabin longer than we were supposed to, so we told him goodbye and we would be out of the cabin in 5 minutes.

 

 

GOODBYE CARLOS!! Thanks for taking such good care of us morning and night, even though we didn't see you very much!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five minutes later we left Carlos his last note and tip, and we took one last look around our awesome cabin.

Oh, how I loved loved loved this cabin!

[mountainbreeze]

We still had almost an hour until we had to meet John outside, and it was still raining outside.We decided to go to the casino bar one last time and have a smoke.

 

 

We hadn't seen Ari at all that morning, we guessed he was already on his way to the airport to go to Indonesia.

Too bad we didn't get to say goodbye to him. He was really sweet.

 

 

We didn't see our Canadian balcony neighbors that morning either. The last time we saw them was on the tender boat to Grand Cayman, so we didn't get to say goodbye to them.

 

 

It was really empty on the Promenade deck. There were a few people sitting around with their luggage, and a few people walking around, but not much going on at all.

There was no band playing music. There were no bar servers. Everyone was so gloomy.

 

 

 

 

We sat at our favorite spot at the bar and had a smoke.

 

 

We didn't stay too long.

Around 9:30, we headed down to the Lobby on Deck 3.

Almost everyone had already gotten off the ship by then and the Lobby was pretty empty too.

We dinged our cards through the machine one last time and we were off the ship.

 

 

So sad. My cruise is over.

 

 

Into the port building, down the long escalator, and into the baggage claim area.

We found our bags right away.

 

 

We got through the customs line pretty quickly, and then we were outside.

It had stopped raining by then.

 

 

As we walked out, Carnival gave us a reminder not to gloat

 

 

 

 

Our timing to get off the ship was perfect and John was there to meet us within 5 minutes.

We perked up quite a bit when we saw this pull up for us!

 

 



 

 

 

We were happy to see John, and he offered to take a pic of us before we left the port.

[mountainbreeze]

The ride to Lago Mar Resort in Ft Lauderdale was about 30 minutes.

Christina and I entertained ourselves during the ride.

 

 

 

 

That's the pink Harley Davidson t-shirt I got in Jamaica. (JAMAICA!!)

We had never been to Lago Mar Resort, but I received a tip from someone on one of my cruise websites that this might be a good place to stay.

 

 

We thought it looked really nice from their web site and on different You Tube videos we found. They had great reviews on Tripadvisor.

We looked around at other hotels too, but something kept drawing us back to looking at Lago Mar again.

 

 

Boy are we glad we picked Lago Mar!!

This place turned out to be AWESOME!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pulling up to the front entrance, John drove the limo up under that awning to drop us off. It was a tight squeeze for that long limo to turn those corners but John did it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before we could even grab our backpacks, there were several hotel guys opening doors for us, and helping John get our luggage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We walked into the lobby, and it was beautiful!!

[mountainbreeze]

We couldn't believe this floor!

It was made of little pieces of stone (marble??), like a big huge mosaic.

It was absolutely gorgeous

 

 

 

 

Justin was waiting at the desk for us. He was really nice.

He told us our room wasn't ready yet. We knew it wouldn't be ready that early. That's why we weren't in a hurry to get off the ship that morning.

 

 

 

 

Justin gave us a map of the property and told us to enjoy ourselves.

He told us he would hold our bags, and have them taken to our room when it was ready.

He said he would call us when we could come get our keys.

Sorry, I can't get this map to turn the right way, but you get the idea.)

 

 

 

 

The first thing we did was walk out toward the beach. We were drawn to the ocean.

 

 

 

It was a gray, cloudy day.........it was warm out, almost hot..............but it wasn't raining.

 

 

The beach was empty. We found a couple of chairs and we put our backpacks down and went to wade in the water for a few minutes.

 

[mountainbreeze]

The beach was full of sea shells, and we picked up some good ones.

The water felt great on our toes, the water was pretty warm.

We sat in the chairs for a while and we decided we liked Lago Mar. This was very nice.

 

 

 

 

After a while, we walked back up toward the hotel and found a few chairs to lounge in.

 

 

 

 

We sat for a while and we both caught up on all of our emails and texts we missed throughout our cruise.

 

After we were both caught up on the latest news, we decided to walk around and explore Lago Mar a little bit. We felt like we were the only people there. We barely saw anyone while we walked around.

 

There was a really cool pool bar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

A playground for kids



 

 

 

 

 

 

A few cool places to sit

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

Giant Chess

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

We saw lizards all over. There were really tiny ones, and we saw huge ones.

This one was about 6 or 7 inches long



 

 

 

 

 

[mountainbreeze]

We were hungry for lunch so we went in the gift shop to ask someone what our choices for lunch were.

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

They happened to have a little diner just off the gift shop.

It was perfect!



 

 

We sat at the counter and it was like an old fashioned soda shop. Christina had a club sandwich and chips, and I had a hotdog and chips.

It was just enough to fill us up.

 

 

 

 

While we were there, our waitress called Justin at the front desk to see if our room was ready yet.

She was so sweet to do that.

It just so happened, our room was ready!

 

 

We paid the waitress and went to see Justin.



 

 

We had reserved a suite with a parking lot view (it was all they had when we booked), but Justin said he had upgraded us to a pool view.

THANKS JUSTIN!!

He gave us our keys and we went off to find our room.



 

 

 

 

We found it easily. It was close to the elevators.



 

[mountainbreeze]

We walked in the room and we saw a long hallway with a few doors on our left.

 

 

 

 

The first door was our bedroom. We loved it!!

 

 

 

 

I had the bed by the window.

 

 

There was a door leading into the bathroom from the bedroom, and there was also a door to the bathroom in the hallway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bathroom was really nice too.



 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

[mountainbreeze]

 



 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back out in the long hallway, we found this cute little kitchen.

The kitchen was fully stocked with cups, dishes, silverware and anything else we might need.

 

 

 

 

And around the corner from the kitchen was a living room.

 

 

 

 



 

[mountainbreeze]

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a HUGE balcony

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

[mountainbreeze]

And the pool view was awesome! It was a really pretty lagoon pool.

 

 



 

 

 

 

We were SO happy with our room!!! It was immaculate. And it was HUGE!

 

 

We decided we REALLY liked Lago Mar now.

 

 

Our luggage arrived within a few minutes. William brought it up on a cart and he also brought a small cooler full of ice. He filled our ice bucket up for us while he was there.

That was a nice touch!

William got a nice tip.

 

 

 

 

We wanted to explore our hotel some more.

So we went out to look around again.

Just outside our front door, the front of the hotel faced a canal. There were houses on the other side.

 

 

Looking down we could see some fountains

 

 

 

 

And looking out from our front porch area across the canal

 

 

[mountainbreeze]

We went downstairs and out to the front of the hotel and looked around. The fountains were pretty.

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Down on the dock by the canal

 

 

[mountainbreeze]

We went back through the hotel and around by the pool.

Look who was laying out

 

 

 

 

Another reptile thing.

We sure don't see things like this wandering around in Kansas City!

 

 

He was huge!

I'd say this one was close to 3 feet long

 

 

 

 

 

 

We left him alone and continued our exploring. We found the mini golf course

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might notice, we are wearing different clothes in a few of these pictures.

We actually did play mini golf that afternoon, and we took pictures. (it was free to play)

Apparently my little card thing in my camera was full and it didn't register about 20 pictures I took that day.

Christina and I came back another day and reenacted playing mini golf so I could retake the pictures

 

 

 

 

[mountainbreeze]

We also played shuffleboard, even though we had no clue how to play.

We used the stick thingies and we shuffled the round things back and forth down the cement.

I'm sure it would be a fun game to play if we knew the rules.

 

 

They had tennis courts, and they had racquets (rackets?) and balls we could use for free. We didn't play, but I would have liked to. It was really too hot to run around a tennis court.

This was more my speed that day

 

I loved the big chess board!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The details they put into this place were really nice. This was part of the floor going to the elevators.

[mountainbreeze]

This window had water running down it. We walked past it every time we went to the elevators to go up to our room. I loved this!

Later we found out the spa was on the other side of that window.

 

 

 

 

Back in the lobby, we took a few more pictures

The chandelier was HUGE

 

 

 

 

We went up to the balcony above the lobby so we could get pictures of the huge fireplace

 

 

 

 

These are the front entrance doors in the lobby.

 

 

 

 

After exploring, playing and picture taking, we were hot and hungry. We were ready for dinner, but first we stopped at the spa on the way back up to our room.

 

 

We both made appointments for the next morning at 9:00AM

Christina had an appointment for a massage, and I was going to have my nails done.

 

 

After we made our appointments, we went back to our room to figure out what to do for dinner.

 

 

They had a nice restaurant at the hotel. A copy of the menu was in the room.

We wanted to eat there, but neither of us saw anything we really wanted on the menu.

 

 

We ended up calling room service and ordering burgers with cheddar/jack cheese and fries.

 

 

They were perfect!!

 

 

 

 

The food was very good and it hit the spot. We were both stuffed.

 

 

I was able to talk to my Sweetheart after he got off work that afternoon. He assured me all was well at home, and that he and our dogs were anxiously awaiting my return in a few days.

It was a really long time to be away from home, and talking to Tim made me miss him even more.

[mountainbreeze]

Christina and I decided to take a walk out on the beach as the sun went down.

 

 

It was already getting dark by the time we walked out there, and we couldn't see very well.

Neither of us had shoes on.

As we walked toward the water, Christina almost stepped on a huge crab, it was about the size of a baseball.

I yelled and pointed at it right before she was about to take a step

 

 

 

 

She jumped about a mile in the air, and did this funny jumping screaming dance across the beach.

It was hilarious!! She didn't step on the crab though!

 

 

 

 

We waded in the water and picked out pretty seashells.

We walked along the beach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We didn't get to see a pretty sunset (it was behind us) but it was nice being on the beach as the sun went down.

 

We used our flashlights on our phones to light our way back up the beach in the dark.

We didn't want to do any more crab dances

 

 

 

 

We walked past the pool on our way back to our room. It looked really pretty at night too!

 

 

 

Back in our room, we found these really comfortable beds waiting for us. We were so tired, we had been up since 5:00 that morning.

 

 

 

We put our jammies on and watched TV for a while.

 

 

 

We couldn't sleep in too late because we had our spa appointments in the morning.

After the spa, we planned to have a beach day.........so we knew we would have a very relaxing day.

 

 

So far, we both really loved Lago Mar. It was a classic old hotel and it was in pristine shape.

Everything was immaculate, inside and out.

The place was kept up so nicely, it was hard to believe it was built in the 40's.

It had a certain charm a comfortable feeling about it. Everyone that worked there was super nice and friendly. We were really glad we picked this hotel. It was perfect for us.

 

 

We were asleep by 11:00 that night. My bed was so comfortable and I slept so good that night.

 

[mountainbreeze]

DAY 14 - LAGO MAR DAY 2 - Friday Sept 13, 2013

 

Christina and I were up at 7:00AM.

We sat out on the balcony for a little while, waking up and watching the beautiful sunrise.

It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day!

 

 

It was nice to be able to call and text my Sweetheart any time I wanted to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We took showers and got dressed. We had spa appointments at 9:00AM

 

 

When we were ready, we walked down to the spa.

 

 

 

The spa was awesome. Christina said she had the best massage of her life.

 

 

The lady who did my nails was so sweet. I just loved her.

She did a great job on my nails, and I got a hand/arm massage too.

 

 

We talked the whole time she did my nails. She told me she loved working at Lago Mar. She said the owners are a husband/wife and they really do a great job with the hotel and the employees.

She said Lago Mar is VERY popular in the summer and we just happened to be there in their off season (mid-September). She said the hotel is FULL the entire rest of the year and it's hard to get in.

She also told me that movie stars stay there a lot, because it's an out-of-the-way place where they can come and relax. She didn't want to name-drop, but I did get one name out of her, Cindy Crawford.

 

 

By the time I left the spa, I bought some of the products she had used on my skin. Whatever it was she was using smelled heavenly when she rubbed it on me, and I was SO SOFT.

 

 

I asked her what it was and she showed me what she used. I asked her if she had these things for sale, and she did.

SOLD!!

 

 

I'm so glad I bought these because I love them both! I am now very much hooked on this stuff, especially the dry oil in the tall bottle. I use it every day now after I get out of the shower.

The smaller bottle is exfoliating cream. I use that once a week. I'm in love with this stuff.

 

 

I was done at the spa before Christina was, so I went back up to the room.

She came in about 20 minutes later and we got ready to go to the beach for the day.

 

 

 

 

We stopped in at the soda shop and had a quick lunch on our way to the beach.

We loved this little place.

[mountainbreeze]

After we ate, we went down to the water and found a spot. It wasn't crowded at all.

The lounge chairs were free to hotel guests.

 

 

 

 

Beach pictures

 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent the day laying out, swimming, and looking for sea shells.

It was really a nice day and the weather was perfect.

 

 

 

 

My only complaint is that after being in the crystal clear blue water in the Caribbean, the brownish green water in Florida was yucky. I was glad I was at the beach.............and I loved the ocean............but I think I'm spoiled now because I thought the water was gross.

 

 

 

 

It was a great day. We were so relaxed. When we got hot, we cooled off in the water.

The ocean water was warm, but every few minutes we could feel a current of cold water on our legs.

[mountainbreeze]

Around 4:30PM we packed our stuff up and walked towards the hotel.

We rinsed the sand off in the outdoor shower (it was FREEZING!), then we went in the lagoon pool for a dip.

This pool looked so nice from our balcony, we just wanted to get in for a minute or two on the way back to our room.

The pool felt so good, we stayed in for about 30-40 minutes before we were ready to get out.

The water was the perfect temperature, and we decided that although we loved laying out on the beach, the pool was more enjoyable than the ocean.

 

 

 

 

Back up in the room, we took turns showering.

 

 

Neither of us had the energy to figure out anything for dinner other than room service.

We both ordered the same thing we had the night before, burgers and fries.

They make a very good burger at Lago Mar.

 

 

After we ate, we had a sudden burst of energy.

We went down and walked around the hotel grounds. We explored some more areas we hadn't seen yet, and we took a lot of pictures.

 

 

We ended up on the beach again at sunset. We loved how calm and peaceful the beach was at this time of night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The hotel had a musician sitting by the pool playing really good music that night. We could hear him while we were walking around the resort. He was really good. He played Jimmy Buffet type of music, but he had his own style.

 

 

We went back to our room and sat on our balcony and listened to him play. What an awesome bonus. It was a great way to end the evening, sitting and talking with my BFF while listening to good music on our balcony.

 

 

We wanted to be sure to thank Justin again for the room upgrade to a pool view room. This was just awesome.

 

 

Around 10:00 or so we both heard our comfy beds calling us.

We watched some TV and went to sleep.

 

The next day was a shopping day, so we didn't have to get up especially early.

[mountainbreeze]

DAY 15 - LAGO MAR DAY 3 - Saturday Sept 14, 2013

 

 

I don't think I could sleep in on this vacation if I tried. And I tried.

I just couldn't do it.

I was up at 7:00AM - for no reason. I think Christina was up right after I was.

 

 

We sat on the balcony for a while that morning.

The sunrise above the palm trees was beautiful.

It looked like it was going to be another nice day. We felt lucky because John (our limo driver) told us it was cloudy and rainy in Ft Lauderdale and Miami almost every day we were gone on the cruise.

We were happy we had blue skies and sunshine the weekend we were there

 

 

 

We showered and dressed and got ready for a shopping day.

We wanted to go to Las Olas Blvd.

We heard we could walk around and shop, eat, and explore. Sounded like a good day to us, and we wanted to go outside of our resort and see some of Ft Lauderdale.

 

 

When we were ready, we went down to the hotel lobby to ask if they could call us a cab.

 

 

The bellman told us the hotel had a van they could use to take us anywhere we wanted to go. He said it would cost the same or less than a cab.

 

 

So he called the van driver, and they pulled the van around for us to get in.

 

 

The drive to Las Olas Blvd was only a few minutes.

While we drove, our van driver pointed out some things to us.

 

 

We had him drop us off at the far end of Las Olas Blvd, so we could walk back. We told him we would walk as far as we could, and we would call him if we got tired and needed a ride back. He gave us his card.

 

 

 

 

When he dropped us off, the first thing we saw was a Cheesecake Factory. Oh yum!

One of my very favorites.

 

 

Of course we went in to have lunch there.

 

 

 

I have never had a bad meal at Cheesecake Factory. They give so much food there is never any room left for dessert.

I had really good chicken terriyaki. I think it was the best I have ever had.

 

 

 

 

After lunch, we walked down Las Olas Blvd.

 

 

We walked in and out of some shops.

 

 

 

 

It was a really nice day.

[mountainbreeze]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These were cupcake benches outside of the ice cream store. They were so cute!

We stopped in the ice cream shop and got bottles of water.

 

 

 

 

We walked toward the ocean. It was a pretty long walk and we were getting hot and tired.

By that time we were close enough to our hotel that we didn't want to call for a ride.

 

 

We walked across a draw bridge, and when we got to the highest part in the middle, the part we walked on looked like this.

The water was about 50 feet down, and we could see through the bridge all the way down.

It was kind of creepy and we got off the bridge as quick as we could.

 

 

Finally we made it to the beach:

 

 

We walked straight down to the water, and walked along the waters edge all the way to our hotel.

[mountainbreeze]

This area of the beach was a public beach. We couldn't believe how crowded it was. We were so glad Lago Mar had a stretch of private beach. I don't think we would have had a relaxing day if we were in the middle of all of these people.

 

 

We saw a lot of roped off turtle areas. They must have layed eggs here

 

 

 

 

By the time we got back to the hotel it was about 4:30 in the afternoon. We had walked ALL DAY.

We were exhausted and hot.

We sat on the balcony for a long time cooling off and relaxing.

 

 

After I got home from my vacation I used Google Earth to measure our walk from The Cheesecake Factory to our hotel. We had walked 3.5 miles that day. A mile of it was on the beach.

No wonder we were exhausted!

 

 

We also noticed that Lago Mar was quite a bit more crowded today than it had been the last 2 days. A lot of people had come for the weekend. There were also a lot of kids. It really was a great resort for families. They had a lot to do to entertain the kids.

 

 

I had a sudden craving for an ice cream cone, so we went down to the soda shop and got a cone.

 

 

It was really good, but now we were hungry for dinner.

 

 

 

 

Again we were too tired to care about looking for dinner. Originally we wanted to go out somewhere nice to eat. We just weren't up to it at all. We made it easy on ourselves and we walked back to the soda shop and got some food "to go".

She boxed up our food and we carried it back to our room.

We ate dinner on our balcony.

We drank our Sprite in wine glasses for no reason.

Our musician was back again, playing his tunes by the pool. We sat there on the balcony most of the evening and listened to him play music. What a nice treat!

 

 

Looking down from our balcony at the pool at night was way more beautiful than this picture shows.

It was a great evening.

Lago Mar was just awesome and I really really loved it there. I will definitely go back there again.

Definitely.

 

 

At some point that night we went out and found the hotel business center. We used our room key to get in and we printed our boarding passes for the airplane the next day.

 

 

When the music was over, around 10, we went in and watched TV in our bedroom while we packed our stuff. Since we had only been there a few days, it didn't take long for us to pack up.

 

 

We ended our last night of vacation watching TV from our beds before we fell asleep.

 

 

 

 

The next day was time to go home................my awesome vacation was over.

 

 

I really had a wonderful time. The whole thing was good. It rained a little, but it really wasn't bad at all. It sure could have been worse! All of my planning and saving and waiting for this vacation was so worth it. It was really a vacation of a lifetime, and I felt lucky I got to do this.

 

 

As nice as this trip was, after 15 days I was also getting pretty homesick. I missed my Sweetheart. I missed home.

[mountainbreeze]

DAY 16 - Going Home Day - Sunday Sept 15, 2013

 

 

 

 

We had to get up early this morning, and it was no fun. It's never fun traveling home after a vacation.

 

 

We were tired, and we weren't looking forward to a day of airports and airplanes.

We weren't even going to get to ride in the fun Limo today. It was such a short ride to the airport from the hotel, I had asked John to bring a towncar instead of the limo.

 

 

We showered and dressed, and we shoved the last of our stuff in our suitcases.

 

 

When we were ready, we went down to the lobby

We dropped our suitcases by the front door. We were a little early, we still had 10 or 15 minutes before John was going to be there.

 

 

We checked out of our room, and we made sure to thank Justin for the awesome poolside room.

 

 

We asked the bellman if he minded if we took some pictures of the lobby, and he told us to take as many pictures as we wanted.

 

 

He did ask us if we needed a cab to the airport and we told him we had a car coming for us in a few minutes.

 

 

Christina and I ran around the lobby and outside in front of the hotel taking pictures of everything.

 

 

 

 

Lago Mar is gorgeous. I loved it. I'm so happy I found this place and I am going back. It was a perfect place for a girlfriend get-away, and I think my husband would really like this place too.