After an amazing honeymoon in Mexico, thought I would do a little report as I know a few are considering/are going. We booked with first choice and upgraded to premier seats because my neck condition although expensive it made the difference between me coping with the long flight and not coping with it. Food was really good, snacks and drinks flowed and service was great. We went to the Excellence Playa Mujeres 10th to 24th July, stayed in the standard junior suite room. The security when you arrive makes you feel very safe, and is quite different to the hotels along the way through Cancun, the coach journey was about an hour with stops at other hotels. There are 3 gates to get into to the Excellence, they ask for the driver's details etc at each gate before they let you into the hotel. When we arrived we were greeted with champagne and our bags were taken up to our room, where we were given a tour of the hotel, the room etc. Our concierge was Fernando, he was amazing, and a big help throughout the honeymoon. In the room, we had information left about what was on in the hotel that day/night, the cocktail of the day, evening entertainment etc. We did a tour of the restaurants and the beach which is about a few minutes walk from where our room was to get our bearings the first night, and ordered room service. Room service was amazing, we ordered it a few times. On the whole it was amazing, we had one breakfast which wasn't too great and one dinner room service on a saturday which was not very nice. For the restaurants, there was Spice (chinese/thai), Basmati (indian), flavour market (tapas), agave (mexican), barcelona (mediterranean), the grill, chez isabelle (french), the lobster house (fish), toscana (italian). Our favourites in order Basmati, chez isabelle, toscana. The only one we didn't try was the lobster house and the flavour market (not fish fans). Basmati was outstanding, great service the waitors are so friendly and the food was lovely. Chez Isabelle was always very full, so we couldn’t get in a couple of nights so recommend you go there early (6.30-7pm) to get in, food was gorgeous, the steak and the crème brulee were gorgeous. Toscana is also good, garlic bread isin't like how we have it in the UK it's like a flat fresh thick bread with a crispy garlic texture. Dinner portions of food are not massive, some nights we ordered extra if we'd missed lunch or breakfast. Jacket potatoes and dauphinoise potatoes in the grill are not like we have them here at all, in fact unrecognisable, still tasted ok. The only restaurant we would not recommend was Spice, food was awful and we never went back. Lunch in the toscana is yummy, lots of fresh food, pizzas, pasta and the dessert counter is out of this world! They also do pizzas in the bar near the beach, we had a few of those, really nice! You can order room service where you sit by the pool and they can bring you food, drinks, cocktails where you are sat which is awesome. We'd recommend trying the Bob Marley, Mango Tango, Miami Vice cocktails. We had so many of those. The tequila shots are huge, we can't remember most of one day in the pool having those! The resort on the whole is very relaxing, away from the busy city resorts in Cancun and actually comes under Isla Mujeres which you can see from the beach. The hotel do a special price for romantic dinner on the beach, this is quite expensive and they also do buffets on the beach. We went to two of these beach dinners: arabian nights where they had indian food, fire swallowing acts and a caribbean night where they had an amazing caribbean band. Saved us the money paying for the romantic dinner! They also do lunch on the beach (there are signs out mid morning saying what is on for lunch) some days, like rock and burger or sea food. The food for all of those was delicious! The spa prices although we heard the treatments were amazing from the couples we spoke to are very expensive so we didn't bother. Tipping, we tipped in pesos and dollars what we could, tipped the room service delivery, housekeeping, turn down service etc. If you can't afford to tip a lot, I would say it didn’t really make any difference to the amazing service we got when we didn't tip. We did a trip one day to Playa Las Americas (local shopping mall), recommend the ice cream stall in there and enjoyed shopping in there. We went to the local flea market, that was not a fun experience. Great to see, but not one we would have repeated, we got literally mobbed by people trying to get you to come into their stall, and we were told not to say our names, where we were staying etc or any information about ourselves and we did get asked this by almost every stall we went into. OH found this horrendous, haha! I must admit it was a little scary. Altho they take US$ pesos was encouraged there, and definately only pesos in the supermarket. Excursions are all in US$, pricey but worth it. We did Isla Contoy, Xel Ha and Coco Bongo's. Our favourite was Xel Ha. Isla Contoy is about a 5 min coach ride, then a 30-40min boat ride. If you don't like boats, be wary. I struggled with the power boat experience and a few were sick when we stopped to snorkel but the island itself was something else. Make sure to take mosquito repellent, the mosquitos there are hardcore. On the beach, we were visited by a stingray, saw a lot of fish right on the beach. We didn't do the snorkeling (once on the boat before the island and then once at 2:30pm on the island) purely because the current was quite strong. It was paradise, never seen OH so excited. Coco Bongo's we did on Sat night, that was heaving with people. You pay for the excursion and then have to make your own way there, stick with the hotel taxis (red stripe cars) and ask them to wait for you, much safer and easier if you don't speak spanish to communicate with the local taxi drivers (green stripe cars). We paid US$130 each for coco bongo's and then $60 for the taxi, he waited us until 1.30am and we got home no problems. The show was definitely amazing, if you like bars/clubs definitely recommend it and stick with premium drinks/vip/gold pass. The normal ticket price although cheaper is down stairs with everyone, there is no air con from what we were told and it was difficult to get out there were that many people crammed in there. Xel Ha is out of this world, if you like snorkeling. We did the dolphins, thoroughly recommend the whole experience, expensive but definitely would do it again in a heartbeat. We didn't need any money for food, drink or anything really during the day. Make sure you get eco/bio sunscreen, we bought the ultra waterproof one in the hotel, altho expensive it worked very well. If you do the dolphin platinum do it with xel ha, works out cheaper, but be warned the prices for photos/video are chokingly expensive. We paid $123 for all our photos after some haggling. The room was incredible, definitely wouldn’t bother upgrading to the more expensive rooms if we went again. We spent many hours in that jazuzzi.To add the weather was about 32 degrees, cloudy some days, very hot and only rained once for about a minute and no-one even noticed it really!
All in all, it was our best holiday yet. We both cried when we left.
