Today is Mr. Sassy's 50th birthday! In celebration, we decided to have a real breakfast - i.e. something that actually filled us up. We looked at our Can-Do Map and noticed a recommendation for a $10 breakfast buffet at Casa Mexicana, which is right on the waterfront downtown - a short walk from our hotel. Sounded good to us, so that's where we went.
The buffet and atmosphere reminded me of a cruise ship - very similar foods and look of the room. They had a chef making omelets and all kinds of other breakfast foods. The fried potatoes were the bomb! The atmosphere of the restaurant was pretty - very open, light and airy. We had a really nice waiter too.
We were very excited that on the way back to the hotel, the musical fuel truck (that had been giving us the giggles all week) came around and as luck would have it, I had my camera with me so I caught a video of it. Unfortunately, they did not bang on the oil cans like they usually do, so Mr. Sassy was yelling to them and making a drumming motion with his hand to try to get them to bang the fuel cans for us, but of course they just looked at him like he a gringo stupido and had no idea what he was trying to ask them.
Back at the hotel, we hoped to check the internet for updates on the weather, but when we arrived, the breakfast area was closed up (door locked) so we couldn't get to the computer. It was supposed to be available until 10:30 and it was only 10:15 or so when we arrived, but I guess the worker decided to close up early today since we hadn't come to breakfast (and I think there was only one other guest at the hotel).
We decided to go in search of an internet cafe because it was important for us to find out what was going on for our flights home tomorrow. We found an internet cafe on the waterfront and I was able to get on-line. The forecast did not look good. Another big snow storm was on its way at home and they were projecting something like 18 inches. I checked our airline's website (Spirit Airlines) to see if there was any information about our flights or about what happens in this situation and came across their policy concerning snow storms. The policy stated that passengers can rebook their flights without change fees (in the case of snow storms) provided they rebook "prior to their initial reservation". We weren't sure what that meant: did it mean we would have to rebook prior to the day flew in to Cozumel (February 1), or prior to our departure (February 10)? We needed clarification on this. We also didn't know what would happen if our flight was cancelled. All kinds of images were clouding my mind - images of us stranded at the Fort Lauderdale airport, sleeping on the floor for 3 days.
As you would expect, there was no quick way to contact someone at the airline on-line (no instant messaging) and being that we were in a foreign country, I couldn't just pick up my cell phone and call.
So now we decided we needed to purchase an international phone card so we could call Spirit Airlines. First we went back to our hotel to talk to the woman who worked there to see if she could tell us where we could buy a phone card. Of course, she spoke no English, and Memo (the hotel's owner, who does speak English) was not around, so this was something of a challenge. My Spanish vocabulary is limited and I don't exactly know the words for "international phone card", but eventually after enough attempts like "telefono international" and pulling credit cards out of my purse to illustrate the word "card", she understood what we were asking and pointed me to a store on a corner near our hotel. We went there, but they did not sell cards and pointed us to a pharmacy down the road. Finally, we were able to find a store that sold the cards - about $9 USD for a 40 minute card.
Then, we had to find the special pay phones that accept these cards. The first one we came upon was located on a sunny corner and I said no way, Jose - got to find one in the shade. So we found another one a block away located in a shady spot and I got on the horn with Spirit Airlines.
Well, we were able to get connected to their automated system, but sat on hold for 40 minutes and the card ran out of minutes before we even got to speak with anyone (I am sure they were being bombarded with phone calls due to the massive snow storm in the northeast). So that was a total waste of time and money.
After some discussion about our options, we decided to stop stressing about it and stop wasting more precious vacation time on the issue and just go with the flow tomorrow - just do everything as planned and deal with any issues as they come up. Our flight home had 2 legs - the first was Cancun to Fort Lauderdale and we were confident there would be no issues with that flight. The second leg was Fort Lauderdale to Atlantic City and this was the leg we were worried would get cancelled because the northeast was being hit by the snow storm.
After all this, we went back to the hotel. By this time, it was about 12:30. We debated whether to go to Los Girasoles, being that we were getting such a late start and we knew we had to be back to the hotel by 5:00 because we had a 6:00 p.m. dinner reservation at Kinta to celebrate Mr. Sassy's birthday.
I left it up to Mr. Sassy and we decided to hang out at the hotel and relax. We spent some time in the main courtyard and I also spent some time in the room. I decided to start doing some packing since I had some time to kill.
As I mentioned, we went to Kinta for dinner tonight. I had chosen this restaurant after getting recommendations from the folks on Trip Advisor. I wanted this dinner to be a special restaurant with a beautiful atmosphere and extra special food, and I got lots of recommendations. The two restaurants that seemed to get the most recommendations were Kinta and Especias. Between the two, it sounded like Kinta was a little more highly recommended for this type of celebration, so I made the reservation ahead of time and asked for a table in the garden (another suggestion from the TA folks). I took a picture (without a flash to see if I could capture the beautiful lighting, so this is a little dark, but you get the idea).
Well, this recommendation was right on. We really enjoyed this restaurant immensely. The garden area was just gorgeous - lots of foilage set off by glowing twinkle lights. The restaurant itself (inside) had a hip, mod/industrial vibe with downtempo electronic chill music playing. It was definitely an upscale place.
Once we were seated and placed our order, and had just begun to enjoy our drinks (their mojitos are probably the best we've ever had), it began to rain, and pretty heavily, so we relocated into the main restaurant near the bar. This wasn't the optimal place to sit (on high bar stool type chairs) but there wasn't much we could do about it (the other tables were already full).
Our waiter was okay - not particularly friendly or attentive, but the food was a real standout. For his appetizer, Mr. Sassy ordered an avocado stuffed with shrimp salad (which he said tasted similar to ceviche) and for his entree he ordered mahi mahi which came in a green mole sauce and was served with sweet mashed potatoes and some other veggies and topped with a fried plantain chip. For my appetizer, I ordered fish tacos which were a very elegant interpretation of the traditional fish taco. The tortilla shells were crispy and the fish filling was in a semi-sweet sauce that was just delectable. For my entree I ordered (what else) chili relleno, only their version was very different than a traditional chili relleno dish. Normally, the chili is stuffed with cheese, but this one was stuffed with a very delicate mix of all kinds of vegetables as well as cheese and had a really delicious sauce. Of course I ordered dessert - a molten chocolate cake (which at home is one of my favorite desserts). I must say the dessert was the only disappointment. It was beautiful in presentation, but the taste and texture did not hold a candle to similar desserts I've had back home (again, I really think cakes and pastries are a weak spot in Mexican cuisine). It was a little dry and despite its name, the center was moister than the rest of the cake, but definitely not molten.
Despite the somewhat disappointing dessert, the rest of the dinner was so spectacularly delicious, we were extremely pleased with the experience and it really made Mr. Sassy's birthday extra special. Our bill including tip for 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, 1 dessert, and 3 cocktails came to $67 USD which was a real bargain for this quality cuisine. At home, a dinner like this (at a similar type of restaurant) would probably run $100 - $125.
After dinner, we went back to the room. We needed to get to bed early this evening because we had to get up very early in the morning for our travels home.
All in all, a nice final day in Cozumel.
No comments:
Post a Comment