Thinking of a gorgeous beach holiday? I got you!
My first time travelling to the Caribbean, my first flight in years! We did experience a little mishap with our plane (technical issue), to begin with, and shared our first emergency landing!
We didn’t have to wait too long before jumping on a new one, and we had enough time to drink a couple of glasses of wine and grab some food. Once we took off, that 9-hour flight was so smooth (even if I was a bag of nerves!). We landed quite a bit later than intended, so we got shown to our room around midnight instead of 5pm.
The leading luxury of this hotel is the private beach. You can see the ocean from almost any part of the hotel, the sea sparkles turquoise, and you can hear the waves from your room.
The huge resort has 4 pools, a jacuzzi, a lazy river (and slides), a swim-up bar and the prettiest private beach. The ocean is quite rough, so perfect if you love surfing! If you need to be a more confident swimmer, you can obviously relax on the beach, and the main pool/swim-up bar is close enough to the ocean to see the beach a. stone’s throw away. You can also use the lazy river with some rubber rings that they offer, which is a great way to cool down and relax.
We booked the club preferred Junior suite, and I’m so glad we did. You can upgrade to a room with a pool, and we were tempted, but we made the right choice. The room was spacious with two baths ( one in the bathroom and one on the balcony), two showers and two sinks, the most gigantic bed, and a fantastic view of the beach and the main pool.
With the club preferred, you also get your own Butler – ours was called Jose. He was so attentive and helpful, obviously being the typical brits abroad didn’t want to ask him for much, but he always got champagne and rum sent to the room. He would always check in with us, and something I thought was really cool was that you could chat on Whatsapp, so he would send us a good morning message every day with a list of the shows and food on offer that day which we found really helpful. We could pop him a Whatsapp message if we needed anything, making it all seamless and relaxed.
We also got to use the preferred club pool, a smaller pool area with a good size pool and a jacuzzi. We spent most of our time here. We were well looked after by the staff (especially JJ!). It was a secluded part where you felt relaxed and private. It was the most relaxing part.
The resort is all-inclusive and offers 9 restaurants and 5 bars. Some of our favourite restaurants included:
COCO CAFÉ
This is how we started our mornings nearly every day. Go to the cafe, grab a coffee and ham and cheese roll/wrap and sit by the pool. It was my favourite little morning routine. Coco has the BEST coffee, and I genuinely mean that. The iced coffee was the best Iced coffee I’ve had. They also do loads of sweet bakes, juices, croissants, ham and cheese rolls, tuna wraps etc. A charming little cafe which is open 24/7 too.
BORDEAUX – French Cuisine
Bordeaux was one of our favourites. It had a refined dining vibe, the staff were super friendly, and the restaurant was very relaxed and modern with quite pretty views. It felt more secluded.
We had an entire 3 courses here, and I liked everything. I recommend the seafood vol-au-vent to start and the beef bourguignon.
PORTOFINO – Italian cuisine
Portofino was always super busy, but who doesn’t love Italian food? I had a risotto which was so so good, and Bill said it was one of the best lasagnas that he’s had!
EL PATIO – Mexican Cuisine
El Patio is your typical Mexican. I LOVE Mexican food, and their tacos were delicious. If you like Mexican food, then you will love this.
WORLD CAFE – Buffet
This was your typical ‘American buffet’. All the food was really good, to be fair, and had so many things to choose from, so perfect for families or picky eaters!
They also had a food truck around the lazy river with tacos, hot dogs, burgers and cocktails. We only went to this one once we got the pretty good tacos and had a few cocktails from there.
They also offer discos and parties if you’re into the nightlife vibe. I assumed we’d be out of an evening a lot more. Still, we loved enjoying the sunshine, getting up early to enjoy margaritas and mimosas, day-drinking around the pool, and then going out for dinner after sunset.
They have so many excursions, and I recommend getting a catamaran boat. If you can, we did a private one, a little spendy! But you can do a group one to a secluded island, which is the prettiest site. You can get off the boat and do a little snorkelling too!
The only thing I wouldn’t recommend, now don’t get me wrong, everything was beautiful, but because it was our anniversary, we decided to book the romantic dinner on the beach which they offer. Let me say…it sounds way more romantic than it is; this could be because the hotel is still relatively new, so give it some time, but the romantic beach dinner was so underwhelming, cold and dark. The beach is beautiful, but the food needs to meet the rest of the hotel’s standards. We didn’t feel like it did because it started off at sunset; you still had people on the beach in front of you, which kind of kills the vibe, in my opinion, and then when it gets dark, you have a small lantern and some light, but we had to use our phone torches to see!
What I would recommend, however, if you’re after a date type of dinner, is the French or Italian restaurant in the hotel resort; the food and service are at an excellent standard, and they both have the date night vibe if you’re after that.
I would 100% go back here. It has everything you could possibly want or need. The weather was beautiful (February), and the staff were amazing. The perfect hotel for couples or families.
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