About three weeks into our trip to Hong Kong, we made a trip to Korea!
I’ve never been to Korea, and sadly, my K-pop fan girl phase ended about 6 years ago, but nonetheless, I’m super excited! I’ll be jotting down a few lines while I’m here and compile it into this post. Continue reading
After comic-con ended, on the Monday, we went to the Woodland Park Zoo.
I personally haven’t been to a Zoo in ages. In Vancouver, we have an aquarium, but the nearest zoo is the Greater Vancouver Zoo, which I’d rather not support.
During my Puerto Vallarta trip I went on my first ATV ride!
The red ones are the ones we rode. The blue one is a RZR
What’s probably amazing was that it was free– we booked our vacation via Flight Center and they were having a 20th Anniversary deal where you get a free ATV trip with your package if you booked during a certain time. I’m pretty sure we booked before that, but our Flight Center associate emailed us a few days after we had booked to offer these free vouchers to us anyway! We had originally wanted to pay for these ourselves since we thought it’d be cool. I guess it all worked out!
What to know before ATV-ing:
It was no easy feat going on a four hour excursion under Mexico’s scorching heat, but it was well worth it! Easily one of the funnest things I did while there.
Wild Trek Adventures ran the ATVs that we went with, and they were pretty great. One of our guides spoke perfect english, while the others spoke enough that we could understand. We definitely felt well taken care of. They also help you take photos. They insisted we touched these wild bananas and pose for photos.
Wild Trek also ran this cool little cafe/bistro thing in the mountains, where we stopped for a 40 minute break. We could order food, drinks, and even take a dip in some clean pools! We were told to bring bathing suits for this, but in the end, we decided not to go in the pools because we were sweaty and changing would be a chore.
They also included a tequila tasting! The milky coconut concoction was amazing— but it costed about $60 USD, so we held back.
All in all, loads of fun, and a different way to see Mexico’s countryside. I’m looking forward to trying this out again in the future, but maybe somewhere where I’m not sweating buckets!
I just got back from my trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico!
It was my first time in Mexico, and hopefully not my last because it was loads of fun! A good balance of do-nothing-days and activity packed ones.
The resort we stayed at was Plaza Pelicanos Club, and it’s all inclusive with unlimited drinks (from either their bar, or either of their poolside bars), food buffet, and two more formal restaurants to choose from. Keep in mind that tipping is an extra expense you should factor in when you go to an all-inclusive!
One thing I wasn’t expecting was the lack of air con. Except for our hotel rooms, the eating areas, as well as basically everything else, didn’t have air conditioning.
Nonetheless, it was great having a private beach area, pools to choose from, and we even ended up getting a massage! The resort was nice. Again, only complaint was the lack of air conditioning, which I ended up getting used to halfway through my vacation. There are also vendors, usually dressed in all white to lessen the impact of the sun, who sold trinkets, snacks and henna tattoos on the beach, despite it being a private area of the beach. I’m guessing they have some sort of deal with the hotels.
Anyway, I didn’t mind them. They do usually try to make eye contact and get you to look at their wares, but I thought they had cool stuff. I never really bought anything from them except for skewered shrimp— these things are so delicous! By the end of my vacation, I had bought eight of these things. No kidding. The fresh lime juice, as well as the hot sauce, made these barbecued shrimps so amazing.
It’s funny how much Mexico reminded me of Hong Kong. Mainly it’s due to the humid weather— always feeling slightly sticky. I miss Hong Kong, and am overdue for a visit 😦
In Puerto Vallarta, we did touristy things, as well as a few things that were probably not on a usual tourist’s to-do list. For one, we visited Pitillal, a nearby town where all the locals lived outside of the hotel zone. My boyfriend and I bussed to the town, first getting on the wrong bus, then finally on the right one. You can bet we were sweating buckets.
In the town there were loads of vendors, many that sold clothes, reminding me of Hong Kong’s street stalls. There were many restaurants, offering fresh tacos, morning gruel (I actually don’t know what the locals were eating in the mornings, but it seemed to be some sort of congee/oatmeal mixture?), and cold drinks. We walked around, admiring the low key architecture, and marveling at how many animals ran stray in the streets!
Our trip to Pitillal was very tiring, but I’m glad we ventured out!
We also visited a few malls in Puerto, including Plaza Caracol, which was about 2 blocks away from our hotel. We frequently walked over there after the sun set, since they’re opened quite late and walking at night is so much better than the morning! We also went to Gallerias Vallarta, which although looked quite fancy, wasn’t super exciting. I liked Caracol more, because it feels more authentic. There’s small stores selling clothes, shoes, candy (for cheap!), whereas Gallerias was taken up by Liverpool, a huge department store, and had more name brands that we were already familiar with.
This post will end up being way too long if I squeezed in everything on here, so I’ll separate my posts 🙂
In my next posts: ATV-ing, Cafe Des Artistes, and downtown Puerto!
Hey all,
So…continuing from my last post.
Early the next morning (okay, not that early. We finally managed to leave the hotel at around 11AM), we set off in search of breakfast. We were done with walking, so we experienced Victoria’s public transit.
Remember how we had a list of restaurants we wanted to visit in Victoria? For our Sunday breakfast, we had chosen Blue Fox Cafe. According to everyone, it was the place to visit in Victoria, and we were pumped! Sadly, when we got there, the line-up was an hour long. We just couldn’t afford to wait that long (it was about noon when we got there) since we had other plans for the day. So we quickly googled up another place to eat. Floyd’s Diner came up in our searches and we walked two blocks north towards it.
We were starving by then, which made Floyd’s perfect. Their portions were HUGE. They were also on the Food Network show You Gotta Eat Here, where one item on thier menu got featured: The Mahoney. If you didn’t already know (I certainly didn’t until I read the menu), the Mahoney’s is a bit of a gamble. For $15, you get a mystery plate of food prepared by the chef. It’s different every time. If you and your friend both got Mahoneys, you’d get two completely different dishes. The fun part is this: you can choose to pay the $15, or flip a coin. If you win the coin toss, you get your Mahoney for free. If you lose, you pay double the amount, making it a $30 brunch. We didn’t get the Mahoney because we both craved other things on the menu, but it’s a cool concept!
When our bellies were full, we walked to the Royal BC Museum. The last time I was here, I must’ve been 9 years old. I didn’t remember any of it except for the woolly mammoth. I brushed up on my history and I think my favorite part was walking through these fake streets depicting what settlements would’ve looked like. The special exhibit they ran while we were there was on the gold rush. It was pretty cool to learn about the rise and fall of B.C’s Barkerville. I really want to give that town a visit now!
We stayed at the museum until closing time, and realized we had quite a few hours until dinner. We wandered around downtown Victoria, quenching our thirst with dollar drinks from McDonalds and slurpees. We spent a good hour or two at Chapters, devouring new books. And then came the moment we were waiting for: Il Terrazzo.
Il Terrazzo is supposedly the best Italian restaurant in Victoria, and although I can’t attest to that because I’m not an expert, the food is pretty good. My bf’s duck was so great he’d compliment every bite. The service was excellent, and the restaurant itself was very nice. If you’re looking to splurge a little, or want to take a date out somewhere fancy, go here. Also, their free bread was warm and delicious, and boy they were generous.
We were so full we ended up walking back to the hotel again. That’s when we started to watch Fresh Off The Boat. Best. Show. Ever. We knew we had to wake up early the next morning for the parade, but we ended up doing a small marathon of it. I was literally crying at some of the episodes. Happy, laughing crying.
The next morning was exhaustion. We woke up early because we didn’t want to miss the Victoria Day Parade nor the free pancake breakfast our hotel was hosting. We were right on the street where the parade passed by, so we could sit outside under tents and watch the three hour long parade. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t think we’d stay for the whole thing but we stuck through almost 2 and a half hours of it. There’s just something about parades where you want to see what is going to come next in the long line of floats, dancers and performers!
We spent a while at Mayfair Shopping Centre, but it wasn’t super interesting. We eventually started to crave Asian food, so we Googled up a nearby Korean restaurant..which turned out to not exist. Then we searched up a Japanese place…but when we got there, we found that they take a break from 2PM till 5PM. We got there at 2:10PM. So eventually we went to Swiss Chalet. So Asian. So satisfied. Not. But nonetheless, our waiter was super nice, and the ribs and chicken wings weren’t bad. Just not quite what we wanted when we were craving Asian food.
And that was it. Our little weekend getaway that was relatively inexpensive as far as going away goes!
Hopefully, there’s more summer adventures to come 🙂 Short getaways are pretty refreshing!
– Karen
