It doesn´t count as the REAL Mexico but....

I didn´t plan on blogging about the first 5 days of my trip. The idea was to go to the beach, get out of the cold, recover from a work project (JT) and as it turns out, eat. Gaining 5 lbs was not our intention, but I think that might be what happened. Planning a beach trip to Mexico was completly frustrating and like stabbing in the dark - all of the places sounded exactly the same to me, and everything was kind of "eh" on the internet... so I picked Playa del Carmen simply because they don´t allow buildings over 4 stories, and the beaches are supposedly some of the best in Mexico. Indeed this was all true. The hotel, La Tortuga, was charming and boutiquey - I loved the design. There was a jungle in the middle with a little lazy-river style pool where you could sit and watch the neon-colored birds, read about Winston Churchhill and Ghandi (JT) and the story of a Somolian refugee (me). The beach we had access too was great - so clean and the water was perfect. Playa del Carmen was pretty tacky, but fun. We made fun of the horrible shirts that said such things as "I´m not a ginecologist.. but I´ll take a look!". Massages were $30 per hour. We drank and danced. We put bad songs in the jukebox. JT took a lot of naps. We took a side trip to Tulum, which was awesome. Actually some of the restaurants in Playa town were fabulous, particularly John Gray, where JT took me for a belated birthday dinner. We met a nice older couple from Vancouver because we accidentally sat next to them at three different restaurants at three different times. JT looked him up today and he is a world-renouned concert pianist. I had time to explore my love of chiliquiles, a mexican breakfast that I´ve had in Chicago. Meaning I had them every day. Chilaquiles always remind me of JT because we had them on our first date, and they remind me of Mexico. Playa del carmen was fun. Neither of us counted it as "travelling" in the sense that we normally do. That´s about all there was to it... JT left yesterday and I went on to Merida. I will try to blog about Merida today if not tomorrow.