Tag: Hotel

Review of The Hyatt Regency, Cartagena

I’d say this is probably the second best hotel I have ever stayed at.

There aren’t too many opportunities for me to stay at high-end hotels since I pride myself on trying to find cheap deals, but sometimes you have to splurge right? We got our flight to Cartagena for so cheap that it made sense to spend a little more on our accommodations.

I knew I wanted to stay at this hotel as soon as I had seen the pictures of their incredible infinity pool overlooking Bocagrande. In fact, I’m pretty sure this hotel had five different pools and I was really pleased at the sexiest infinity pool having a NO CHILDREN policy. They had their own pool so the rest of us had peace and quiet to drink our liquor and take all the selfies for IG we wanted. Big win.

There isn’t too much depth and detail to go into with this review because unlike the other two ‘very nice’ hotels I have stayed at – we didn’t spend much time at the Hyatt. We had a lot of plans and activities to do so the hotel was truly only used for sleeping, swimming and the spa. (If you want to read about how the spa was, click here)

First of all, this hotel is massive. I can’t recall the exact number but I know we were on the 18th floor, the check-in desk was on the 12th, the spa on the 14th and there was floors going way up into the 30’s. This was the first time I walked into a hotel and the front desk wasn’t on the first floor, it was all the way on the 12th. Luckily the check-in process was very quick and painless as we had arrived at 11pm on a Friday night and just wanted to get to sleep as soon as possible.

The room was a good size and looked modern. Because I am lazy, I didn’t like the closets being all the way by the entrance to the room so naturally, the chairs and table by our beds ended up being where we stored our clothes. (don’t judge) The bathroom was cool because everything was motion-activated so if you went to the bathroom at 3am you didn’t even have to search for buttons, the lights would just turn on. Also, there was a lot of toiletries in the shower, the bath tub and by the sink. My travel mate said that the cream was very good and we made sure it accompanied us back to Canada as a result.

I should note, the best part of the room was the view! We were fortunate to get a room that overlooked the beach and we could also look below to see the infinity pool. This came in handy because we could time when to go to swimming due to the large groups of people wanting to occupy the area.

There are probably a million other things going on at this hotel that we maybe didn’t see or just didn’t have time to get to, but, I would definitely stay here again. For three nights we paid $280.00 Canadian per person and it was well worth it. The attentive staff, beautiful room, amazing infinity pool and location all combined into a very pleasant stay for a long weekend.

Happy travels!

  • Mirna

Review of Azulik, Tulum (Jungle Villa)

Here’s a wild story (not really): You plan out the entirety of your trip, you book your stay and your activities months ahead and then one week before the trip you see a place on Instagram and are like ‘holy shit I want to stay there’. So you cancel ALL your activities and use the refunded money to spend one night at this marvel you saw on Instagram.

This is how I ended up planning a trip to the beautiful Azulik Tulum. Now, I’m not popular enough (yet..) to be sponsored to go anywhere nice, so this review is my unbiased experience. Especially after forking out $520.00 CAD to stay there for one night. You damn well know, I was getting every dollars worth of this stay.

Our base for the trip was in Cancun and that was where we intended on spending our time, until we booked a night at Azulik – which is located in a city about two hours away named Tulum. Because I wanted to keep this blog post strictly about the stay at the hotel, if you want to read about how to get from Cancun to Tulum I made a whole ‘how-to’ post here.

When you arrive at the spot, it looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere. Since it is basically a luxurious treehouse, this location probably makes a lot of sense. We had arrived at 2pm and check-in wasn’t until 3pm, so we took some time to explore the grounds. The gentleman at the front desk took photocopies of both of our passports and gave us some ‘Caribbean Jungle Rain’ in a bottle to drink. They have many hostesses at the hotel they call ANGELS, and one of them proceeded to give us a little tour and take us to their amazing beach area.

I sadly have to preface the beach area with – WHAT A HORRIBLE FRIGGING TIME TO BE IN MEXICO. In Cancun and in Tulum you couldn’t really go into the water because there was at least 3-4 feet of seaweed as a barrier. Usually I would just try to be adventurous and hop over such obstacles, but even when you entered the water you would have to swim through about 100 feet of gross brown stuff to get anywhere clear. No thanks. I’m too squeamish for that.

Aside from that unfortunate water situation, the beach was beautiful to look at. Very clean and had a well-stocked bar on it as well. There were plenty of beach loungers to lay on and these cool nets that you could climb on top of to suntan on, which my boyfriend talked me into doing even though I am super clumsy. (I didn’t die, FYI)

After hanging out at the beach for a little bit, our angel came to show us to our room and give us our fuzzy keys. I was really really excited at this moment because I wanted it to be everything I had seen on Instagram. You know what? It was even more. Once we walked into our room shit began to feel really real. From the beautiful, high, round and mosquito-net covered bed to the beautiful tub to soak in and then to our incredible patio that had two chairs and our own private jacuzzi. Wow.

We were in Jungle Villa #2 which was on the far side of the property, but it was awesome because we faced the spa area and were on a lower level so the breeze was amazing. This hotel is eco-friendly so there isn’t air conditioning and only two electric plugs in the room. Furthermore, the jacuzzi was actually filled with salt water and the bathtub in our room was filled with some next hippie water as well.

My boyfriend and I literally spent most of our evening in that jacuzzi. We loved how peaceful and beautiful it was there and how good some salt water on our skin felt since we couldn’t go into the actual ocean. I enjoyed every minute of that evening, probably the most relaxed I had been in a long time.

Eventually we had to get out of the jacuzzi because we had made reservations at one of Azulik’s restaurants, Kin Toh. Looking back at it now, we shouldn’t have even gone to the damn dinner. We were good in the hot tub and some room service would have been perfect. If you want to read about my experience at Kin Toh, I wrote a separate post about that here. I feel like once you read that, you will understand why we should have just stayed in our room. Fail.

Cue next day…..

The morning of our departure I was up really early. Like, 5:30am early. I’m not sure why but I decided to put some shorts on and walk over to the spa area by our room. It was a serene and peaceful moment. There wasn’t anyone else outside (except the security who keep watch over the beach at nighttime). It is a shame the water was ugly and brown because of the seaweed, otherwise it would have made the most perfect of sunrises.

I returned to the room and woke my boyfriend up to do something I had been looking forward to since I read everyone else’s reviews of Azulik – ordering room service! Because this place tries to use as little energy as possible, you can’t actually call down for room service. In every room there is a menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner alongside two brown balls with your room number on it, a pencil, a pencil sharpener and little pads of paper. What you do it write down your order on those pieces of paper, put it in the ball and send the ball down a chute right outside your room! It was so cool. I realize it is very low-tech but I had never seen such an ordering system and it really endeared me.

Within about 30-35 minutes our breakfast order had arrived and we were able to enjoy this incredible meal on our private balcony as the sun came fully up. Probably one of the best moments of my life. I had food, a view and the love of my life next to me. Definitely an unforgettable experience. Also, if you ever go and order the breakfast make sure you order the little bitty pancakes. So good.

And that was it, the end of our beautiful adventure at Azulik.

This place was definitely worth the splurge. From the service, the grounds and our incredible room – I would spend that $520.00 all over again. The only thing that wasn’t perfect was the water situation (not the hotels fault) and how our dinner at Kin Toh went (again, not the hotels fault). So this place is actually perfect.

I wouldn’t really come here with a friend because this place reeks of romance and relaxation. Plus you better be REAL close with whoever you’re traveling with here since nothing covers the bath area. Your best bet is to come here with your significant other to connect or to come here alone to disconnect. Either way, you’ll love it. A day or two would suffice, I can’t imagine being here for any longer because even beautiful places get boring after a while.

I’m really happy we took a chance and came to stay at Azulik. I hope to return one day!

  • Mirna