where we stayed

 We found our condo in Mexico on vrbo.com (vacation rentals by owner)
We had looked into going the all-inclusive resort route,
and if we were ever to take our kids down there, we'd certainly do that.
But for the four of us, this was just what we wanted.
A beautiful home-base to return to, a kitchen to make a few meals on our own,
but the freedom to get out and explore and really feel like we were in a different country.

We did find a cockroach in the bathroom of our condo the first night, but that was our fault for leaving the bathtub unplugged.  The condo itself was sparkling clean and very modern.
I made Kent trap the cockroach with the toilet plunger and we flushed him.  
Kent detests cockroaches. He's my hero.

 And the view? Killer.  Probably a good fourth of all the pictures we took are just pictures of the beach from our condo balcony.
Every morning the ocean was like glass. So calm and still. Beautiful.

 Second balcony from the top, right by the lighthouse.

That straw hut place on the right?  It was a bar. They played music from 8 in the morning until midnight.  It didn't really bother us but in the mornings when I'd go out to sit on the balcony and eat my yogurt and granola breakfast it wasn't exactly the peaceful waves and breeze I was hoping for.

Although we came to discover that any place right on the beach like this in Playa del Carmen would have had the exact same problem.  Walking along the beach we'd hear one blasting song to the next, restaurants and clubs all down the beach in both directions.
Playa is a party place.  One of the main reasons we were glad we didn't bring our children.
Not because we were partying,
although that ironically became our catchphrase of the trip--"party,"
but because it just wasn't a great place for kids.
We saw very few children there, and the few that we did see were usually crying.

 On Saturday night there was a wedding right there by the pool.  We sat on our balcony and watched the whole thing.  Ceremony, dinner, and dance.

The first night all four of us got in the hot tub, it overflowed (they had overfilled it)
and next thing we know, two very threatening-looking security guards are inside our condo, pointing at us through the window and motioning us to come inside....
we were unknowingly spilling water down onto the sidewalk for the restaurant below us.  We apologized and they left.
The next morning we requested our hot tub be drained a little.

I don't think we could have picked a better place to stay.
After exploring all day in the extreme humidity and heat, it was so lovely to have a clean, modern, air-conditioned place to come home to each night.
And the view couldn't have been any more amazing.