February 3, 2020 - Tulum, Mexico

We bought bicycles today! We figured out that it will actually be cheaper for us since we will be here for a month than renting! No gears, but hand brakes. My bike is red and I got a white basket; Tobey’s bike is black. Two bikes, one basket, and one bike lock – $4,648 pesos. ($247US) We checked with a couple of the rental places and they will probably buy our bikes back at the end of the month for about half. We will see.

We headed over to one of the markets for some mangos, bananas, and watermelon then headed back to the apartment for lunch and naps.

This afternoon, we headed out on the bikes and spent an hour riding around town. I did okay keeping up with Tobey in town, but I am not ready for any cross-country rides!

We played gin this afternoon and I managed to win our first game. I am sure Tobey is just going easy on me so I give him another chance!

We biked to dinner tonight – more tacos al pastor at El Nero. We plan to watch a movie tonight and probably head to the beach tomorrow.

February 2, 2020 - Tulum, Mexico

SUPER BOWL SUNDAY!!!

We were exhausted after our travel day yesterday and slept in – until 10am! It was a slow start to the day, but we soon got going! We walked to Chedraui (the supermarket) to pick up some groceries and see some of the changes in town. Our round trip was almost four miles.

Along the way we noticed that since we were here was 2017 some of the restaurants we liked are gone. There are several new ones to replace them and we are looking forward to trying many of them!

We also checked out several bike rental shops in town since they no longer have them here at the apartment.

Back at the apartment, we visited with Barbara and Chris and relaxed for a while. Hey, isn’t that what vacations are for?!!!

Soon it was time to decide on a dinner choice so we opted to have chicken from Pollo Bronco. We picked up a whole chicken asada (grilled) with rice, tortillas, and coleslaw. It was $160 pesos ($8.50 US).

We took our dinner home and watched the Super Bowl. It was good and we have leftovers!

To all our friends rooting for Kansas City, congratulations on the win tonight. To our friends cheering for San Francisco, your team played a good game. We decided it was easy to be objective when our team isn’t playing!

February 1, 2020 - Phoenix, AZ to Tulum, Mexico

Today started early for Tobey and Sue – 3am to be exact! The alarm clock was not really a welcome sound, but we had a 6:30 flight from Phoenix to Cancun, so … Our UBER driver picked us up about 4:00am and we were at the airport before 4:20! We had a slight mix-up with our TSA pre-check not getting on our reservation, so we headed back to the check-in counter and got that fixed and back to security to check in … AND WAIT … until 6:00 am for boarding. We both got some sleep on our flight to Houston and thought we would go into the Centurion lounge in Houston for lunch, but I didn’t realize we were flying into Houston Hoby Airport, not Houston International (we flew on Southwest) so no lounges. Oh well!

We walked and walked to stretch our legs then got some lunch at Chick Fil A. If you are ever flying through Houston and are at Hoby Airport, their staff was amazing! Super friendly, polite, great customer service, and the sandwiches were good. (No, we don’t have stock in Chick Fil A!!!!)

We headed back to our gate only to find out our flight was delayed over an hour. UGH. We finally arrived in Cancun after 5pm, instead of 4, but we did breeze through Customs and Immigration. Unfortunately, we hoped to catch the 5:05 bus to Tulum, but missed it. We did get the 6:30 bus to Playa del Carmen, then bought a ticket from Playa to Tulum. Traffic from Cancun was terrible and we finally got to Tulum about 8:45 pm!

There was a new (to us) taco restaurant El Nero, next to the ADO bus station so we grabbed some tacos there.

We both had four tacos al pastor (the meat he is carving) and a coke and it was $106 pesos (about $5.75US). We weren’t sure if it’s because it was late and we were hungry, but they were pretty darn tasty!

A short taxi ride to our apartment at Villa Clarita and we were greeted by the owners, Barbara and Chris, and their sweet dog, Maya.

This is our fourth time staying here, so it was a little like coming home after being gone for some time. Familiar, but it looks like there are lots of changes here in Tulum. Tomorrow we will get out and explore.

January 24-25, 2020 - Las Vegas, Nevada

We started our day with a 9 am timeshare presentation at the resort where we are staying. It was painless and lasted only one hour and paid for our 3-night stay here! Not bad.

We went up to the strip and walked around some of the casinos. The Venetian was decked out and ready to celebrate Chinese New Year – very pretty! We were not winning any money so we went back to the resort to rest for a while before going to Fremont Street. The resort’s adult tub wasn’t that warm, but it was relaxing!

We had dinner at El Gordo Tacos, a place we discovered a couple years ago. Yummy street tacos, similar to what we get in Mexico – just more expensive!

Fremont Street is always an adventure in people watching. So many folks trying to make money dressing up in the weirdest outfits or showgirl outfits and you just need to give them money to take pictures with them. Most are just too strange to even take pictures of!

A band we had seen before called Alter Ego was playing at one of the Fremont Street stages. They know how to rock, for sure, and we enjoyed listening to them for a couple hours! We also watched the light show. Wow, has that changed! The Viva Vision screen is 1,375 feet long, 90 feet wide and suspended 90 feet above Fremont Street’s pedestrian mall. The newly-upgraded Viva Vision screen is made up of 4.92 million energy-efficient LED lamps. It was like watching a huge television screen, set to music. Amazing.

We made our way back to the Tahiti Village around midnight after a full day in Vegas. Today, after checking out, we left our bags at the resort and made one last run to the casinos. Tobey played poker and I played roulette. Needless to say, we had fun, even if we didn’t win!

We are back in Arizona tonight and will be here for the week before we head south to Tulum, Mexico for a month.

January 23, 2020 - Las Vegas, Nevada

Today was a sleep-in day – after our early morning (1am) emergency alarm. Ugh. We hung out and watched part of the impeachment hearings, then decided to go check out the casinos!

We stopped at the MGM and participated in a focus group at CBS Television City. For watching a 20 minute tv show and giving feedback about the show (not yet on the air) we were paid $40 each. In all, it took about an hour and it was interesting to see how the research is done.

Afterwards, we walked through several casinos then ended up at the Rio where we had dinner at the buffet. We loved all of the peel-and-eat shrimp and the dessert buffet selections were great!

I managed to lose my $40 at Roulette, but Tobey said it was free-money so not to worry!

We are both tired tonight and didn’t mind calling it a night by 10:30!

January 22, 2020 - Las Vegas, Nevada

Tobey and I flew to Las Vegas today so he could have his Christmas present – seeing Carlos Santana at the Mandalay Bay House of Blues.

We are pretty good at using the city bus system here in Vegas, so we bought our passes and made our way to the Tahiti Village, where we are staying. After settling in, we took their shuttle up the strip and got our concert tickets.

We decided to try the Shake Shack for a quick dinner. Sometimes our choices are good, others – like tonight – were not so good. The burgers were okay, but neither of us cared for their “Shack Sauce”. It tasted like a mustard base and not to either of our liking. We also had chocolate malts – again, just okay. It was a busy place, so maybe it’s just us.

The Santana concert, however, did not disappoint!

We had general admission, standing room tickets and it was fantastic! One row of people behind the railing, center stage!

Carlos Santana e is one of the best guitar players ever!

His drummer, Cindy Blackman, is also his wife, can really rock it!

Near the end of the concert, he invited this young man, Tosh, from Australia to the stage and gave him his gold guitar to play. WOW! This boy was only 10 years old and he was amazing.

The concert was two and one half hours of fantastic music and Tobey was most pleased with his Christmas present! (me, too!!)

These are a few of the videos from the concert.

https://youtu.be/yKL8pVzt93w

https://youtu.be/Rjt3L7V0gfQ

https://youtu.be/_0JFerKc-gw

We did get a “surprise” at 1am, after settling in for the night back at our condo. There was an “emergency alarm” and instructions to depart your room and walk, do not take an elevator, to the exit nearest your room. Okay, down and outside from the 6th floor and joining several others outside not knowing what was going on. After 20+ minutes, we were allowed to go back to our rooms. Apparently they are having some problem with the alarm system and there was no emergency! Hopefully, they will have it figured out before tonight.

Today will be an easy day – we will probably walk the Strip and check out the casinos and maybe gamble a little.

January 19, 2020 - Scottsdale, Arizona

Tobey and I have been hanging out in Scottsdale with our Moms since mid-December. It has been a great respite from the chilly Colorado weather! Today was no exception – temperatures climbed to 75 degrees!

This morning we worked our way from Mom’s to get near the Sun Devil Stadium area (Van Buren Street and Galvin Parkway) to listen to an AC-DC tribute band and watch runners in the Rock-n-Roll Marathon. With so many roads closed for the race, we parked about a mile away and walked to Van Buren. The music was good and it was amazing to see how many runners were participating in the race!

We were at the 11.2 mile mark for the half-marathon and must have watched almost 10,000 runners go by in the hour and one half we were there! What amazed both of us was how good everyone appeared to be doing! As they went by, they sang along with the band, stopped to take pictures, and danced on down the street!Elvis was even running the half marathon – barefoot!

One of the local cheer teams was there to keep the runners motivated!

On our walk back to the car, we watched some of the full-marathon runners as they were passing the 24 mile mark. They, too, looked amazing (even though there were very few of them in comparison!).

While the runners looked like they were having fun, don’t expect either of us to take up running as a new hobby!! Tobey has, however, gotten almost 150 miles on his bike this month.

We are heading to Las Vegas on Wednesday for a few days, so I will try to post some updates from there.