BLOGWORLD! Oh, how I’ve missed you all A couple of days sans posting seems like a lifetime, doesn’t it?

After my last post, my weekend in Long Island got even better. In fact, I’d say it was one of the best weekends I’ve ever had! More on that in a bit.

break the fast.

I woke up extra early this morning (despite my serious sleep debt) to get a head start on my to-list for today. For breakfast I had a bowl that included oatmeal, yogurt, cereal, and peanut butter.

…clearly I couldn’t choose just one thing.

I also sipped on a cup (or two) of coffee.

sunday.

Speaking of coffee, I don’t think I wouldn’t gotten through yesterday alive without it 😕 I had a change of plans and actually ended up driving back to the shore after coming home from Long Island. I think my current Facebook status says it all: 1 day. 3 states. Lots of coffee. Even more memories. I mean, a little bit 20 ounces of coffee at 10pm never hurt anyone, right?

I also had some car ride snackage:

Before leaving NY, Amanda’s mom made us an outstanding dinner, but all of my photos turned out too blurry Side note – always make sure your camera switch is not stuck somewhere inbetween “auto” and “program.” Duh, Gracie. One of the photos that did manage to turn out was of this divine peach blackberry cobbler.

This cobbler gave my love for cookies a serious run for its money. YUM!

saturday.

We initially planned on going into the city on Saturday, but it turned out to be a scorcher. So instead of subjecting ourselves to the sweaty abyss of Manhattan, we all agreed that the beach was a much better idea.

Amanda, moi, and half of Erica 😛

That evening we had plans to go to Fire Island (or, as we referred to it as Foyre Oyland. And Magic Island. And, Magical Fantasy Island). The only way to get there is by boat (for obvious reasons), so we took the ferry there and back.

The ferry made for a fun addition to our night. Who doesn’t love a boat ride?

Our destination was Ocean Beach, which is the most popular tourist destination on Fire Island.

We stopped for a quick dinner at a local Italian restaurant. I ordered the crab cake appetizer as my meal. I’ve made it no secret that I’m super picky about crab cakes, and these were really good!

We spent the rest of the night having a grand ol’ time

All in all, it was definitely a weekend for the books. In fact, we’ve already got our next LI weekend planned! LOVE YOU LADIES.

I have a lot to catch up on today…including a I-can’t-remember-the-last-time-I-exercised workout. Oops Enjoy your Monday, lovelies!! xoxo G

• Where would you like to go for a weekend getaway?

AMIGAS!!!!! I don’t even know where to begin. Wow. Even though I was only in Mexico for a week, I’m having a seriously hard time re-entering the real world. Taking the week off from blogging was so. weird. It was nice to have a break from all forms of technology, but I wish I would’ve been able to keep you all up to date with what I was doing. And when I say I was broken off from all forms of technology, I mean it. Liz and I didn’t even know the time at any point in the day 😛 But that’s what vacation should be, right?!

Before I give the deets on my vacation, let me begin by saying that I literally had the best week of my life. We relaxed. We ate. We met so many people. We danced our butts of. And I couldn’t have asked for a better person to spend it with!

The resort itself was out of this world. I knew that we were going to a nice resort, but it was way beyond my expectations. We stayed at the Riu Palace Mexico in Riviera Maya (Playacar), and it was gorgeous:

The beach was so incredibly beautiful. Sometimes resorts have little rinky-dink beaches, but this was the real deal:

We spent pretty much the entire day on the beach. Despite my efforts to avoid sunburn (I went through TWO bottles of sunscreen), I seem to have missed a spot 😛

One of the things that Liz and I were worried about is that our resort is kind of known for being mostly older people.That did turn out to be true, but it didn’t matter because we had access to 4 (maybe 5?) other Riu resorts, which had tons of younger people. Not to mention we all shared the same beach. We made a lot of friends and had some good times But the most fun we had was definitely found in Playa Del Carmen:

We went to a few different bars/clubs, and they were all insanely fun. The Blue Parrot was a good one; it was right on the beach, and they had crazy cool fire shows:

The entertainment in Mexico (in town and at our resort) was all around superb:

But the highlight of our entire trip was probably Coco Bongo:

Coco Bongo is basically a huge show/disco/club with performances (mostly celebrity impersonations) and a ton of audience interaction. I’d compare it to a modern day version of Moulin Rouge. We heard from a lot of people at the resort that it was a must-see, so we went on Thursday night. The resort actually set us up with tickets and a table inside so we didn’t have to wait in line. We didn’t know exactly what to expect, but what we got was literally thee most fun night of our lives. We met up with some of our friends from the resort, and the night was filled with laughing and dancing.

Other trip highlights were a day at the spa (no photos of that, woops!) and our snorkeling excursion! That was an all-day event, and we went to three different snorkeling spots. The first was an underground cave:

I thought snorkeling in a cave would be scary, but it wasn’t at all! Instead, it was beautiful and one of the most exciting things I’ve ever experienced.

We also snorkeled out to a coral reef, but I wasn’t allowed to take to my camera to that spot :/ We went pretty far out into a lagoon and saw tons of tropical fish and a 5-6 foot baracuda. Not gonna lie - I could’ve done without seeing that =)

The last spot was another lagoon, which was basically like a big open cave:

There was a small cliff jump (which we didn’t do) and a zip line:

Oh, and did I forget to mention that all of the food was to die?! I managed to practice “moderation” for the first few days, but that kind of fell by the wayside towards the second half of the week 😛 I just couldn’t resist all of the delicious eats! There were 4 dinner restaurants, 2 lunch restaurants, and a buffet that was pretty much in a league of it’s own. Liz and I pretty much owned that joint. Here are just a few of my filled-to-the-brim plates:

We only ate at two of the restaurants: Miyagi (Japanese) and Krystal (fushion cuisine). This wasn’t your typical hotel restaurant food…it was legit fine dining. Miyagi was probably my favorite. Liz and I shared pretty much all of the following:

 

 

At Krystal we started with some tapas, which I wasn’t too impressed with:

But this pumpkin soup with a seared scallop was hands down one of the best dished I’ve ever had:

We ended our eating fest with a bang on our last night when we ordered room service at 4am. I’m just the picture of health right now, aren’t I? 😛

Okay, maybe we didn’t finish all of that food. But it was free….can you really blame us?

I can officially say I feel stuffed just looking at all of the food I consumed over the past week! I don’t think I would’ve had it any other way =) But I will say that I’m definitely looking forward to getting back to my healthy eating schedule.

…But getting back to my normal work/life schedule? Not so much :/ I feel like I was in a dream world for a week and now I need to snap back into reality. I’m sure I’ll be re-adjusted in a few days or so.

Hope you all enjoyed reliving my vacation with me! I missed you all so much, and thanks for the sweet comments you left me while I was gone I’m off to do a million-and-one things on this Monday, so I better get going. Adios! xoxo G