Mexico Christmas Eve

What to do on Christmas Eve? The resort was having a turkey dinner for all the guests, all the theme restaurants and the two huge buffets were serving the same meal, and while it probably would be sort of fun to have a turkey dinner in Mexico, the idea of Mexican staff cooking turkey and all the trimmings for some three or four thousand people, all to be served at pretty much the same time...well, we were all a bit hesitant as to how good it would actually be. Plus, the resort had given everyone "appointment times" for dinner...meet in the lobby at 7:30 and they'll tell you where your dinner is at.....meh, I'm too cranky for that sort of thing.

"Besides" as everyone said, "Besides, we can have turkey any time."

"Well" I muttered under my breath "Yeah.. if I make it you can...did it occur to anyone that maybe I might want someone else to cook me a turkey dinner?"

And then I laughed, because it's a well known fact in our house that I'll go out for a bag of chips if someone else is opening it....I am a good cook, but I can't say that I enjoy cooking.  Actually, that's not quite true...I don't mind the cooking part, but I despise trying to decide what to cook and then the grocery buying aspect of it all is equally repugnant to me. If I ever win a big lottery, that would be one of the things I'd do...hire a planner to make my menus and buy all the ingredients. I'd happily cook, and I don't even mind the clean-up. Just tell me what to do.

But, as they say, I digress.

Scott had asked our concierge for another suggestion and was told that we had to try ALUX, pronounced "aloosh". She said it was in a cave, and we thought that sounded interesting, so we got our taxi fellas to take us there. It's a little off the beaten path, a few blocks off the main tourist street, but in a kind of dicey area...not sure I'd want to walk there at night.

But what a treat it was...a really large cavern, complete with stalactites and stalagmites and pools of water. When you enter, you go down small flight of stairs and a large-ish dining area and bar are there, which is where we ate. But, after dinner we walked around and there are all sorts of small 'private' dining areas, a tiny disco and  little rooms tucked into small nooks and crannies...it was like something from Star Wars, or a Hobbit movie.

The food was amazing as well, I think the bill for 5 of us, appetizers, dinner and drinks(one person had steak & lobster...) was about $50 Cdn each, that included a decent tip, so while it wasn't cheap, it wasn't horribly pricey.\

After our dinner, we decided to stroll down 5th Ave again, about half of the  places were closed, being Christmas Eve and all, but  there was still enough open shops to browse through, and pick up a few more souvenirs.

 I always wanted to try one of these 'fish spas", but I chickened out...who knows what might be in that tank?

More Festive decorations!

We eventually headed back to the resort, and before bed I had a few "flat" presents for everyone that I had packed, bookmarks, lotto tickets and some gift certificates, as well as a little tree that I had tucked in my suitcase as well. We opened our gifts, and then hit the sack. Tomorrow we were heading home.
I left the doily and tree, along with an envelope with a nice tip (and a Feliz Navidad card) for the fellow who had taken care of our room for us...he was a funny little man who hugged us whenever he saw us, and tried to learn some English phrases as well.