Upon check-in at the hotel, our concierge guy Marcos convinced us to sit through a 90-minute presentation about the Melia membership club. We were hesitant but, after a lot of back and forth, he promised he would pay for our $200 meal at the Passion by Martin Berasategui restaurant and gave us two 50 minute massages for the price of one at the spa ($150 savings). For a 90-minute presentation at 8 AM over breakfast, the $350 worth of stuff was with the time sacrifice. We researched the presentation before going into it and read a lot about how some people’s tours were 2 hours, how you needed to be very firm with the sales people, and how some people spent way too much money on a membership and couldn’t get out of it. We put together a game plan going into the pitch to make sure we stood firm that we were not going to buy.
Our sales guy was quite nice and apparently, Marcos gave more free perks that he was supposed to. We had breakfast at the buffet and talked before the sales guy showed us a few luxury suites, and then took us to their business office to show us the club membership. The pitch boiled down to a $42K price tag on a partially covered 1 week vacation every year for 50 years, however, there were tons of crazy additional fees and your money bought points instead of hotel nights so the value of what you buy might change arbitrarily based on the chain’s whims. They also wanted the money within 24 months which equalled out to payments more than our rent! We were flabbergasted at the “deal” and were joking about the ridiculous cost with so many caveats.
Our sales guy quickly realized that we were not buying and we were done with the presentation in under an hour. For all the stuff we received, it was very worth it, but some of the other couples we met here had a bit higher pressure sales person and it wasn’t quite as easy to make a get-away. If you do decide to go in for the pitch, make sure you have a game plan ahead of time so you don’t sign up for something you regret.
After the pitch, we found some lounge chairs by the pool and lathered up with sun screen. The weather was perfect and the sun came out right as we laid down. Being the antsy person I am, I left Ryan to nap and headed to the pool bar. I started chatting with this super nice couple who were on their honeymoon. They also had recently visited Thailand, and were thinking about going to Peru, so we had lots to chat about! Eventually, Ryan wandered over and we had a great conversation over some bloody Mary’s, mud slides, strawberry daiquiris, and then rum and Cokes. Unfortunately, all those drinks forgot to remind me to reapply sunblock, and my back got nice and uncomfortably red! Oops!
Around noon, the water-jazzercise started in the pool. We watched the two instructors do some pretty intense water moves outside of the pool for 20 minutes – they were so enthusiastic about their moves we hand to laugh! Eventually, we hopped out of the pool and headed to a sub par, pizza lunch at one of the restaurants. It seems that the cooks “forgot” to add marinara sauce to their pizzas, making for Hawaiian cheesy bread instead.
After lunch, we found a cabana by the pool and napped under the shade for a few hours. Talk about relaxing! Around 5, I attempted to go to spin class but the instructor hurt his back and canceled the class. Feeling a bit woozy on the treadmill, I decided to head back to the room, got ready, and went to a Rodizio dinner at the hotel before hailing a cab to head to Playa’s famous 5th Street.
We heard about 5th Street from quite a few people. It is about 2 miles of cute local and chain shops, beauty parlors, restaurants, and bars. We were dropped off at the end closes to our hotel and we walked for about two hours down the street. There were tons of people! I left my sun hat on the Edventure shuttle from our sea-turtle tour the day prior, so we haggled a few shop keepers until I found a fabulous new sun hat at a great price. I was also very impressed by all the restaurants and bars. They were so cute and each had a very unique theme with amazing décor. It didn’t seem like there were any chain places at all (outside of Senior Frogs) and I wanted to stop and try all of them!
There were also loads of typical American shops like Nike, Sephora, Forever 21, but we only shopped the local ones since those are unique to the area. There were lots of nice leather goods and amazing art at very reasonable prices. I wish our apartment had more room for all the things I wanted to buy – especially the art! There was a full side street of amazing paintings by local artists.
We stayed on 5th the entire time and felt very safe. After so much walking, our feet started to complain and we hopped in a cab to head back to the hotel and then to bed.
The Impatient Traveler 