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Hi Pam! We are back from
Jamaica, and I wanted to let you know what a great time we had. We
had no trouble at all with the travel -- flight on Air Jamaica was
awesome, and the shuttle to the hotel was very easy and pleasant.
The resort itself is absolutely beautiful -- the grounds, the rooms,
the beach, the restaurants -- EVERYTHING was beautiful. We had a
room on the top floor of the 2nd building, and encountered no
"musty" odor, no bug problem (never saw one cockroach anywhere on
the resort), no air conditioning issues, -- nothing at all to
complain about! The food and drinks were fabulous, the staff was
the best, and the beach was clean and beautiful. We got to eat at
all three a la carte restaurants and didn't wait in line for more
than 15 minutes any day. But, I can see why people complain about
that process --it's really archaic -- and they only seem to sit
40-50 people each night in any of the a la carte restaurants. I
don't think there was ONE night when all three were open, but the
food in the buffet is really good and we didn't get tired of it as
there was so much variety. BUT, people complained every day about
the a la carte restaurants and got pretty angry about it!
All of your suggestions were right on target. We took lots of $1
and $5 dollar bills for tips, and this is a MUST-DO. We did NOT
bring a travel mug, and were very sorry we didn't! We brought
towels and a candle to hide the "musty" odor in the room, but
we never needed either of these items -- thankfully! There were
plenty of towels available in the towel hut by the pool (and we
changed out our towels a couple of times a day), and never had to
light the candle as we had no musty odor in our room. My husband
likes the room COLD and the air conditioner worked absolutely fine.
It rained every single day starting at about 12 noon, so there was
lots of heat and lots of humidity, but no bugs (at least not in our
room), no mustiness, and no heat in our room. We followed your
advice about the taxis -- we intended to walk a block or two from
the hotel to find a non-hotel taxi stand driver, and before we even
left the property, we saw several of them parked outside. We hired
one to drive us around for a couple of days, and he took us to the
craft market, "downtown" Negril, Rick's Cafe, and Mayfield Falls.
It was great! We felt very safe with him, and the locals seemed to
appreciate that we weren't part of a big bus tour giving all the
money back to the resort. We like to exercise so we ran on the
beach -- once on seven-mile beach, and several times on the Bloody
Bay beach -- and we really didn't see any other resort that made us
think we wished we were staying there. The other resorts (Couples,
Hedonism, Beaches, etc.) looked nice enough from the beach, but they
looked basically void of people. Once you get to the Riu, you see
people on the beach, at the pool, everywhere. The other resorts
looked like ghost towns.
So, we had a GREAT time. All of your suggestions/recommendations
were right on the money. THANK YOU very much. (If there's any
aspect of our trip that I didn't comment about that you are wanting
feedback for, let me know and I'll be happy to tell you -- I could
write for pages and pages about our trip---I'm keeping it short for
your sake!)
A co-worker of my husband's is interested in a trip to Riu Negril,
and we will be giving her your contact information.
We hope to work with you again in the future, as we really hope to
start traveling more now. Thanks again, Pam. Our honeymoon was
outstanding thanks to your suggestions and recommendations.
Sincerely,
Mary
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