Mary and Kevin

Riu Negril

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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