Greg Higgins

Well it’s Sunday and that means my vacation is about to be officially over. Tomorrow I go back to the grind and normal routine of adulting. This year my wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary (July 11th), so we decided to take a trip to Puerto Vallarta. We had been several times before but all before the pandemic.

We flew out on Saturday. Our hotel was the Riu Vallarta. We stayed there before and loved it. They made some renovations since last time and made some changes but for the most part it was still the same great place.

The food was amazing. They have five restaurants on the property. One of them, an Italian place, is new and I swear they had the best lasagna I’ve ever eaten in my life. It was phenomenal. So good, in fact, that we had to go back on a different night just to eat it again.

The hotel is right on the beach so we spent most of our time sitting out there, soaking up some sun.

The highlight of the trip, though, was an excursion called Rhythm’s of the Night. You get on a boat and take an hour long boat ride at sunset.

Then, you walk through this forest area until arriving at a huge amphitheater. Performers come out and put on a spectacular hour long show with contortionists, jugglers, balancing acts, and many other crazy stunts. After that, you go to the beach and have a private dinner on the beach with candlelight. It’s truly spectacular.

What makes this even better is that I got in good with the captain and mentioned it was our anniversary. He told me he was going to take care of it. And he did. He gave us great seats for the show. Seats in which I got picked (multiple times) to get up on stage and perform with some of the actors. Then we got our own private serenade while we ate. After dinner they brought out this beautiful red velvet cake for us to eat.

We got back from our trip on Friday and both wish we would have stayed longer. Last night we capped off our vacation week with a trip to watch Shakespeare in the Park. They played “Much Ado About Nothing”. It was enjoyable. We took some food and drinks and had a little picnic under the stars while watching the show.

It was a great week. I unplugged from the world. I didn’t do much with my phone. I left it locked in a safe in the hotel room for most of the trip. I took a digital camera and got most of my photos with that instead. We played Rummy in the lobby of the hotel most nights while we listened to the band play music. It was a much needed vacation.