We got back to The Pearl on Tuesday, but not before spending an interesting weekend.

Last Friday we moved from our hotel in The Gallery district of San Jose del Cabo to the Zona Hotelera. We stayed at Krystal Grand Los Cabos, an all inclusive resort.

This was our first experience with an all inclusive resort, going in I compared it to a cruise ship, without the ship, and I was not far off. The location was right on the beach, yet it was at the end of the hotel zone which meant it was not close to the shops and restaurants prevalent in the heart of the zone. It is a mid-range basic property, not in the same leagues as the Hyatt and Hilton properties just down the road, and of course, that is reflected in the cost, and the luxury level, but it is much more budget friendly. The staff did make up for a bit of the deficiency in other areas, though overall we were disappointed and will most likely not stay at all inclusive properties again.

The best part of the property was the pools, just hanging out at them is the major activity on the property.

The food offerings were pretty much average, with a couple of exceptions, but the dining experience was not outstanding – reviews on TripAdvisor support our findings. There were only three wine choices: white, red, or champagne which was the best of the three (note the small “c”, this did not come from France). At the Italian restaurant on the first night I had oso buco, which I will admit was quite good.

Read about the highlight of the stay on Tricia’s post today, it was amazing but had little to do with the resort.

Pool time gave me sketching time.

If you read my Tuesday post you saw that I was reverting to graphite, which is what I used the most. First I did a few of what I call “shape sketching” because there is little detail, just capturing the shape with 5mm graphite in a KOH-I-NOOR holder. This is easy and quick, and the only way to ruin it is to obsess over the lack of details.

Monday was Tricia’s birthday, though she got her best present on Saturday – be sure to check her post today.

As is our tradition, a good restaurant is part of most any celebration and the resort certainly did not have such an offering. One of our Uber drivers was also a chef, she recommended a place called Acre, a farm to table restaurant at the Acre Resort.

It was about a 20 minute ride from Krystal, the last ten minutes were on a dusty, rutty, dirt road through roughly developed hills. We ended up in a jungle setting with, suprise of surprise, a luxury resort. It was quite a place, with treehouse accommodations as well as cabins. We are not sure about us staying there after we heard that snake sightings are not uncommon. But, the restaurant and the service was such a welcome change from Krystal.

My main was fish tacos.

Since it was Tricia’s birthday they brought Champagne (the real stuff from France) and sorbet. Read more about it an upcoming post on Tricia’s site.

It was a good trip, our first to Mexico in 37 years, and we confirmed that Europe is still our favorite. The pool time was good, but I just don’t really like swimming much any more, and I was even a lifeguard at one time. Yet we are so glad we went, we had some good food and some quality time, but now we are planning for our Europe trip, tickets are in hand for Europe in May.

Would love to hear your thoughts, hope you are enjoying friends in these turbulent days, and capturing some of the moments with pencil and paint.