This year for Thanksgiving we did something a little different… We went to Mexico! Thanksgiving is a holiday we typically spend with Alex’s family because his sister and her husband are usually in Italy for Christmas {her husband is from Italy}. This year we picked Mexico because Alex’s parents wanted to take a trip with us to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary, which was in October. Puerto Vallarta, Mexico turned out to be the perfect spot!
Alex and I headed south a few days before everyone else so we could get a mini vacation just the two of us down there since last time we were in PV we didn’t have any time to ourselves. It turned out that the flying gods were not on our sides, though, because we ended up getting stuck in San Diego, where we had a layover.
There are far worse places to be than San Diego, so we made the most of it and did a little exploring around the city. We had a fantastic dinner at Queenstown Public House. It was SO good. We loved walking through the Little Italy neighborhood and seeing all of the holiday decorations.
24 hours after we were supposed to land in Puerto Vallarta, we finally made it! The weather was gorgeous that day and we made it through the immigration line in literally 1 minute, which was a stark contrast to the last time I went through immigration there!
Both of us enjoyed our evening together, though we were exhausted from our second travel day, and then we patiently awaited the arrival of Alex’s parents the next day.
It was so nice to be back in Puerto Vallarta again – it had only been about 9 months since we were there, but Alex didn’t spend more than 24 hours in PV so he had fun exploring and checking things out.
{One of the first nights we took a cab into Old Town and walked along the beach and had a fantastic dinner right on the sand at La Palapa. It was a top favorite for us all!}{Gorgeous view out to sea.}{View up the coast from Old Town.}{Most of our days were spent by the pool or walking the beach. We all had great rooms at the Casa Magna Marriott, which I would HIGHLY recommend, and I loved watching the sunrise from my bed!}{The weather was great for most of the trip, though we did have two very rainy days and a couple other overcast days. It surely didn’t ruin the fun, though! We made the best of the weather and found other things to entertain us.}{Alina and I planned a special celebration on Wednesday night for Donna and Stan to commemorate their anniversary. We started out with a photo shoot!}
{The photos led us down to the beach…}{I didn’t get a good photo, but we had a special table on the beach and had a delicious 3-course dinner. It was so intimate and personal and I had fun listening to Donna and Stan telling stories of memories of their 35 years of marriage.}{The weather turned on us on Thanksgiving day, but we were grateful that the hotel was preparing special Thanksgiving dinners for the Americans! Donna and Stan’s balcony was enormous and had a table big enough for all of us, so we pulled the table under the overhang and had our turkey dinner outside in the rain.}{The hotel prepared a turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, veggies, cranberry and rolls for us. We were quite surprised how great it tasted!}{The turkey was so tender and juicy we were able to carve it with a butter knife!}{We had one more rainy day on our trip, which we spent in Old Town and the Romantic Zone.}
{My personal favorite restaurant of the whole trip was Casa Tradicional. I absolutely LOVED the carnitas – the presentation was incredible but the flavor was out of this world!}{The margarita glasses were so pretty!}{Holidays in PV!}{On our last night in PV we had a final celebratory dinner at Cafe de Artistes. The ambiance of the restaurant was so neat – we were outside in a jungle-like setting. The menu was a Mexican-French fusion. We had a really great last night!}{The guys enjoyed smoking cigars out on the little point in front of the hotel.}{Eventually the weather cleared and the sun came back out!}
{Alex and I had such a wonderful trip! It was so nice to get to spend so many days with Alex’s family. We are so very fortunate that we’re able to take trips and meet somewhere so we can have that uninterrupted time together!}
