I woke up the next morning and looked at the clock… 6:20.  Wait, I think I read on the Excellence Times that sunrise was at 6:50.   I started throwing everything I could think of into my beach bag.  The bear sleepily looked at me and said, “What are you doing?”

“Beach!”  I exclaimed.

“Now?” he asked…  I think he was back asleep before I answered.

I scurried down.  The air was warm and very, very still.  I was glad that I had brought plenty of insect repellent lotion and smeared it all over me.  I could SEE and HEAR some bugs, but they weren’t biting me. Back home, we were on a two hour delay for possible ice!

When I got to the beach, most of the covers were taken off the Bali beds because they had gotten very wet from all the rain the day before.  There was one, however, that was still on and it wasn’t bad at all.  I got an armload of towels.  (That’s one of my favorite things about this resort.  Towels are easily accessible EVERYWHERE, and you can have as many as you want!   They’re harder to come by at other resorts.)  It wasn’t long before Ignacio came along and did a far better job of setting up my bed than I had, but it was still a great morning and so worth it to be there for the sunrise.

I stayed down there for about 3 hours before the bear decided to join me.  I haven’t read a book in a stretch for that long in FOREVER. I was LOVING it.  Eventually, he joined me and had stopped at Aroma on the way over.  He had a bag of croissants and some coffee.  This is when I FINALLY figured out that coffee was the heartburn culprit, and didn’t make the mistake again.  I ventured down on the beach and went in the water for the first time since day one.  It was CRYSTAL clear.  I saw a small stingray hiding under the sand and enjoyed just splashing around.

Bear had said that he wanted at least some pool time, so we decided to walk up the beach to Las Olas for ceviche and burgers for lunch.  I love that place.  I love that they usually have live music going on and such a variety of things to taste.  Their fries weren’t as good there as that The Grill or at Toscana but everything else was very good.

We walked over to the main pool and we could only find one or two single chairs that weren’t taken, but I walked back behind the Sol bar over by the building 9 non-EC pool and the bathrooms and there were a BUNCH of spots that weren’t taken; we put our stuff there and got in the main pool for awhile.  I have always wanted to participate in one of the activities.  We played BINGO in the pool and it was a blast.  The rain started to come in again, still we stayed in the pool in the rain for a time before getting out.  We split a meat lover’s pizza from the wood fired oven, and it was great.  I also always love the cheese fingers at the Sports Bar… it wasn’t quite open, yet. We decided to spend just a little time at the building 8 pool before going back to the sports bar to have some of the cheese fingers.  They’re a tiny order of just three, so they’re not particularly guilt inducing… and so good with a beer after a long day of doing nothing.

Tuesday night was date night at Agave and something I’ve always wanted to try. We decided to go to The Lobster House to get just a steamed lobster as an appetizer; then, back to Agave for dinner.  When we got there, the hostess recognized me from my Facebook posts and gave us an extra special table just over the pool.  We both ordered tails–Mine, thermidor; bears, garlic butter.  It’s a different kind of lobster than Maine, but they do SUCH a good job there. Before it could come to us, however, the rain started to really come down and got our pretty table all wet.  No worries in paradise, though, we just scooted further in the restaurant and had our tails there.

The rain had lightened up… some… and we decided to make our way over to Agave.  The hostess gave us an umbrella to use, and we had to go down one of the few uncovered pathways at the resort.

I felt bad for them at Agave; you could tell that the setup had been even more romantic, but all of the candles in the open area had gone out from the rain and the tables were all pushed back under the covered parts.  It did make it QUITE stuffy.  The menu is different for date night.  You get a starter salad which was a tasty shrimp.  You have soup which was a creamy walnut, and I went with the vegetarian option, the bear went with the steak.  He said it was good.  Mine was good, too, except the artichoke did not taste fresh.  We decided to forgo dessert because we wanted to try the “famous” peanut butter cake at the grill.   The atmosphere and the music at Agave were lovely.  It was just so hot and stuffy!

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As we walked over the The Grill (again, the ONLY uncovered part of the resort) the rain started to threaten again.  We got in just in time, and the cake did not disappoint.z
The bear suggested we have ONE drink at Havana with Diego  (good luck with that), and we braved the rain one last time to go back between buildings 7 and 8.  It was rocking in there with our friends from night’s past and two lovely new couples from the UK.  The single drink was a double from the very beginning… followed by a few shots that Diego made for everyone, but then it was bedtime.

It was to be our last night in paradise for this time around.  Still, I knew we had until noon the next day, and it’s not like it was going to be our last trip!!!