While at the Moon Palace, we spent most of our time by the pool. We knew that in order to get a palapa we had to reserve our seats fairly early. Every morning between seven and eight I would go out and put our towels on a couple of lounge chairs. I would also leave a few personal items such as books and hats. Now, if you loose a beach towel they charge you $20. This made me a little leery of leaving our towels to reserve our chairs. Next time I would make sure to bring our own beach towels. Besides, the towels they provided were a bit rough. Not very nice for sunburned skin.
I know there have been complaints about the beach at the Moon Palace. I thought it was still nice to look at, if not necessarily optimal for swimming. The stretch of sand between the Sunrise and Nizuc section makes a particularly nice evening walk for a couple wanting a little romantic stroll. One evening we got a bottle of champagne from one of the bars and enjoyed it on the beach while watching the full moon rise over the ocean.
The Palace resorts have a program that allows guests at any of the resorts to use the facilities at any of their other resorts. After a few days at the Moon Palace pool, we decided to take advantage of the shuttle to the Hotel Zone. We got off at the Beach Palace and had lunch overlooking the ocean. While the view was fantastic, the food was not nearly as good as at the Moon.
After lunch, we headed down the Hotel Zone and spent a little time at some of the malls. The best deal we found was at the Hard Rock. We always buy a Hard Rock hurricane or pint glass whenever we visit a new destination. If we bought a hurricane for $12, we could keep the $10 glass. Since we were going to buy the glass anyway, the hurricane was just a bonus. The rest of the shopping was a joke. You can get better deals in the States. Don’t even bother.
We caught the bus back to the Cancun Palace, as we had heard that it was nicer than the Beach. It was. If I wanted to spend some time playing in the ocean this is where I would do it. I heard that the showers available in the gym can be used to clean up after a day of beach frolicking for an evening of bar hopping. The only problem with spending an extended period of time at the Cancun Palace was that the only way to get bottled water was to buy it. I could have used a small, soft sided cooler loaded up with the bottled water available everywhere at the Moon.
I thought about heading down to the Aventura Palace to take advantage of some of the Spa services that were highly advertised. The only problem was that the round trip cab cost would have been about $80. Also, we had gotten so sunburned on our first day that it would not have been very pleasant to get a massage after that. I think if I had not been so burnt that I would have tried to make a deal for the round trip transportation to be included in the price of the spa services. EVERYTHING can be negotiated in Mexico.
We also missed out on spending any time at the Xpu-Ha Palace. One of the tours that we could have chosen to do would have allowed us to play at the Xpu-Ha after taking a tour of Tulum. This sounded attractive to me, as I wanted to see some ruins, but I did not want to spend all day in a bus