Day 2 - a wedding planner, a beach and a little Havana dreaming...

Our second day in Playa we slept a little late, enjoyed the view from our patio and set out about 10:30 to meet with what turned out to be one delightful lady!

Our son and his fiance are planning a July wedding in Playa and asked that we meet with Maria of weddingsinplaya.com. Our assignment was to check out Maria, the proposed wedding venue and sample the venue's culinary offerings.

We met Maria at Fusion for a quick smoothie and then rode with her to The Beach Club at Grand Coral.

Before I tell you about the beach club I must say this, riding with a local in Playa is an adventure. Maybe even more so than riding in a taxi. Also, it should be mentioned that Maria is Italian. And, to quote Maria (imagine hand gestures moving dramatically through the air!), "the Italian in me comes out when I drive".

With this said, Maria took a "shortcut" to avoid the highway construction. The "shortcut" gave us the opportunity to see several Playa sites we had never seen before including a gentleman carrying two chickens by their feet. The chickens had apparently just met their demise and were off to what was surely a large pot of boiling water.

On our return trip I would bet my bottom peso we actually collided with another car. The other driver and Maria exchanged words through sign language without ever slowing down.

Just when I wasn't sure what might happen next our delightful Italian lady gestures to him as only she could and says, "oh, **** off"!

The Senor, brother-in-law and I sat in silence willing ourselves not to laugh. All I could think was, well, all righty then!

Back to the mission at hand...

We found The Beach Club at Grand Coral to be the perfect venue for the upcoming nuptials.


Our report back went something like this:

Maria is (I'll say it again!) delightful!

The venue is spectacular!

The food was muy excelente!

Let the festivities begin!

We spent that afternoon at the beach basking in the beautiful sun, sand and atmosphere that is Playa (oh - and I had a massage!).

The beach was crowded and I enjoyed listening to the various accents from around the world. Dutch, French, German, Spanish, English and some we didn't recognize.

To quote the song, it was a "lovely day...lovely day...lovely day...lovely day"!





We had dinner that evening on the north end at a very cool Cuban restaurant, La Bodequita Del Medio.



The food, the service, the atmosphere and the band were all top notch. La Bodequita Del Medio is now on my "highly suggested" list.

Like most of our nights in Playa we ended up at Fusion...

watching the moon...

and the stars...

listening to the waves...

and trying to solve the worlds problems...