With less than 24 hours until the New Year, the hubs, our very dear friends and I decided to check out Hotel Costa Galana's outdoor Pool and the Beach. But we needed fuel. So, we took advantage of the hotel's all you can eat breakfast buffet!
And here's a video of the breakfast buffet. Trust me. If your mouth isn't watering after watching it, then you need to check for a pulse.
After breakfast, we got dressed for the beach and took the elevator down to this passageway that had paintings on the wall. It was like being in an art gallery. The corridor led directly to the hotel's private pool and beach section.
Every hotel in the area has their own pool and/or outdoor lounge area. But once you get to the beach, guests staying at different hotels can use the same private beach area. The only thing guests can't do is use the other hotel's pool or beach gazebo. I'll show you what these look like when I post more about the beach in day 4.
There is a public beach further away, which I imagine is way more crowded, but I prefer the private beach area a lot better.
Now, let me share with you some images and videos of what our pool and beach experience was like.
Damn! It's been a couple of years since I swam in the water. The best I could muster up was the frog stroke. I'll admit that after I was done I felt like I was about to have a heart attack. Maybe it was that huge breakfast I ate earlier.
After spending some time in the pool, we checked out the beach, which made me extremely nostalgic for home. As some of you already know, I grew up in Miami. It was my hometown and my parents and I would go to Miami Beach a lot! But those trips to the beach ended when we moved to Orlando, Florida. The hubs and I did visit the beach in Key West in the early 2000s but there were too many rocks on the sand to really enjoy a barefoot walk. And, of course, we got even further away from the beach when we moved to the Bronx, New York. But Cordoba City, Argentina doesn't have beaches. Alright, some of the locals will argue that the murky ponds of certain wooded areas in their province are beaches, but I don't.
Thankfully, life granted me the chance to reconnect with the beach in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
After walking on the sandy beach and chilling at the pool, we went looking for a place to eat. Luckily, there were a couple of restaurants parallel to the beach area. I'll show you what these look like when I post about day 4.
We settled on a restaurant called Antares, but later regretted it.
We didn't mind waiting a little extra for our food, but we were expecting 20 to 30 minutes at most. We never imagined we would have to wait an hour and a half for our food to arrive. At one point, the waiter came back and asked us to refresh his memory of what we had ordered. Then, he came back and apologized for the delay with our orders. But he never offered us free refills or a discount. Obviously, some of the folks that had sat down around the same time as us walked out of the restaurant. But we were too tired to do that and decided to wait.
Eventually, our food arrived and it looked delicious. I can safely say that none of us had any complaints. But I wouldn't step foot in Antares again if you paid me. The wait time was unforgivable.
It was almost 5 o'clock by the time we were done eating. That left us with only three and a half hours before the New Year's Eve Party inside one of the hotel's restaurants. So, we headed back to our respective rooms to "make space," shower, and rest.
I'll share how we said goodbye to the New Year in my next post.
To Be Continued...
