Travel and other junk

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Today we woke up bright and early, ate too much for breakfast, enjoyed the pool and then headed over to Paseo Cayala here in Guatemala City. I’m ashamed to admit that in the 3 times I have been to GUA, I have done basically 0 exploring.

Paseo Cayala was pretty much something you would imagine out of a storybook. I couldn’t believe how stunningly beautiful this part of the city is! 100% recommend taking a few hours to go and visit. The best part, it’s incredibly kid friendly. You can rent bikes and little power wheel like cars for the kids for dirt cheap and they can ride up and down the roads and no one cares.

Oh, and we found an Indian food restaurant and it ended up being freaking incredible. Fun fact, I love Indian food more than anything and I try it in every single country or state I visit. So far, the very best Indian food I have ever had is from a popular little place in good ‘ol Provo, Utah. This place in Guatemala was the closest competitor and in some ways, it was better!

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Day 1 is off to an awesome start. We made it back to DFW a few hours before take off. It probably took us 10 minutes to go through security and get to our gate, which is probably a world record! We made it to Guatemala and immigration lines were non-existent. Our shuttle was ready and waiting for us and got us quickly to our hotel in minutes. We got right into our room without a hitch. I’m still in shock over how smoothly this aspect of our trip was.

We are staying at the new Hyatt Centric in Guatemala City and I can’t even believe it’s only a category 2, so 8k World of Hyatt points a night. Last year it was a cat 3, 12k points a night, and still a bargain at that. I’m not exaggerating when I say they have the most amazing breakfast ever. They remembered us from last year, as well, and brought me my Coke Zero with lime ASAP. Best! Place! Everrrr!!!

We made it to the Salt Lake City airport yesterday afternoon only to see our flight out had been delayed due to mechanical junk. The delay was only an hour and ten minutes, buttttt that was exactly the amount of time we had for our connection so no Guatemala for us that evening.

I called American Airlines and after an hour of holding they were able to get us on to the next flight out, which was the next day, over 24 hours later. Most people would be frustrated and upset, but not me.

Trip insurance for the win.

On a whim, and because I no longer have any premium cards with great travel insurance on them, I spent $140 on trip insurance from Allianz. I’m expecting them to cover all of our expenses, plus new clothing, toiletries, etc. that were all in our checked luggage and currently inaccessible. AA gave us food vouchers, as well. Hyatt was the best, as usual, and let us cancel our one night in GUA and reuse our free night certificate here in Dallas. I’m hoping to be able to double dip with the hotel “expense” and come out way on top!

Really, it’s been the best lay over. The kids are loving the pool and the warm weather.

Now time to pack up again and finally head to Guate!!!

Also, we are slobs. See photo A.

Take 23929 at writing a blog! I’ve made some sad attempts in the past to document our travels and day-to-day shenanigans, which, needless to say, failed miserably, but I think I am finally ready to really give this a try. As much as I love Instagram, it just isn’t cutting it when it comes to sharing allllll the details, so, here we go and hopefully attempt number 23930 will never have the chance to rear its ugly head.