Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Every year, we take a small five day trip before feasting with in-laws and traveling to visit family. It is the perfect combination of time off: sun, family, and food. This year, we stayed at the amazing Mia Reef Resort for four days Sunday, November 29 to Thursday, November 24. We were pleasantly surprised that Chicago O’Hare airport was not very crowded on our travel dates.
In September, we snagged tickets to Cancun for $250. We had a layover in Miami on the way there. On the return trip, American Airlines gifted everyone with a surprise of removing the Philly layover and our return flight became a direct flight from Cancun to Chicago. First time that’s ever happened for us. It usually pays to book the flights with layovers (unless it’s a layover in NY or NJ b/c of price of ubers and hotels).
Additional expenses included:
– Miami hotel “Even” ($109 with free shuttle from/to airport)
– Cancun Airport Transportation from Cancun airport to the ferry (round trip $100). This was kind of pricey.
– UltraMar ferry rides to Isla Mujeres ($135 roundtrip for four people)
– Mera lounge passes in Cancun ($60 for four people due to benefit from American Express Platinum cc). These reservations were well worth it since it included unlimited food/drink, and Cancun airport is so expensive.
– We did not redeem any hotels.com rewards since they changed their ways of applying rewards unfortunately. We may need to find a new hotels booking website.
We also saved on transport walked from the ferry to Mia Reef Resort (15 minute walk through the cute northern downtown, an $8.50 cab ride). Mia Reef is pretty much its own island off of Playa del Norte.
We spent most days in the water snorkeling, swimming, and kayaking. The resort had complimentary snorkel gear, paddle boards, and kayaks, although we brought our own snorkel gear. We all loved the snorkeling at the Mia reef. We saw numerous schools of both big and little fish, sting rays, and so much beauty under the sea. We saw tourist groups come through to explore the snorkeling at Mia Reef while we were there. You could see some fish from above the water even:
One day after dinner, we ventured across the bridge and walked into the downtown area for souvenirs. It was cute.
We also explored “King’s Pool”, which was a natural cove at Mia Reef Resort on the eastern side of the island for snorkeling. The snorkeling here, and in addition to the beach snorkeling, was just amazing. We used swim shoes that we had packed.
We also spent a good amount of time at the giant chess board:
We started in a villa room with double beds, but the front desk was more than accommodating by upgrading our room to the Ocean Villa, which included a king and a sofa bed, but most importantly– the outdoor bed. Plus, the ceviche bar brought us the lunch ceviche due to our close proximity. It was the most luxurious thing I have experienced.
My husband and I were so happy with the food choices including quality seafood cuisine for the adults and a nice variety for the kids. We don’t usually go back to the same place, but we may make an exception for Mia! It was everything we wanted in a vacation.
Big Families Can Travel Too 