Hotel Alarms at Dawn, Donut Debates, Private Pool for Three, and Shells, Shells, and More Shells

At exactly 7:44am the hotel siren began to sound at full blast. The whooping of the siren was followed by high decibel bleats and then the humorless voice of a woman announcing that “An alarm has been detected in your area, please stay tuned for further instructions.” This siren/announcement played on a loop for a full 15 minutes before it stopped. As if that were not sufficient punishment, after finally falling back asleep the telephone began ringing at 8:30am, and why you ask was the woman on the phone calling at this early hour, “Good Mahrning Mrs. Bahrenst-eye-in, this is Charlotte cawlin’ to ah-pollo-chize for dee ah-larm dis mahrnin’. I wuz makin’ waffles in the Club kitchen fahr brek-fahst and burned dem which set ahff dee ah-larm. Everyting is figh-en and der is not’in’ to worry bout. I’ll luke fahrward to seein’ you and de children up here at de Club lah-yet-er dis mahrnin fahr brek-fahst.” Brilliant.

After this second wake up, I figured it was probably best to get up rather than fall back asleep and surely be awoken again, probably to be informed that there would be pancakes for breakfast. The kids enjoyed taste testing the mini donuts at breakfast, comparing the vanilla and chocolate was a serious business for these two aficionados. The vanilla were deemed the superior flavor after much vigorous debate. Justin also shared with us his "cool look" which you can appreciate in the breakfast pic above, it is a look only to be used to display natural coolness in front of the camera and not to be attempted by amateurs or imposters.

We decided to spend the day at the pool reserved for Cove guests only, which is on a much quieter part of the beach and as we discovered quite a bit swankier. Me likey! Carefully selected pool attendants and servers are plentiful here, and the billowy soft lounge chair cushions are divine as are the bright canary yellow towels which play magically off the turquoise color of the Caribbean.

We spent hours hunting for shells on the beach. The beach is littered with thousand of perfect miniature conch, nautilus and every other type of shell imaginable, and the kids marveled at how many beautiful shells they gathered. At lunchtime I queued up in the line that was forming at the poolside grill to order our food but a kind server named Estella, lead me to an empty table where we sat comfortably in the shade as she took our food order. Justin, Livvy and I spent hours on the lazy river and revisited our favorite slides as well, but mostly we enjoyed our serene, cordoned off slice of the resort.

Feeling adventurous, we had dinner off the resort at a delicious restaurant called Café Matisse, and closed out the day with an impromptu photo shoot in the romantically lit foyer of the hotel.