Waking up, we were happy to find that the sun was shining and our all-inclusive breakfast was delicious. As we were on vacation and making the best of a bad situation, we finished breakfast and promptly found ourselves a place by the pool to relax, swim, and relax some more while waiting for The Royalton Hicacos to send someone over to pick us up. The children running around making noise made the relaxing difficult. The drinks, however, helped balance it out and made relaxing easier. The pickup didn’t happen until after lunch, so I killed some time taking pictures of the fountain in the lobby upside down.

I will give The Royalton Hicacos credit for making up for our lousy arrival experience. Eduardo, the reservation manager, met us at the hotel to apologize for the problem and lead us over to the other hotel. After taking us back to the hotel we wanted, he offered us a free tour (which we took a few days later), a glass of Champagne, and was very accommodating.

While waiting, we ran into a German couple who had also been sent to the other hotel. They were stuck over there for two nights instead of one like us, but apparently, the experience they had was worse. They didn’t want to talk about it at all.

Our room still wasn’t ready, so they took our bags and showed us around the resort, including where we would find lunch and get towels for the pool.  So we had some food and spent the rest of the day waiting for our room by the pool.

Our second day we grabbed one of the hop-on hop-off buses that stop at the resort. At the first stop near a market we got off and had a look for some souvenirs where I picked up a hat to keep my white face looking white in the hot sun. The hat was inexpensive and, as we later found out, easily available for purchase in about every place we visited. At first a bit rough but with some warm sweat and good use, it became more comfortable throughout the trip and was going to be a good souvenir on its own upon our return to Ireland.

I made a video about the hat upon our return

The hat, unfortunately, was placed in the overhead along with my carry-on bag for the flight home, and not being one who regularly wears a hat, I forgot it on the plane. It was a sad day.