Patrick is basically the best employee at his office. Sure, I may be a little biased toward him, but objectively each year his company does a ‘stack rank’ in which they review every employee and score them. The top ranking employees get to go on the annual “Achiever’s Club” trip. So because Patrick is awesome I got to go on an all expense paid 5 day vacation at the all inclusive Iberostar Grand Resort. Patrick went too.

I’ve always been a bit skeptical about “all-inclusive” resorts. It seems like there has to be a catch so I assumed that, for example, you could have all of the alcohol you want as long as you choose from their selection of three super cheap drinks. I assumed wrong.

From what I can tell “all-inclusive” means have what you want when you want it. I imagine it’s similar to living with 50 Cent, you know, pre-bankruptcy. Okay, maybe not that extreme, but you could order all the room service you wanted. You could swim up to a bar in the pool and order whatever drink your little heart desired. Sure, you would have to ask for the top shelf liquor, but all you had to do was ask. You could have someone draw you a bath, change the scent in your room, or bring you a new pillow specifically selected from the pillow menu. They had a menu for pillows.

What that meant for us is that Patrick ate copious amounts of prosciutto at every meal, and I spent whole days reading by the pool and/or ocean. I did lose Patrick’s goggles, but I feel like he should just be grateful that the wave didn’t sweep me away with them. It was amazing, but I haven’t even gotten to the best part.

SNUBA!!!! So snuba is a cross between scuba and snorkeling. You don’t have to be certified to snuba dive because someone else is controlling the air tank that you are tethered to. So you get to enjoy the wonders of breathing underwater without the work of learning how to do it for yourself. A fish bit me. It hurt, but I survived with but a tiny scar on the tip of my pinky finger. After snuba-ing we dried off by driving some speedboats “James Bond style.”

Patrick built a sandcastle.

We’re going, like, James Bond fast.

How I spent most of my days.

SNUBA!!!!

RIP goggles

Iberostar Grand

All in all it was a fantastic trip. I know there are many travelers who will judge me for saying this, but I would totally go to an all-inclusive resort again.