So Alex and I went to South Padre and it was teh roxxorz. Seriously. We drove in through dense fog on Friday evening and drove out through dense fog on Sunday morning, but Saturday was glorious and perfect.
We stayed at the Sheraton hotel. Hm. What to say… It wasn’t a regretful experience, by any means, but I’ll be looking for a different hotel if we do it again.
- :) - Location. Right next to our engagement spot on the beach.
- :) - Balcony. Partial view of the ocean. Lovely for breakfasts and vegging out.
- :) - Cleanliness. The room was nice, clean, and well-appointed (as old-timey folks would say).
- :) - Hot tub & pool. We enjoyed them. Met interesting people there. Clean and well-maintained (on the inside, at least). Met interesting people there.
- :) - Desk Clerks. Very helpful and nice.
- :( - Registration. I used the phone-in, actual-person method of registration, and still we found ourselves in a smoking room (we requested non-smoking) when we arrived. My nose, lungs and eyes are fairly sensitive to lingering nicotine in the walls an upholstery. The hotel was filling up, and there were few other room choices. We ended up in a disabled-access room, which was fine, except there was no tub or couch, and it kind of smelled like grandmas. One lady at the front desk informed us that sometimes the registration system just puts people in smoking rooms against their wishes, if it seems convenient. Crap like that really irritates me.
- :( - Hot tub deck. This was littered with half-drunk glasses of booze and cigarette butts. Not so romantic.
- :( - CONSTRUCTION! I had read about this online, but TripAdvisor reviews can’t really do it justice. Scaffolding and construction walkways seem to be everywhere. Sheraton is building a massive high-rise condo monster (20 stories at least?) on the property, just inland of the hotel (by “just” I mean like 20 meters). Being 3 times as tall as the hotel, it apparently blocks all sun in the afternoon. The construction goes on day in and day out, 7 days a week. We were on the “non-construction” side of the hotel, and we still spent a good deal of time listening to heavy machinery outside our window (we were on the 6th floor of the hotel). There are a few other projects on the island like this, now, out-viewing and out-obstructing one another, a fact that led me to speculate that, in a few decades, SPI will be like a trashy version of Dubai.
- :( - Soundproofing. I’m half deaf, but even I heard the doors closing and people walking up and down the hall, and Alex, having normal hearing, was serenaded by spousal arguments and crying children in the next room. Not fun.
So anyhoo, the hotel experience was up and down, but overall positive. The best part of the weekend, though, was biking up the beach. Alex and I brought our bikes, and just rode north for about 2 or 3 hours, at a very leisurely pace. We had to dodge hundreds or thousands of blue-green Portugese Man o’Wars (Men o’War?) washed up on the shore. They ranged from an inch to eight or ten inches long (the large, inflated body part; the tentacles were sometimes much longer) and made a horrible, loud pop when crushed with one’s bicycle tire. We rescued the first one we noticed, and a couple of others, but they just washed up on the beach again, and there were waaaay to many to rescue, even if we could have gotten them out beyond the breaker zone (which we couldn’t).
The beach was gorgeous, the weather was perfect, and we finally stopped for a snack at a little picnic area. Then we followed the main road/highway back into the town and had a not-very-impressive lunch/dinner at a vegetarian-health-food-place called Naturally’s. The organic lemonade convinced us that the natural sweetener Stevia’s lack of commercial success has less to do with multinational corporate conspiracies and more to do with its horrendously awful flavor.
So, yeah. Awesome weekend. Yummy, lazy drive home. Nice night with our friends Craig & Melinda. Now so very tired. Unmotivated to do work.
Here is a link to a Google Map I made of our trip. I hope the link works. And Alex, if you read this, the point at which we turned off the main boulevard to follow the parallel street, then the point at which we went down to the beach at the beginning of our trip, are just guesses. Feel free to refine or correct them.
8 comments ↓
Thank you so much for visiting South Padre Island!
Melissa Zamora
South Padre Island
Convention and Visitors Bureau
1-800-SOPADRE
http://www.sopadre.com
Melissa,
It was a wonderful experience, as usual. Of course, I wonder what things will look like in 30 years if another dozen projects like the Sheraton condos get built, but what can you do…
Tell me, though: how often do the Portugese Man o-War blooms happen like they did this weekend? I kayak on the Laguna Madre, and sometimes go swimming in the ocean.
Wow…How untraveled one seems when the construction of a fabulous building is the topic of conversation. Trying to save the man-o-wars is like trying to save ants in a pathway. It seems that this visitor is a very critical type. My travels always keep me too busy to complain and if I don’t like something,I do something else. Learn how to travel with some realistic expectations and stop being a baby.
Hm. Not sure how my expectations are unrealistic, or what the objective standard for that should be. It’s sad, to me, to see something as beautiful as the natural environment of SPI being increasingly pushed aside for commercial development (which I don’t consider particularly beautiful). It’s also difficult to pretend that every aspect of my stay at the hotel was pleasant (even though, as mentioned above, the majority of it was).
I note you’ve accused me of being “critical,” “complaining,” “untraveled,” and a “baby.” That’s a lot of insults in a small space. You might wanna watch that. But maybe complaining about blog posts is fundamentally different from complaining about hotels. If so, you’re saved from hypocrisy.
I live 90 minutes away. SPI isn’t “travel;” it’s my backyard. After several dozen hotels (and hostels and cabins and campgrounds and B&Bs) around the U.S. and internationally in the past few years, I suppose I’ve developed my own tastes. Apparently they aren’t the same as yours.
Perhaps someday I’ll post a movie review and you can insult me for not loving it from beginning to end ;). Thank you, come again.
Alex,
I’ll thank you not to judge my “untraveled”, “critical” “baby” of a husband because he chooses to relate both the positives and negatives of a weekend at SPI. Does it make you a great traveler if you never have anything less than a glowing response to everything you see? As a famous traveler once said, the imperfections of a journey make it perfect. It is utterly laughable to think of my husband being described as a person with unrealistic expectations. If he wanted things to be “just right” I guarantee you it was more for my sake than his.
In the context of your comment, criticizing him for making the effort to put a jellyfish back in its habitat comes across as hollow and jaded. And if you don’t like his blog, you can, in your own words, “do something else”.
I will respond to this once more. I have nothing really to say about your less than perfect hotel. I can assure you that the mess wasn’t left by the hotel manager or done to harm you. You probably hit the hot tub immediately after some pigs went for a dip. Happens every day. Pick it up, get in the water and be a hero. I pickup trash every time I hit the beach. I run three days a week right by the water. I pick up trash that I know wasn’ t left by any locals. I, also surf about 2-3 days a week, waves permitting. The water is home for man-o-war and many other types of jelly fish. It’s no big deal. Your lucky you didn’t get stung with your rescue effort. A tip…don’t pick up the jellyfish. I’ve sailed across the entire Gulf and have seen miles of man-o-war, one per square yard. Miles upon miles. And, if you get scared by the pop as you ride over them, stop riding over them. The lemonade’s sweetener is also something that we can’t fix. You really think anybody cares about that, or wants to hear about it. Dude, what’s up with you. The construction on South Padre, Bali, Panama, Costa Rica, Austin and every other place worth living and or visiting is called free enterprise. You can buy some land and build whatever you want within codes. If you build something offensive which does happen, then your REI will not happen and you will have less money to do it again. See how it works. Trust the project’s investors who have put a lot on the line to develop, fund and build a building that will be an asset to the tourism industry on the Island. Sorry if it’s too high for you. If your worried about the building’s shadow, move to the right or to the left and you’ll be tanned like the local surferboys. Please don’t paddle out at the jetties and start complaining like you do, or, you might get splashed with jelly fish water. Try Playa Bagdad, no tall buildings, no yucky tasting lemonade and it’s very quiet with no scaffolding. I’m outta here.
One more thing….The Sheraton is not building this thirty-one story condominium building.
Thanks for the info about the condo owners/builders. I’ll check that out. As for the rest, I’ve reported an honest experience, and you’re apparently having a hard time either accepting that, or understanding that I enjoy SPI immensely. In fact, you’ve made several very erroneous assumptions about what you think you read in the original post, and even assumed that some of my neutral comments were critical, when they were not (do you seriously think I blame the Island or anyone on it for the POMW on the beach?).
Life is good and bad, and the Island is no different. I’ll keep visiting it as long as I live here, but I really hope I don’t have to someday sit through a lecture from you when I’m doing that.
Future comments will be deleted, if they continue demonstrating this perplexing need to convince me that I should have found everything on the Island to be perfect, and I’m somehow wrong about my own opinions if I don’t think so.
Enjoy your island (which is a great place) and maybe from now on don’t waste so much time trying to argue with people who don’t find it (and your ideal vision of capitalism) to be completely free of the texture of imperfections that make up the rest of the world.
Leave a Comment