We were to excited to head to the Beaches resort in Turks and Caicos this past January. I had read about 500 reviews before we booked, and then another 500 after. Beaches is an all-inclusive resort owned by the Sandals chain but geared towards families.
They are in partnership with Sesame Street and X-Box, so you know that the kids are gonna love this place.
It’s the parents that you have to appease. Against the advice of many photographer friends, I didn’t bring my professional camera, I just brought my Lumix point and shoot, and boy I was glad I did. It was so great to just snap the shots as they happened and not worry about carrying around a big, bulky camera.
When we arrived at the resort, we were ushered into the lobby of our section – the all-suites Italian Village. Dave and I were served ice cold champagne, and the girls got fancy fruit punch. We were invited to take a seat on some comfy couches, where there were baskets of fruits and plates of cookies. The girls even had a special kids area with stuff just their size! Our concierge brought us all our forms to sign at our leisure, and I can honestly say it was the best check-in I’ve ever had. We were then given a short tour of our section, and shown to our room where our bags were already waiting for us.
The suite had two rooms, a kid’s room with bunk beds and a trundle and our room with a giant king size bed (seriously, our bed at home is a king and this one was way bigger) and a couch and trundle. At first Dave didn’t want to get the suite as he thought we wouldn’t spend much time in the room, but he was very glad that I overruled him when it turned out we were pretty tired and in bed by 9pm each night.
Our days consisted of either heading to the white sand beach, sitting by the pool, or playing at the waterpark. Emma, who is 6, was crazy over the tube water slide, going up and down and up and down and up and down every day.
Charlotte is 3 and absolutely ADORED all the Sesame characters walking around the resort. It was so great that they were always around, ready to take photos with the kids. They had nightly shows too, and we all walked in a huge parade around the resort. Charlotte misses all the characters, but is reallllllly into Sesame Street now.
Dave and I loved the all-inclusive part of the resort, we ate and drank to our hearts’ content. Our favorite part was splitting a bottle of champagne on our patio every night before dinner. Maybe that’s why we were in bed by 9pm? No arguments about money, just lots of fun and relaxation. And the food. Oh, the food! 16 different restaurants, we tried to try as many as we could. We loved the Japanese restaurant where they cooked the food right at your table, the sushi place, the Italian restaurant and I was addicted to going to the Parisian cafe every morning for an iced latte and some pain au chocolat.
It was really neat that about 70% of the resort was Canadian, it’s a very popular spot for us to travel to apparently! And one other strange thing – there were three different villages: Italian, French and Caribbean. Our section, the Italian Village was FILLED with Italian people staying there. I mean, everyone was speaking Italian! When we walked over to the French Village, surprise – French people! It seemed like people traveling from Europe took the different villages as instructions of where to stay instead of just differently styled areas, lol!
Some of my highlights of the stay were: watching my girls on stage in a fashion show, watching Emma breakdance in the talent show, Char singing from High School Musical (why does the second child grow up so much faster?), seeing Dave perform in The Village People’s YMCA, reading 7 books in 10 days, banana dacquiris with real bananas, swim up bars, swim up soda bars for the kids, lazy river, surf simulator, nachos at the beach, free photo session with the cheesiest poses known to man (you can see some in the slideshow below), dinner and a movie night at the pizzeria, salt-scrubs, facials and massages at the spa, the sunsets, the friendly staff, and the 24 hour diner with self-serve ice cream and tons of cookies!
It was one of the best vacations of our lives, and probably the most relaxing vacation with kids we’ve ever taken. We are already planning when we can go back, and hopefully we’ll have some friends come with us next time!
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by Brandy
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