It was a celebration of the music we love and the love that has let us share our name for the past 15 years. This was a Mexican musical getaway sans children, a long weekend to bask in the warm tropical glow of a decade and a half of marriage.
The place, the Hard Rock Riveria Maya, made for an ideal host as my love and I were booked into a Rock Platinum room with a Single Sky Terrace, with a private hot tub on a quiet top floor patio overlooking the water and Cozumel and, however faintly, a couple of cruise ships docked at the island. That sight in particular served as a fond memory of another trip we’d taken together and, as proxy, a reminder of how fortunate we are to be in this loving relationship, to be in the position we find ourselves, and to have children we adore traveling the world alongside but who were tucked away now, many miles from us, safe and secure with their grandparents. We love them dearly, of course, but didn’t give our daughters too much thought throughout 4 nights of fine music, tasty food, warm water, cool breezes off the water, and passionate kissing.
Lots and lots of kissing.
The room was out of this world. The food was delicious. The people were lovely.
Only a single thing at the Hard Rock Riveria Maya failed to exceed our expectations: the pen.
The free hotel pen at the Hard Rock Riviera Maya is likely standard-issue Hard Rock paraphernalia and, if sitting on a hostess stand at one of their many dining outposts it’d be fine, same goes for their stand alone hotels in San Diego or even glitzy Las Vegas, but here in this Mexican lap of luxury, at the bodacious all-inclusive Riveria Maya Hard Rock resort, the Hard Rock pen is neither a classic rocker nor a hipster indie kid.
The Hard Rock Hotel pen is forgettable like that one band that had that one single that seemed to be on the radio every single time you turned over your first car during that one summer when you were younger, so much younger than today. Sure, you vaguely remember a fragment of the chorus, the smoky outline of the melody, and the touch of the girl you thought you loved during much of that year, but the title of the song and band name is lost to history.
A shame, really, because we’ll never ever forget the food, people, beds, pools, beach, spa and the time spent relaxing and simply being in love with each other at this supremely lovely place.
We’ll never forget the Hard Rock Riveria Maya’s attention to detail, to every minuscule detail, but we will forget in short order the pen which doesn’t please the eye or the hand, or the paper its blue ink studders to mark. It’s just a pen, albeit a pen made from recycled plastic (so a few points scored there although the reused material lends itself to easy nicks and scratches which quickly makes these pens look even cheaper than they are), but not a pen that speaks to the refinement of the place in which I found it, a place where the most difficult thing you’ll have to decide is whether to order your next umbrella-ed cocktail while seated at the bar submerged in the pool, poolside, or from a lounge chair dipped into a pool’s shimmering water.
