I'll be watching you

I am a people watcher, always have been. Going on vacation just changes where I do the watching. So here are some of the people we saw this week in Cancun.

An Asian woman in her early 30s—she was thin, and wore a two piece suit and sunglasses. She had long hair, nearly to her waist, and had colored it some sort of honey color. Or perhaps the sun had done that, stripped the color from her hair and left it looking a bit wan. She stayed at the beach most of the day, putting her hair up, taking it down, rolling over this way and that. She’d also saved the beach chair next to her for someone who never showed up. I wondered if her companion had just overdone it the day before—either too much booze or sun could do that to you—or if they’d had a fight. The other person never did show up and she finally left.

A family of three—tall father, slightly tall mother, both lean with a born-that-way look. The daughter was either a very tall pre-teen or else a slightly tall young teen. What caught my eye first was the daughter’s braid. She had very long hair and the first time I saw her, she’d braided her hair into a braid almost as thick as my wrist. Her mother had nice hair too but not like the daughter’s. Kent noticed the family dynamics: all three clearly had high regard for each other. As he said, so often you see pre-teens or teens sullenly going along with the family vacation, there because they were forced to be there. But not this family. They sat near us a couple of days, and we saw them when we were having drinks at happy hour and they just seemed to enjoy the heck out of each other.

A gaggle (no other way to describe it) of English women who knew each other, some of them clearly on friendlier terms than others, but all at least good acquaintances. We finally decided they were probably all flight attendants there after a long haul flight. We saw them two days in a row and then poof! They were gone.

Two couples who, I swear, never left the pool—specifically never left the bar at the pool, although they pretty much stayed in the pool. One of the women had three or four random tattoos on her back, as though they’d happened accidentally. The tattoos didn’t have any shared theme that I could tell and at least one was not in color. I wondered what made her get those, what if anything they meant to her. They were so random, in fact, that I wondered if she'd lost a bet. The two guys never, ever left the pool which led me to believe they just peed in it for three straight days.

A couple of senior couples—these were the ones I especially liked to see because I hope Kent and I are like that when we reach that age. They were moving slowly but clearly enjoying the warmth, the view and their time together. 

Snippets from Ireland

Our cabbie from the airport pretty much took us on the scenic aka expensive route (we figured that out when the trip back to the airport took less than half the time). But he also told us about places we should check out that we hadn't put on our list. And he told us about hurling, one of the national sports in Ireland. So I think of him as a paid tour guide.

I always find people watching to be quite good while traveling and this trip was no different. On the outbound flight, the couple sitting across the aisle from us made for interesting viewing. First, they hung all over each other in the gate area. Keep in mind, when I say hanging on, I don't mean an arm draped around each other. I mean full body contact in the gate house. Plus they changed into pajamas for the trip before take off. I could see that on other, longer international trips but by the time dinner gets served and cleared away, you've only got a couple more hours until you land. Changing into PJs in the tiny airplane bathroom and then back again into street clothes just isn't worth the effort to me. Obviously they thought otherwise.

While clearing immigration, we noticed a young, maybe early 20s couple from the U.S. one of whom wore a cheesy "Kiss me, I might be Irish" tee shirt, and the other wore something similar although the slogan (thankfully) escapes me now. Why, why, why would you wear a tee shirt like that? Even while walking the dog??

As we checked into our hotel (which Kent handles because he's the one with the loyalty program there), I stood back for a bit and then moved up by him. The woman at the desk immediately quit making any eye contact with him and only spoke to me the rest of the time. I wondered if it were a cultural thing; she was either from China or Korea. I couldn't entirely place her accent and couldn't read that part of her name badge that said where she's from.

Our server at dinner Friday made Kent's night when she introduced him to an Old Fashion with a different sort of twist. He gets frustrated with the way Old Fashions are made here in the U.S. because they'll often be made with water or soda water, and that's not a true Old Fashion. Hers was a proper one but with a bit of maraschino cherry juice and a cherry in it. And the cherry wasn't one of those gross, unnaturally red ones either. In fact, we will need to find a good source going forward because Kent really enjoyed that drink.

We were milling around in the gate house Sunday waiting for our plane from Atlanta back to Kansas City, I got in one of those small flyby conversations with another passenger who was boarding the plane at the gate before ours. He was an older gentleman and when he found out we'd just spent the weekend in Ireland, he got so excited. He kept telling his wife, "Hey! We can do that too! I've always wanted to go to Ireland!"

I hope he gets there.