Goodbye, Cozumel!

The next morning, we had to go our separate ways--some of us were flying out of the small Cozumel airport, and some of us had to take the ferry over to Playa del Carmen, and then take a bus up to Cancun airport. (Kevin and I were in the latter category, and our plane was the first to leave, so we had to leave before everyone else.) Before we left, though, we went out to check if our sand castle had survived the night--it had! Kevin's painstaking creation of double walls with moats did the trick. We said goodbye to the ocean, then took our bags out to get a taxi.

The trip back was fairly uneventful. We did have a direct flight back to Chicago, which was nice. When we got in and collected our luggage (nothing lost--yay!), we took the L downtown to Union Station, and then took the Amtrak back to Champaign. We booked ourselves a sleeper car, since it was only a little more expensive than regular seats. It was my first time on the Amtrak, so I didn't know quite what to expect.

It was great! Since we booked a sleeper car, we got a free dinner in the dining car included, and we got to eat before the "regular" passengers were allowed into the dining car. The food was surprisingly good. We then settled into our snug little sleeper car. We did fold the seats down into a bed, but opted to both share it rather than pull down the upper bunk bed. It was very comfy! We can definitely recommend that mode of travel.

When we got back to Champaign, it was about 11pm, so we took a taxi back to our house rather than call any friends to pick us up. And that was it! If we ever go to Cozumel again (unlikely) I hope we can fly straight into the Cozumel airport rather than doing the taxi-ferry-bus thing, which makes for a pretty long day. All in all, though, it wasn't too bad, and definitely worth the hassle! I *do* wish we could go back someday--there's still so much we didn't see! But, if there ever is a next time, I think we'll try to go in winter so it's not so hot.

Anyways, it was a great trip, and we were sad to leave, BUT we had less than a week before we had to leave for our NEXT trip, to Ireland this time! Isn't that wild? More on that later, of course, but we definitely didn't have much time to dwell on being sad to leave Mexico!