Honeymoon day 4: Sales and surf - the funcrunch files

Yesterday a representative of the resort property asked if we would be willing to hear a 90-minute sales presentation about the timeshare in exchange for a free breakfast, 15% off all meals retroactive to our check-in day, and an entry in a drawing for a free vacation. We figured that was a fair enough exchange. So we met with a saleslady, who gave us our breakfast and a tour. She talked and talked about what a great deal it was; as owners we could use any of the resort's own properties or exchange with different hotels and resorts all over the world, and we could rent out our timeshare and make a net profit in years we didn't want to use it. We listened with genuine interest and then explained honestly that we weren't willing to make a decision on the spot; we had just gotten married, after all, and wanted to review our finances first. They kept pressuring us with incentives to decide immediately, lowering the deposit on the down payment to a "how could you refuse" amount, but we stood firm. So eventually, long after the 90 minutes and after having four different people try to talk us into buying the timeshare, they let us go.

After we escaped we made lunch in the little kitchenette with the groceries we bought in town, then headed out to lounge at the pool and beach. One of my goals this vacation was to try to learn to swim. boyziggy tried valiantly to teach me, but it's going to take awhile. My mother is a nonswimmer and I never learned either; I don't even really like being in the water much unless it's hot out, which it certainly is here. But it's windy too, so we ended up in the indoor pool more than the outdoor one. I felt embarrassed with luxury when the staff delivered drinks and chips to us poolside. I also got to use more of my tiny Spanish vocabulary when exchanging my towel (toalla) for towel card (the towel lady didn't understand the English version of my room number).

After a sunset walk on the beach I returned to the room and we had room service for the first time, a tasty grilled vegetable and grapefruit salad, along with some soup that we got at the health food store in Phoenix. Then we watched The Royal Tenenbaums (we only seem to get movie channels, CNN, and TNT here), which I thought was great but Ziggy fell asleep. Well, I fell asleep while watching The Hours last night myself, even though I really liked what I saw of it, so that was only fair. Watching English movies with Spanish subtitles is fun, especially if I put it on mute and try to figure out what they're saying from the subtitles alone.