Danielle De Angelis Photography | Varadero Cuba 2019

In mid-February of this year, I and about 28 other family members embarked on the biggest trip we have taken together. We were going to celebrate my dad’s birthday and we also happened to celebrate Valentines Day together. We stayed at Memories Beach Resort In Varadero all inclusive for 1 week.

 February 9th 3:00 am: 

My parents and siblings all loaded our suitcases into our two cars and we headed off to the airport. We being Canadians, of course, we had to make a stop at Tim Hortons. Upon arriving at the airport, we ran into a few family members and family friends who were on the same flight as us. After saying our hello’s, we checked in and headed through security. 

Security was pretty quick and painless. They opened up a second area so we didn’t really have to wait in line.

Our flight took off around 7 am. It is a pretty quick flight from Toronto to Varadero. I believe it was 3 hours and 5 minutes. The minute we got off the airplane I regretted wearing my oversized Gap cardigan. It was already 27 degrees Celsius! We again went through Varadero security and made our way to the baggage claim. We stayed in a resort so we had to go find the bus that would take us to the resort. 

On the bus heading to the resort!

The beautiful ocean from the bus.

View from the “quiet pool” restaurant.

            When we got to the resort we were greeted by a few waiters giving out Pina Coladas. YUM! We sipped our drinks and checked in at the front desk. We have been to this resort about 4 or 5 times now and are pretty familiar with the layout so we headed straight to our rooms. My sisters and I immediately changed into weather appropriate clothing and headed off to the quiet pool restaurant. Each of us ate a quick cheeseburger and fries and we headed back to our room to get pool ready. 

By the time we got to the pool, it was about 2pm. We were all exhausted from not sleeping at all the night before and travelling made us super tired so we were only at the pool maybe an hour or so until we were falling asleep so we decided to walk back to our room for a nap. 

After our nap, we got ready and met up with some family for our first dinner on the resort. We went to the buffet every night it was surprisingly delicious. They have all sorts of food and different themes on different days.

The next two or three days was pretty repetitive. Breakfast, Pool, Beach, Dinner and repeat the next day. We would occasionally hang out in the lobby chatting and drinking coffee and lots of alcohol.

Here is the view from the restaurant at the Entertainment Pool. This pool was always filled with activities and things to see. Dancing, singing, games such as mini golf and volleyball. Always loud music and tons of space to lay out and tan.

Every night the resort put on a show. The shows consisted of dancing, singing, a live band, and even the audience was included. This night was the Valentines Day show. The theme was love and it was a dancing show. They also had an amazing Michael Jackson show, a Cuban show, and a magic show.

We went into town only once this trip. At first, there was about 12 of us in the city. We looked around a bit at two small and then headed down to a local bar we visit every time we are in Varadero. 

At the bar, it started pouring rain. Now, this was strange. It only really rain for 20 or 30 mins at a time in Cuba but it wasn’t letting up. About 3 quarters of our group went back to the hotel while me and my parents stayed in the city. We had a few drinks at the bar until the rain subsided. 

They have tons of old cars in Cuba. Here are some brightly coloured ones. Cars are not the only mode of transportation there. They also use horses and
mini coconut cars. We ended up not taking the bus home and we took a coconut car home instead.

After that, we just went to eat dinner and then went to sleep.

I tried to spend as much time at the beach as possible since we do not have any beach like that in Toronto. Here are some of my favourite beach photos i took on my DSLR.

Overall, the trip was incredible. It was nice to be with the majority of my family on vacation not have to worry about a thing. Memories Beach resort is great and I recommend it to Families looking for a very safe and fun resort to vacation at.
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– Danielle