Last week was awesome! First, let me apologize for the delayed post, but last week was awesome!
Josh and I went down to Turks and Caicos for six nights and stayed at The Regent Grand on Grace Bay. We typically like to go away for our anniversary — not always on our anniversary, but take a trip around then. This year, we went a couple weeks early to celebrate. Our normal beach vacation consists of breakfast, beach, reading, lunch, beach, pool, and dinner all on repeat for the length of stay but this time, we had a very active, non-active vacation and it was great!
Long walks on the beach – literally! We walked at least four miles each day every day for six days! The great thing about where we stayed in Grace Bay was that you can walk two miles in either direction and see most of the resorts.
Reading – as we do normally on vacation, we read a lot! Thank goodness for the
Kindles! This trip I caught up on a lot of my magazine reading but also finished four books:
The first two books were definitely on the top of my to-read list and I really enjoyed them. Mindy Kaling poses some funny but valid points in her book and I really appreciated the humor and candidness.
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business is a topic I was really interested in for both personal and professional development. I learned a lot about how the research of habits has been applied on an individual level but also at a corporate perspective. The last two books were top rated Kindle downloads. Typically, on vacation I just want easy reads and these were them. They satisfied my guilty pleasure of reading a story that doesn’t require too much focus. I highly recommend all four books (depending on what you’re goals are though).
Bike ride – we don’t own bikes at home, and we ride no more than once a year, but our resort had free bike rentals, so why not? We biked to
Leeward Beach which was about two miles from the hotel. This is one of the beaches we walked to each day, but it was neat to bike over, definitely a lot faster!
Planks, downward dogs, and plies – for some reason, I thought it would be fun to work on my core on the sand. Every day of the trip, I spent two to three minutes planking on the beach and performing basic yoga and barre routines. Any one who walked past me on the beach must have thought I was insane, but that’s okay because it made me feel better for eating bacon at breakfast!
Running on the beach – the first day, on a whim, I tried to run barefoot for about a mile. The last time I ran barefoot on a beach was a year ago in St. Maarten. On the second day, I felt a slight strain on my right foot and decided it would better if I tried to run in my running shoes. Over the rest of the trip, I ran a total of 10+ miles on three separate occasions. Those three runs were probably some of the most difficult runs I have ever ran – no joke! I would try to get out early in the morning before to breakfast to avoid the sun and heat, but man it was already hot and humid by 8AM every day. The runs honestly felt like the last miles of a 20-miler. As I was reading more about running in the sand, I found this article interesting comparing
sand versus concrete. Also,
National Running Day was June 5th and even Josh went out for a run with me!
We did also very much enjoy eating at a sampling of restaurants on the island, spending time in the ocean and pool, and overall relaxing! If anyone is looking for a relaxing beach vacation, I highly recommend Turks and Caicos. You will not be disappointed!
What are some of your summer vacation plans?
P.S. We came back to a nice weekend at home… and Sunday’s night dinner preparation was a rude awakening back to our weekly routine! 🙂
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