The facilities, the service, the food, the beach - all top notch. Note that this review is about the Grand, not the other hotels around, part of the Iberostar group.

You can read the details about the hotel below, but what I loved the most was the service and the beach.

But let me briefly address each area separately as it deserves to be.

The room and the bathroom are very spacious and the bed is amazing. There are 2 sinks in the bathroom and a living are beside the bed with a desk and a couch. All nicely decorated. On the balcony you will likely find a couch and a hanging hammock loveseat.
There are 3 pools (jacuzzi's around each): the quiet area pool (shhh... no music), the spa pool (warm and indoors) and the main salt-water pool, literally right in front of the beach. It is huge and salty (like a tranquil ocean). This is where everyone comes out to hang and where most of the activities are.

There are 2 buffets and 5 restaurants - the restaurants are fancy and the food is great. Meals like that in the city would probably cost you around $100 per person.

As for the service... you get your own butler who makes sure you have everything you need. You can order delicious food right to your room and the room is cleaned twice a day. Bartenders work quickly and everyone is there to please - friendly people, the best service!
There is the standard entertainment (although the singers are amazing), but we did have a couple of beautiful concerts under the open skies with dinner.

Also, because the hotel is fairly large, you can be driven around in a gold cart from place to place.

We have ventured out into the resorts nearby, which were crowded, took a look around, and went back to our little peaceful beautiful heaven.

The crowd there was mostly older (although we were told that changes depending on the time of the year), but it was never crowded and you were never competing with anyone for anything.

I have not described everything. The rest will be left for your to explore :)

Negative feedback? I found the decor in lobby's to be a little bit tacky and, of course, this kind of a vacation is not cheap :)

Also note that an 'ocean view' room does not necessarily mean that you will be close to the ocean. In fact, our room was the farthest room from the ocean, but yes, we could see it somewhere on the horizon :)

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I am not a big fan of Oprah, but I really enjoyed reading this book. Love her or hate her, you can't deny that Oprah's life is captivating and her journy - extraordinary.

In my opinion, this book will give you the most accurate portrait of what she is like in real life (vs. what you see on TV) besides actually knowing her yourself. Written by Kitty Kelly, known for her biography's of celebrities, this unauthorized biography was compiled from over 850 interviews, but, most importantly, from Oprah's own interviews as well.

The book is written in a very lively and entertaining manner (you need it, it's 544 pages) and paints a very dynamic portrait of Ms. Winfrey. Borrow it from the library near you.

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If you are looking for something unique and handmade, this is your place! People from all over the wold sell their crafts here: from greeting cards to jewelry, to clothes, to funky items you haven't thought of (like pocket squares - http://www.etsy.com/listing/40730415/pocket-square-accessories-men-fabric)

No limits for the things you can find here. A great place to get inspired, too!

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This was my second time to the Body Worlds Exhibition. Although many of the bodies were the same from 2 years ago, there were new elements as well, with this exhibition focusing more on the brain.

I loved seeing and studying the various bodies and body parts up close: the layouts of the organs, the network of the veins and the nerves, the muscles. Seeing what knee/hip/fractured bone surgeries and replacement results look like, fetuses at their various developmental stages, and miner's lungs (as opposed to those of a smoker) were some of the fascinating things you don't get to see every day.

If you take your time and read all the literature around it as well, it will take 1.5-2 hours to walk around.

I think in the end, by appreciating the complexities of your body and understanding it just a little bit better, it make you want to take better care of it. The abstraction is taken away and you think of what's on the inside as a little bit more real.

This exhibition ends in January 9th! Hurry if you haven't seen it.

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One of the largest gyms I've seen in the Vancouver area (and I've been to at least 3 others). You will never have to wait in line for a treadmill again (and neither will you be limited on it in terms of time)!

It has everything you will ever need and more. It has been ensured the gym has the latest equipment (personal TV attached to every cardio machine is a nice touch). Everything is well laid out and organized. The staff is very friendly. The ridiculous-sized body builders are proof that the gym is good!

While this is a co-ed gym, girls do get their own smaller space on the 2nd floor that they can use if they wish.

There is a nice steam sauna in the changing room (how relaxing after a workout!)

All fitness classes are included in the monthly price, which also quite reasonable (around $50/month). You can get at least a week for free to try it out.

I gave it a 9, because in my mind, the only thing missing is a pool and/or a jacuzzi :) And yes, I'm waiting for those contracts to go away! But unless you're looking for something small and cozy, this is the best I've seen.

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Reviews were good and some people referred to it as Inception-like. And I enjoyed that movie! I also like "Requiem for the Dream" (same director as Black Swan).

Objectively, this movie should have been good. Acting was good, shooting was interesting (shaky camera, close-ups), taking you right into the middle of the drama, although found the shakiness on a large screen a bit too much at times. Dancing was beautiful. And the fact that the entire movie seems like science-fiction until you figure out what's going, I thought gave it a unique aspect.

But overall, there was just no soul in it. It seemed technical, calculated and extreme in every genre (let's make this part really sexual, and this one really frightening, oh and this one especially gruesome). Slap it all together and you get Black Swan.

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