Playa Del Carmen, Cancún

A day trip to Playa is a great break from the hotel, bar and shopping scene of Cancun. Playa is much smaller, without high rise hotels, and a much more laid back atmosphere. That's not to say it isn't commercialized. The town completely caters to the tourist industry. But it doesn't have the big US chain restaurants - rather a lot of smaller restaurants, clubs and shops to explore. We spent three weeks there, and I've got several tips on my Playa del Carmen page.
In Playa the Avenida Quinta is one, long avenue filled with establishments for the tourist. You can shop, eat and drink, and walk and walk. It runs parallel to the beach and closed to motorized traffic, so a popular way to visit Playa is to walk Quinta from one end to the other and then back along the beach. Coming from Cancun, it is easy to do this and enjoy a good meal on a day trip.

Easy to get to from Cancun. There are collectivo buses, but it is just as easy to go to Cancun's main bus station and take one of the comfortable big buses to Playa. They take you to the station right on Avenida Quinta, near the ferry pier to Cozumel. If you go south from the Playa station there is a pretty nice shopping center, and to the north is the long walk through all of Avenida Quinta, from which you can return along the beach for a good walk.

i was in cancun 2 weeks before the place is amazing very tropic exotic
37 degrees and the sun very hot
i prefer playa de carmen more cancun cause its more calm with nice people nice bars a lot of things to buy cheap and of curse better beatches for sure u must go to tulum and enjoy the heart of caribbean the sun and the beatches there its a dream with the car from playa de carmen until tulum is 30 minutes or 40 u must take care with the policia are litle strange never drink and drive be carefull. of curse u must go to xcaret place u cann see stange animals really nice there litle expencive but for one day its ok the mexican people en genera are very kind and cancun is safe.......

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How we wish we found this place earlier during our stay in Cancun - we would have come down another time or possibly stayed overnight. It's beautiful and a great place for couples. We only saw the beach that's by where the ferries depart to Cozumel (that was the main part of our day) and Fifth Avenue, looking at the shops of jewelry and crafts. There was such a more authentic, unique selection than what we found in Cancun.

From the Cancun Downtown bus station, which is on Tulum Avenue, it's only 70 Pesos (US $7) per person (round trip) to go to Playa del Carmen. You can only pay for the ticket of the one way trip, so you'll need to pay for the return trip on your way back from the Playa del Carmen station. The trip is only about 45 minutes to 1 hour, very quick, there's a little TV playing a movie, and went by very quickly.

Playa del Carmen is ~42 miles south of Cancun, lined up with small arts & crafts shops, and restaurants with abudant seafood (yum!).

Don Emilione Restaurant & Bar is known for its delicious dessert, coffee, and fresh fruit drinks - http://www.donemilione.com/

Allow about 2 hours to stroll around and people-watch. Then, take a ferry to Cozumel island to catch the sunset~ (Pier is only one block from the main street. You can't miss it!) The Ferry runs every hour. If you get onto the ferry an hour before sunset, you'll catch it while onboard~

I know Playa Del Carmen has become much more popular than when I was there last. I'm sure there is much more to see and do, but if nothing else...it's worth a trip just to see the color of this water!

Nice beach town close to Cancun. If you want to rest, or if you go with your gilfriend, then Playa del Carmen is much better than Cancun. Go to the handcraft shops down in the Fifth ave. They sell nice things, but as all tourist shops, they're quite expensive. Try to bargain. You might get a discount.

Great mix of old Mexico, 'touristy' Mexico and international 'free spirit'. You can walk outside the small core of the town or go down the main drag that is 'chock a block' with stalls, stores and restaurants. If you go shopping there, find out what days the cruise ships are in and go a different day. When the cruise ships are in the prices go up. Expect to pay about half of whatever is initially quoted on most goods.

Every day we climbed into that VW, heading for Tulum and the famous ruins. But we kept turning off to investigate pretty beaches or towns we'd heard about, and never made it to Tulum! Guess that will be another trip some day. This is the beach at Playa del Carmen. We enjoyed this town so much, we called the airline to extend our stay by a couple of days, so we could stay in PDC. While we didn't stay at the Blue Parrot (pictured on the beach) that is where we plan to go some day. The beach was fabulous, the people friendly, the pace relaxed.