Dominican Vacay



Hola all - I hope all is well.

 

I haven't gotten a chance to update in a while but honestly. I've been having the time of my life. 

No time for documentation of said great time. Josh and I just marked our five year wedding anniversary in the Dominican Republic. It was nice to see that we hadn't lost our ability to throw down. And thrown down we did.

College style. We left Brunswick early Thursday morning (Oct. 18) and drove to Jacksonville to then (in a completely annoying twist) fly back to Georgia. To Atlanta. THEN we flew to the Dominican - we went to Punta Cana ... Barvaro Beach.

 

It. was. paradise.
 

Yay for vacation. 

 

Thursday evening we checked into our hotel, the Bahia Principe Ambar, an all inclusive. That night, we chilled. We hit the pool, beach first thing Friday. The hardest decision we had to make was what to drink, which wasn't as easy a choice as it should have been. There was certainly a lot of options. And with the swim-up bar it was dangerously convenient.

 

 

The pool environment was kind of like It's a Small World at Disney. Only with less singing. There were people from every nation there. I mean EVERYWHERE - Holland, Germany, France, Russia. And Canada ... more about them later. In the afternoon, the hotel put a exciting little bi-lingual guy out there to stir the pot host games. Drinking games mostly. Oh and Zumba ... because drunk people dancing on wet concrete is always a good idea.

 

Speaking of the pool, that's where we met two of our new favorite people from Belgium - Tijl and Ineke. They were just awesome. Very sweet and both of them speak better English than a lot of folks I know here. We talked forever and learned a lot about their country. They're very proud of it, as well they should be.

 

Several nights we did dinner and drinks (duh). We all took in the Michael Jackson show too. That was very good. We seriously want to go to Belgium now to hang with them. They also have an open invite to Georgia.  





Me and Ineke

 

Josh and Tijl with their beer.

The Belgians were naturally not impressed by the choice of brew there.

They have amazing beer in Belgium.

 

Josh and I had a blast with them. Other than pool and beach time ... and taking 900,000 photos of us during the pool and beach time - we didn't do much. We did get a couples' massage that was very nice.

 

We ate, though Josh was less than thrilled with the food - surprise, surprise. I, on the other hand, probably gained between 10 and 20 lbs - the wine and the occasional piece of pizza. And not stepping into a gym AT ALL. Seriously ... I took the entire time off from working out. The most activity was swimming in the ocean and later carrying in huge bags of candy for Halloween. I feel guilty that I don't feel guilty. : )

I did eat a lot of veggies - they had a lot of mushrooms and zucchini whilst there. Oh and eggplant was EVERWHERE. And pineapple. But they do theirs with syrup. Nom.

You can eat at the resort or go to one of their dozen restaurants. They had Japanese - which was awesome - and Italian .... which blew. It looked nice, the place was beautiful. But the dish - see below -  was not. I'm convinced that my "salmon lasagna" was dressed up cat food.

One Canadian couple was so upset by the quality of food at this restaurant the guy repeatedly said that he was going to "f*#ing kill someone." Yikes. Anger much?

But that wasn't the worst of the behavior from our neighbors to the north. There was this big dude Mike, who can drink a cup of beer in about three swallows. (Sidebar: During one of the drinking contest, which was kind of like the Olympics considering all the ethnicities on display, this Canadian guy won hands down.) Josh and I were impressed. We went to chat and congratulate him. We started talking and he found out that we were Americans ... and from the South. He kept dropping all of these thinly veiled insults. Like he asked me if I knew what three US capitals are named after presidents. I got Lincoln, Neb., but that was it. Later, I remembered Madison,Wisc. But damn. I'm at a pool bar on vacation not on the Jeopardy stage with Alex Trebek.

A-hole. I just kind of floated away after that. Wasn't gonna let his shitty attitude ruin my day. Like this ... weeee.

Of course ... what I wanted to do was this ...

 

 Yes. I was pissed.





After a quick Google search, I discovered that he was wrong. There are actually FOUR capitals named for presidents. So in case you are quizzed by other obnoxious Canadians ... here ya go:

* Jackson, Mississippi: named for Andrew Jackson.
* Jefferson City, Missouri: named for Thomas Jefferson.

* Madison, Wisconsin: named for James Madison

* Lincoln, Nebraska: named for Abraham Lincoln

The next day ... we ran into him again. This time, we chat. I tell Mike and his girlfriend (who was VERY nice) that I had done genealogy research and traced my fam back to Scotland. I said "we've been in the US since the 1600s." Homeboy goes - "Whoa that's racist."

 

'Cuse me? How? How is that racist? Clearly, he didn't hear me OR he has a maple leaf wedged up his arse. I was like

 

As Sarah put it, "he lives in America's hat so we win." (Gah, I just love her.)

Anywho other than nearly igniting World War III at the pool, we went on a tour where we swam with dolphins. And Josh made out with an extra large seal.

 

It was so cool. You got in the water with 10 people and did all sorts of tricks with the dolphins. Ours was named Izis. 

 

You'd swim out in the pool, then the trainer says to the dolphin "vámonos" then she was there, jumping over your head. Scare bear. Actually, the anticipation was the worst. The trainer would send her on and say "She's coming for you, Lindsey." Then sometimes he would sing "Jaws" music. Shit. My heart started to beat so fast I thought I was going to keel over. But thankfully I didn't.

 

We did the jump over the head thingy, then we'd swim out, she would come over, flip on her back -we grabbed her flippers and she dragged us across the pool. It was the same deal with the dorsal fin. I couldn't really get a good grip on that one. And we got kisses. Fishy kisses.

 

 

 

Luckily we didn't have this experience.

 

 

Holy moly.

 

So yeah. After the dolphin experience, we got ready to head home Wednesday - only to discover that there was a tropical storm. Lovely. It eventually morphed into Frankenstorm. It didn't affect our flight but it did Tijl and Ineke's. They had to stay an extra night. Not too bad. I mean there are worse places to be trapped. But I've talked to her since and they are home safe and sound.

 

Since we've gotten home, we've been cleaning, doing laundry and getting everything back in order. We watched the big Ga-Fla game. Then we watched Auburn SUCK and loose to Texas A and M by 40 points. We. are. awful. Gah.

 

One more day before I have to go back to work and real life. I'm kind of glad. It's been wonderful --- even so, I need structure. And I need to work out. I'm running a half marathon next week. So that will force me to get back on track. I hope.