Today we leave for the Dominican Republic

 To round out our year themed: Tropical fruity beverages, we are now taking a trip with David’s work to an all inclusive resort on the Dominican Republic. 

We are staying at the Dreams Flora resort. 

I am relatively determined to make this a down time trip as I dragged poor David hither and yon across Hawaii. 

This trip feels like something fancy rich people do and I feel a little alien in that circumstance. 

Good news: I’m less anxious than last time we flew  by a ton. 

I think this is due to having just flown and having had some success with the lorazepam. 

We got up at 4:20 (because we are hilarious) and drove off to Dulles. 

David fought a losing battle to the qr barcode scan but we got in. 

We used the long term parking again and the shuttle came by just as we parked. 

Security was empty and we breezed right through. 

Over the last week we did various documentation for foreign travel and packed a very small carry on. 

I love that neither of us is a heavy packer. 

We’ve been told that the baggage claim situation is sketchy at the Punta Cana airport. 

Randos unload the baggage claim and then charge you to ‘help’ you retrieve your stuff. 

So we are skipping that entirely with the small carry on. 

We shall see. 

David’s deep in his group chat watching coworkers navigate travel from a Dulles terminal D seat. 

Some are definitely having a harder time than others. 

We flew a mostly smooth flight for 3.5 hours and landed very softly. 

We went through a crowded slow and steamy customs line but it was actually better than I’d read about. The line moved well and all our paperwork was in good shape and in the end then they didn’t even ask to see it. They just stamped us in. 

The area to find our shuttle was barely chaotic and we got routed right to a very friendly official looking guy, by a security agent, who pitched us excursions but took a no thank you graciously and sent us off to the right area. 

The shuttle was smooth and we drove through strip malls and highways and past this delightful mascot,

to increasingly beachy and resort like areas until we arrived at our very gated and grand looking hotel. 

Everyone keeps saying “welcome home” in a hyper  friendly and slightly disorienting attempt to pump up the warm fuzziness. 

David’s work set all of this up and gave us all preferred member status so even the check in process was fancy. 

That is to say they took us upstairs to sign things and gave us champagne (the lady was baffled by my refusal and seems never to have conceived of a non drinker before). We were escorted to our room by the check in guy because our butler (!?!) was at lunch when we arrived. 

It’s hotter than Hawaii but about he same as Maryland so we got out of our airplane sweats and shoes and into shorts and flip flops quickly. 

Then the wandering began. On and off we wandered for about 3 hours checking out all the stuff in the video above. 

We stopped for beach pizza and salad (very like Pizza Hut in flavor), piña colada (virgin and otherwise), we got the beginning of a timeshare pitch, and we went back to meet our butler. 

They do most things through WhatsApp and both of us ditched our WhatsApp years ago so David reinstalled his.

We were pretty hot from the wandering and a little overwhelmed from all the sales pitching so we decided to pool. 

This was an excellent decision. We went to the preferred club adults only pool as it was the least crowded and most quiet (ish). 

When we got there we found a group of 5-6 drunkish guys singing 80s music and playing nerf football at one end of the pool. It may not surprise you to learn that this was the end by the in-pool bar.

The dude with the ball kept yelling “Walkers , Walkers!” Wich I took to mean “oh look there are walkers” but instead meant “Hey Missy look at me”. I looked his way eventually and he threw me the ball. 

I am pleased as punch to report that I caught it to wild drunken cheers. I returned the ball with enough accuracy to get more cheers then retreated with David to a quiet section. 

This pool has an almost lazy river lay out so it was easy to find a shady isolated section in which to cool off and drink (frozen strawberry daiquiri for him and ginger ale for me).

I loved this part. We talked about all the things and swam around each other and planned dinner (Italian), we called the kids and uploaded some pictures and felt so happy and relaxed. 

We stayed past the bar closing and the people leaving and had the best time just hanging out with each other.

Sometime around sunset we went to look at the Italian place (Portofino) to see how crowded it might be and came across Chris and Pammy (family) eating at the open air steakhouse. It sounds like their trip was less smooth than ours by a good bit and they had only arrived an hour before. 

I hope that we get to spend some time with them later.

We went back to our room and took a hot shower and dressed up (a little) for dinner. 

Dinner was good not great but we were mellow and happy and I will take good Italian any day. 

They had plenty of vegetarian  Italian options and lots of lemonade. 

We had caprese salad and veggie stuffed aranici, sun-dried tomato rolls, pesto pasta and a spinach and cheese calzone, PLUS tiramisu and mango pannacotte. 

After dinner we walked over to the beach and tried the swings. 

The beach is having a big and somewhat stinky seaweed invasion so we’ve been avoiding it (it and the many beach sellers who are stalking what must be a do not cross property line). 

I’d read that they (the beach sellers) were fairly aggressive and they really are but also they are friendly and take no thank you easily. One of them called David Stone Cold (for his similarity to the wrestler ) several times and tried to sell him cocaine to my vast amusement. 

The language here is Spanish and I’ve been working on my Spanish. Everyone we’ve run in to speaks great English but I am proud to report that I could read about 90% of a posted notice about the seaweed which had no English translation on it. I know I could have used my phone to translate but was happy as a clam standing there working it out. 

It was what you would expect. The ocean contains a delicate ecosystem, and the seaweed is important to many fish species some of which are endangered, and they are doing what they can to pursue a balanced response with the guests and Mother Nature in mind. 

Good stuff to see and an encouraging sign for my Spanish progress. 

We went back to our room and got out of our dress up clothes and put on pjs and watched motorcycle racing and anime and called the kids to say good night. 

That was a long and eventful