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| Mal |
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| Kennedy |
After not taking a sun vacation last winter -- and missing
the family time with the girls -- we were happy to be in a position to go away
again this year. Dave and I decided to tell Kennedy about our plans before
Christmas (to make sure that she would be able to get away) but left it as a
Christmas surprise for Mal. It was fun letting Kennedy help me choose a trip
this time and I was excited for Mallory's reaction -- but she was actually kind
of disappointed. She talked about how she had so much homework to do, and since
she had decided to work over the break at the pork plant for Christmas cash,
she was both behind in the school work she had put off and missing time with
her friends. So, yeah, that part wasn't fun for me.
Anyway, we chose the Grand Paradise Playa Dorada in Puerto
Plata, Dominican Republic, and it turned out to be just okay -- neither the
nicest or worst place we've ever stayed. (And I thought it would have been
interesting to go to Puerto Vallarta this year -- we've never been to a
vacation on the Pacific and the girls have never been to Mexico at all -- but
Dave dug in on our plan to never take the girls to Mexico while it's still a
drug cartel war zone. So, back to the DR for the fifth time.) Because I couldn't
book our seats on AirTransat without paying a fee, I decided to go all in and
buy OptionPlus: for $30 each (each way), we would have seat selection, priority
check-in, priority boarding, extra weight allowance for the luggage, free
earphones, a comfort pack with blanket and pillow, and $15 food
allowance -- and while I was very glad to have bought it in the end, this was primarily
just giving us all the things that airlines used to include anyway.
Because we had priority tags on our luggage, they were the
first off the plane, so we were the first family on the shuttle bus and sat at
the front, and when we got to the hotel, I told Dave to get into the check-in
line while I waited for our bags and that was a master move: with two clerks on
and hordes checking in, people from our bus were still in line two hours later. Our rooms were a total
surprise: after walking the length of the resort, we climbed up three flights
of exterior stairs (the poor bellman carrying three of our suitcases while Dave
took his own), and when we got to our room and opened the door, there was
immediately another spiral staircase. At the top, the room was condo-style with
a small kitchenette (stovetop without dishes or utensils and a minifridge
stocked with water and pop), a bed in the main room and a separate bedroom with
the bath off of it. (The girls' room at the end of the corridor was the mirror
of ours, and for some reason, Kennedy allowed her little sister to claim the
proper bedroom -- the only room with a TV.) The décor was modern and the rooms
were clean and everything worked fine (except for one evening when, after Dave
and I had cold showers in our room, the girls called to say that their water
had shut right off -- while poor Kennedy was in the middle of rinsing her
hair). We later saw a regular hotel room, and while it was half as big with two beds squished into one space, it would have been nice to have their balcony (and for the girls to have equal access to the TV and the bathroom).
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| Our ceilings were the vaulted pyramids seen on the top floor here |
The food was fine with a main buffet restaurant that had
many good options -- Dave thought that the food was overall boring and repetitive,
but my only complaint would have been that the buffet restaurant had cheap
plastic patio furniture (and I understand that people come to eat in wet
bathing suits, but I've never seen this at another resort). The staff were also
not particularly friendly or efficient -- and we have always had great service
at resorts because we always tip (and to be fair, the bartenders took care of
Dave, often ignoring the non-tippers that were waiting if Dave went up to get
something). There were two a la carte restaurants and the Steak House was just
okay (not that we eat steak, but the décor and service were lacking) and the
Italian was very fancy and fine (and the only place to eat at the resort that
had actual walls).
The weather was hot and sunny and the water was warm and
clear. Dave had hoped for more waves (like at the last place we stayed in
Puerto Plata) but this resort seems to be protected. There are no sun shelters
on the beach, but since there are many palm trees, we were able to find shade.
Only one day did we not get loungers on the beach, and were really lucky to
have gotten a spot by the pool. Out of the beach breeze, however, the air was
much hotter and we were happy to move back to the beach after lunch (except for
Mal -- she had enjoyed being out of the wind).
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| Waboba! |
The shows at night were just okay with two nights of
professional dancers and the other nights having audience participation events.
They had karaoke one night and Kennedy rocked the house with Love Shack. (Honestly, most of the
singers were very poor, with people thinking they were better than they were,
and Kennedy had people hooting and cheering for her -- she said this song is
her "regular party trick", so she knows how to do it.)
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| Love Shack, baby! |
We were lucky
to have found a table in the bar area that faced the stage every night (otherwise,
we would have had to sit in rows of those awful plastic patio chairs) and we
played Crazy Eights (the only game Mallory will play) and had fun no matter
what else was going on. During the karaoke was when I first noticed how many
French-Canadians were at this resort, and here's a typical story of how they
affected us:
While sitting at our table and playing Crazy Eights one
evening, the young couple at the table next to us got up and walked away. Kennedy
saw that the girl had left her clutch purse on the table, and Kennedy grabbed
it and ran after her. They thanked Kennedy and explained that they were coming
back and had left the purse to hold the table, so Kennedy came back and put the
purse back. Now, that couple was gone for probably an hour and a half, and in
that time, I told a dozen groups that the table was taken. One man who went to
clear the purse and glasses off sneered at me when I said that the table was
taken, and when he looked like he wasn't going to listen to me, I took a chance
and said to him, "C'est occupée".
He gave me a dead-eyed sneer again, then repeated what I said
(correcting my pronunciation from "ah-cue-pay" to "ho-cue-pay")
and then threw the purse back down and stomped off. Some time later, a whole
group of Québécois -- chattering happily in French -- came to the table and
began clearing it. A woman picked up the purse and made a step to bring it to
the bar so I once again said, "C'est occupée" (with corrected pronunciation), and she smiled and nodded and left to do whatever she wanted
with the purse. Maybe five minutes later, the young couple comes back, and when
the guy (who was a mountain of a man) asked the people at the table what the
deal was, they shouted him down in French, acting like they had no idea what he
was talking about; acting like he was the one being rude trying to talk to them
in English. The woman kept saying "at the bar, at the bar", and I don't
believe for a second that they didn't know any more English than that, didn't
know what this guy was saying to them or what I had been trying to tell them.
And the Quebeckers only stayed for one drink anyway and then left and the young
couple scooted back in. This young couple, obviously, were jerks for trying to
keep a table for that long, but the Quebeckers were also total jerks, with that
added air of arrogance and cultural superiority. And there were so many Québécois at this resort,
travelling in large and loud groups, everyone smoking (including the one group
that would push as many tables together as they could get, to set up their
three hookas), and we were absolutely scornful of them until…
One night we were in the late night snack bar (where they
serve hamburgers and hot dogs but was a good place for us to make tomato
sandwiches on the most delicious buns) and this group of people came in, and
while the men were putting together hamburgers, the woman said to a waiter,
"I hate all of the food here, there's nothing I can eat, and even though I
only got here today, I hate this whole place". I turned and raised an
eyebrow at the waiter and he shrugged and smiled at me. That group sat at the
table next to us, and in between the cursing and the trash talk, eventually
mentioned that they live in a town 15 minutes south of us. And the next night,
a loud-mouthed, trailer-trash-talking father of four in a tie-dyed muscle shirt came and
introduced himself and we learned he's from the town 15 minutes north of us.
The point of all this being: I don't know how Canadians have a reputation for
politeness when most of the people we met at this resort were national
embarrassments.
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| But we're not embarrassing |
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| Right? |
One more example: The girls and I were sitting on the patio
chairs in front of the stage waiting for the dinner buffet to open and a couple
of little girls (6 and 3 as we learned) came and sat in front of us and started
talking to us. Their grandmother joined them, and after I made some remark about how
the older girl was lucky to have been able to play hooky from school to go on
vacation, the old lady began her crazed monologue. She explained that first one
and then the other of the girls had had chicken pox so they hadn't gone to
school before Christmas either, and no, they hadn't been vaccinated against
chicken pox, and it's not even the law that you have to vaccinate and most
people don't know that (everyone knows
that). She explained that she's a holistic nutritionist and babies don't
need any vaccinations for the first three years of life anyway since mothers
pass all of their immunity to their babies through breastmilk. (which totally explains the high infant
mortality rates before there was immunisation) and she looked at the girls
directly and said, "And that's why you have to breastfeed and not listen
to doctors who want to shoot your babies full of poison". She explained
that vaccinations don't work anyway because you can't kill a virus (but who ever said that's how vaccines work??)
and then she asked if we knew that honey is a superfood. She said that when
dogs overdose on prescription drugs, vets inject them with unpasteurised honey
because it neutralises bacteria (inject?
and what's the connection between ODing and bacteria?) and that's why it's
so important to save the honeybees in Canada because they don't like to get
sprayed. "How would you like to get sprayed as big as you are and now
imagine a tiny bee." (the bees
should inject themselves with honey, I guess) Then she explained that all
of the food at the resort is garbage, that all of the food we ever eat is garbage,
because that's the way "they" want it, "They want to poison us
for the first fifty years and then spend the next twenty convincing us to buy
their medicines to stay alive" (so…doctors,
the entire food industry, and big pharma are ALL in a conspiracy against us?
check). She told us that she stopped
eating wheat a year ago and her mind is so much clearer, and when you think
about it, 70% of the world doesn't eat wheat, so that proves just how
unimportant it is for our nutrition (but
isn't it a matter of geography and climate and what grows where? I don't think
North America could feed itself if it stopped growing wheat…), and THEN she
said, "But do you think I can get a fucking job? They take one look at me
and my information and say a big 'fuck you' and…" And that's when I stood
up and said, "I guess that's our exit girls, you take care now". And
I smiled at the little granddaughters and started walking as the old woman was
saying, "Oh, I see how it is, you're one of them…" Now, I can be polite and listen quietly to your conspiracy
theories from Google U, but I will lose all respect for anyone who curses in
front of little kids, and not tolerate anyone who curses in the faces of my own
kids, big as they are.
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| Dave dancing and playing the coconuts. Still not embarrassing, right? |
All this to say: the Quebeckers were totally getting on our
nerves until we met worse Ontarians. As Kennedy and I were joking about how
many of the other guests we hated it occurred to me, "I wonder how many of
them hate us?" Us getting to the front of the line at check-in, throwing
our tip money around, grabbing a table in front of the stage every night to play
Crazy Eights while their kids were dancing at the Mini Disco (we did put away
the cards when the main shows started, but maybe other people thought we should
pay attention to their kids doing the Hokey Pokey?) -- there were probably
people (if we were noticed at all) who hated us too. Imagine!
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| Mallory harassing a sick Dad |
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| Poor Dad |
We decided not to go on an excursion this time because we've
kind of done it all before. Mal said she'd be interested in zip-lining, but
surprisingly, Kennedy said that that scared her. (And since Mallory had to sit
on the floor of the gondola that took us up the small mountain the last time we
were in Puerto Plata, I didn't really think she could handle the heights). That
didn't stop the vendors from trying to sell us excursions (and jewellery and
paintings and t-shirts and hair-braiding and…) and that was a major drawback
for this hotel: it's on a public beach
so the vendors are non-stop, and even when you say no gracias they keep asking, "Have a look? Make a deal? Maybe
tomorrow?" It was relentless and hard to be polite about.
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| This is all I wanted to do, and a book is a great vendor shield |
When we got to the airport to leave, that's when I was really glad to have bought the OptionPlus:
hundreds of people in line, three employees checking people in, and we zipped
through the priority line. I was slightly annoyed that a family we had a
nodding acquaintance with at the resort also slipped into the priority line
because we knew from the flight in that they hadn't bought the upgrade -- but I
got over that soon enough: when we were at the gate area, there was an
announcement asking the girls to present themselves to the staff (Dave went
with them in case there was a problem), and as it turned out, we were upgraded
to first class. Now, Dave flies first class for business all the time, but this
was exciting for me and the girls, and if no one actually did hate us before,
they probably did once they saw us sipping sparkling wine from actual glasses
as they squeezed past us to get to their cramped and dingy seats. This was a
late night flight and I spent most of it snoozing, so the constant offers of
snacks and booze weren't really a perk for me, but the girls enjoyed having
their personal entertainment units (something they missed having on the flight
in -- there was just the one big screen showing one movie; this is a pretty
basic airline). The first class seats were an amazing treat, however, when we
got into Toronto and had delays getting to the gate -- forty minutes waiting
for the grounds crew to pull us forward and another ten waiting for the walkway
to be connected -- and we were really grateful that our lucky star was shining
on us that day.
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| My lucky star |
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| My lucky star |
Overall this was a good time (I guess the negatives just make better stories than the hours spent reading good books with my toes digging into the warm, sugary sand) -- I just wanted to be with my
family, and with no wifi (Mal was not impressed!), we were unplugged and
together and connected. Sad to say,
but this will probably be the last time we make one of these trips; the girls
are getting to an age when they have their own lives, and even though Kennedy is
always game and appreciative, Mallory made it pretty clear that this was no especial
treat for her. (Although Kennedy did point out that she hopes we'll be the kind
of grandparents who will go on a trip with her and her future family to act as
babysitters -- I promise I won't curse at anyone if they'll let me come along!)
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| You know there are a lot of Canadians at your resort when there are inukshuks on the beach |
