Dominican Republic
Believe it or not, this was my first ever beach holiday.
I mean, of course I’ve been to the beach before & I’ve been on holiday before & I’ve even been to the beach while on holiday before… but I’ve never before been on a holiday where the whole point was to laze around by the sea for more than a day or so with nothing more adventurous going on than the occasional swim, drone flying & trips to the bar to load up on cocktails when the people who take your drinks orders from your loungers hadn’t been around in a while…
We (my girlfriend, Kate, & I) flew out at the end of Feb for 11 days of sun, sea, piña coladas, & all-inclusive goodness. (On a side note, I once again forgot to take my flying ring frisbee which I’ve owned for 11 years & never once thrown as I keep forgetting to take it anywhere decent. I’m nothing if not consistent in my ridiculousness.)
We’d been thinking about getting away for some winter sun and were looking at a week somewhere but the deals we found for 11 nights were barely more expensive than 7, so we happily plumped for the longer duration. We picked the Hilton La Romana resort based on the gorgeous turquoise sea, white sand beach and good reviews.
Bags packed, including new additions of goggles, snorkel (love that word! makes me laugh every. single. time.) and fins, plus a fully-loaded kindle, camera, and drone but no zebra mask this time. I knooow. It’s in storage due to a recent house move, or I would definitely have taken it.
This was a holiday of firsts for me - as well as being my first beach holiday, it was also my first all-inclusive and first package holiday with one of the traditional tour operators, in this case, TUI Travel.
We departed from Gatwick and got there via the London Victoria Gatwick Express (we live in Kensington so it’s a very easy journey). For the first time in forever, we didn’t get to the airport in time to have the obligatory breakfast & expresso martini (shocking), and just about had time to grab some water & sandwiches from Pret before we boarded. Or tried to board - there was this mad panic as the information board said the flight was boarding so we rushed to the gate, but all that really happened was we were herded into a stuffy departure lounge with 300 other people and kept there for a good 20 mins (more than enough for a cocktail!) before they actually opened the gates.
The flight itself was fine, shorter than I expected at 9 hours. The meals were ok and they did offer a free drink or two, but then did that thing which I really dislike whereby they continually launched into these sales pitches over the tannoy to try and get us to buy their tatt. Seriously, if they’d announced one more time that the “Haribo was now only £3, yes that’s right, ladies & gentlemen, just £3”, I think I would have gone postal and tried to open the door to fling myself out and end the pain.
Thankfully, we landed without incident, although it was touch and go for a while.
All pretty straightforward once we landed - we collected luggage, found our transfer bus & settled in for the hour’s trip. On arrival, we checked in, freshened up and headed to the buffet for dinner.
There was a choice of five or six restaurants on the resort; we ate at the buffet most days (always for breakfast, often for lunch and dinner) as it was very well stocked and had cooks on hand to make omlettes, pasta dishes, or barbequed chicken, steak or prawns. The other times we tried out the other options which included Japanese, seafood and Mediterranean cuisine.