Back from vacation

Sorry for not posting yesterday, but I needed a full day to decompress from the trip home.  It was more eventful than anticipated!  I will do a separate post on our adventures in Punta Cana airport at a later date.

We have just spent a week at the Lopesan Costa Bavaro Resort, Spa and Casino in the Dominican Republic.  As I said before we have never been to an all inclusive resort before; nor have we ever been to the Caribbean.  So I am no expert but these are my opinions/observations.  We went with our son, daughter-in-law and their two small boys ages, 7 and 4.  We booked a king garden view room and were upgraded to a pool view room.  Son and family were upgraded to an ocean view room, and their view was lovely.

This resort is around 30 minutes from the airport, however if you have a kamikaze driver it probably only takes 20 minutes......just saying 🤨

Here are some photos of the front of the resort and the lobby:

This was our room.  Pretty standard room and very comfortable.

It was an open plan bathroom.  Never had one before.  The frosted door to the right of the photo, that is where the shower is.

The frosted door to the left is where the toilet is.........yep not overly private.  With the sink in the middle, open to the rest of the room.

Below is a view from our balcony.  We were on the third floor. 

I put a link to the hotel in the second paragraph of this post, where you'll see more information about the resort.  We booked through Expedia, no idea if we got a good deal or not?

Pros of this resort:

Reasonably compact, everything easy to walk too.

Pools were great.  Multiple of them, you could be in the large pool with many people or go to one of the smaller lap pools.  Plus there were two water parks.  A smaller one for younger children and a larger one for all age groups.

Many restaurant options to choose from.  Also numerous bar options to choose from.

Well maintained and very clean.

Staff very friendly and polite.

The buffet options were good, with something for everyone.  Bottled water was served at every meal.

Plenty of bottled water supplied in the hotel rooms.  You cannot, nor should you drink the tap water!!

Great coffee shop, went nearly everyday.

Cons of this resort:

None of the shows started until at least 10pm at night.  

There was very little entertainment between 6pm and 10pm if you had children, just a guy playing the saxophone or another guy playing music.

The casino was very basic, only went the once.

We couldn't get reservations to any of the good restaurants for the first two days.  When we did eat at the nicer restaurants, the presentation was spot on for the food, but the taste didn't match.

The beach wasn't that well taken care of, lots of seaweed, and not a lot of swimming in the ocean, as it was cordoned off with buoy's.

This was as much our fault, as it was theirs but the language barrier was frustrating at times.  As I don't speak Spanish and some of the staff's English skills was lacking.  We had a couple of issues with our room, and we ended up just giving up with it, as we were not getting anywhere........again as much our fault as theirs.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  I loved the all inclusive idea, as I neither had to cook or clean for a week, my idea of a holiday.  I managed to read 3 1/2 books (I was half way through one that I also took on vacation) while away, and could have done with taking another couple with me.  Enjoyed having the family with us to show us the ropes, and enjoyed having extra time with the boys.

We spent very little all week, and what we did spend was mainly tipping the staff.  Even then it was only a couple of dollars (American) here and there.  We did give the lady who cleaned our room $20, as the poor woman spent all week trying to teach me Spanish!!!  Hola! 

The older of the two grandsons did come down food poisoning on the Monday night, which was unfortunate.  So took him to the doctors and get some meds, as there was a doctor on site.  He was well enough to travel on the Wednesday.  I had an iffy tummy one day, but other than a bit of sunburn we all faired well during the trip.

So all in all a success with a lot of great memories made.  I think we will be doing this sort of trip every year from now on.  We were booked to go to Jamaica but due the the weather damage they had last year we had to cancel, so maybe Jamaica will be our next place to visit?

Vacation

Depending on when you are reading this post, we will be heading home from a week away in the Dominican Republic.  In fact we will be home later in the day today.

I prepped posts for the week away, as I knew I wouldn't be posting while we were away.

This is the first time we have been on an all inclusive vacation since we went on our honeymoon to Tunisia back in June of 1983. 

Going on an all inclusive vacation is on my bucket list.  We are going/went with our son, daughter-in-law and the two boys.  We were going to go with them in 2025, but plans changed.

So I am giving you a heads up you're going to be truly sick of vacation posts before I am finished!!!!

We Bought an Abandoned Victorian Mansion… This Is It Now | TIMELAPSE

I have been following along with this renovation.  It's 40+ minutes long but well worth watching.

Bathroom Shower..........

 September/October of 2024 we had our shower retrofitted by Bathfitters.  If you look at this post you will see what it looked like before hand.  The tiles had started to have pressure cracks in them at the bottom.  Structurally the shower was fine, but cosmetically it was not looking fine.  So rather than pull the whole bathroom to bits, we decided to have paneling put over it.  Over a year later we are still very happy with it and it works perfectly for us.

Now our shower is twice the size of a regular shower, which we love, no squishing inside a tiny thing.  We had a grab rail installed for when we get older and need something like that; truthfully though we use it now.

This is the other end of the shower and the floor is also made of the same material.

It goes right to the ceiling.  We could have had a ceiling panel fitted to match, but we chose not too.

Now the one thing we forgot about at the time was shelving as we were using the baskets from Amazon, which you would see in the post from 2024.  We just had these installed as the plastic has a ripple effect on it and we were finding the baskets wouldn't stick to the surface properly.  These ones won't move anytime soon.  We are very happy with them.  The hook is one of the Command Hooks, that I installed.

So if you are thinking of using Bathfitters for anything, I would recommend them.  They are not cheap, but it was cheaper than redoing our whole bathroom.  We have a bath area, with the same tiles, so all those tiles would have had to be removed also as we couldn't get the original tiles.

Also I love the look of glass shower doors, but hate the upkeep of them to having them sparkling clean all the time, so shower curtain's are the way to go for me!!

As promised another candid photo of one of the grands.........

 this time the youngest one.  He was 3 at the time and his expression says it all!

What is funny about this, is I have seen this expression numerous times.  From the age of 5 months until around 15 months he hated everyone other than a couple of people.  I just had to look at him and he started crying.....LOL  Thankfully he was the youngest of my 7 grands, so I wasn't upset, I know he would get over it and he did.

He has to be one of the most loving kids out there, along with his cousin Paige.  We always get a huge hug and told "I love you Nana."  He is super close to his Grandad as well.  When I babysit, and put him to bed.  Rather than read with him, we have a talk about everything good that had happened to him that day.  He loves that, and now his older brother wants me to do that with him as well.

I have this photo "living" here:

So that every time I need cheering up I look at that photo and smile!

The larger picture is a photo of the sunrise from when we lived at the farmhouse.

Top 20 - 1970s One Hit Wonder Songs We'll Never Forget

The Number 1 is my favourite of the bunch.  I knew all but a couple of them.....

What was yours and had you heard of all those songs?

February is going to be a

... Jane Austen reading month for me.

I picked up this Jane Austen boxed collection on half price at Christmas for $15 which I thought was a good deal.

This is what is in the set:

Not sure in what order I should read them?  

Is there a right or wrong way in the order they should be read?

I have probably read these books at some point in my life, but I can't remember when?  I am a sucker for a historical British romance, so must say I am looking forward to reading these.

I will probably end up donating these to one of the "N's" both are bookworm's.  Would you believe Nora turned 12 in November and Nitara turned 13 earlier this month.........where has the time gone too?  Both are in Grade 7.......high school is just around the corner!

Are you a Jane Austen fan?  When was the last time you read one of her books?