Before Anita and I got married in September of 2016 we decided that we would like to spend our honeymoon on a beautiful beach somewhere in another country. We briefly considered some of the classics such as Mexico and Jamaica. We settled on Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, not necessarily because it was a much better option than the others, we just liked the location and decided to settle on it.

We knew from the beginning that we wanted to go to an all-inclusive resort on the beach. The idea of just sitting back and enjoying vacation without worrying about paying for meals and drinks sounded amazing. I’ve heard that if you run the numbers it’s considerably cheaper to just book your own tickets and rent a place and buy your own food, but we weren’t really looking to cut a lot of costs on this trip. However, it was more affordable to spend 10 days than I anticipated. Our total at that time was around $2800, which included food and transportation. We did end up doing a few extras (parasailing, snorkeling, etc.) that brought our total closer to $3500. Honestly the same experience in the United States would probably have been most of double that.

We booked through a travel agency, but they basically just booked us through applevacations.com. Honestly, if I had it over to do, I would just book straight through applevacations.com. Their search system is pretty good and when you are booked they take care of you from end to end, including transportation to and from the airport. In the end, we settled on Bavaro Princess Hotel All Inclusive Resor, and never for a moment regretted our decision. The resort has since been remodeled but it was already an incredibly beautiful place. The staff of Dominican Republican natives were some of the friendliest people I have ever met. A lot of them could barely speak English, but they knew just enough to be able to understand what you needed when you had a request. Their smiles and hand gestures were always sufficient to make up for the language they didn’t understand.

Pretty much every day, we would get at least one Pina Colada. Believe me when I say they taste several levels better than anything of the sort you can buy in the U.S. The resort had nine restaurants and several “drink” stations on the grounds. There is something extra fun about walking into a nice restaurant, being served by friendly people, and then standing up and walking out without worrying about the bill.

On average, the dining was pretty nice, by our standards at least. With the exception of one or two of the restaurants that were breakfast or lunch buffets, it was mostly cloth napkins and dress codes. The variety was pretty good, but by the end of ten days I was ready for non-restaurant food.

They loved making fancy desert plates that, on average, looked a lot better than they tasted.

The crepe station, on the other hand, had food that tasted even better than it looked. Our favorite was filled with Nutella and covered in raspberry sauce.

We also decided to go parasailing and didn’t regret that decision for one minute…

Actually, when this guy showed up to take us out to the parasailing boat we did wonder whether or not we should regret our decision. Apparently, the mask is more to keep out the sun than to hide his identity but somehow it’s still pretty unsettling.

Our view of the courtyard from our balcony.

We also decided to go on an outing with Reef Explorer. Basically you get taken 10ish minutes out into the ocean to a small manmade island. They have several options to try out there, snorkeling, paddle boarding, ocean kayaking, and that sort of thing. They also had and stingray and vegetarian (at least that’s what they said they were) sharks that we swam with.

They even included a short massage while we were out there!

A baby-faced, young, and happy version of us, leaving our honeymoon and heading back to the real world.