"my first all-inclusive" a Punta Cana Travel Page by trickydick

flew from vancouver mid morning. arrived toronto late afternoon. sat around pearson for many hours. got into DR after midnight. 90 minute bus to Punta Cana. Our 7 night all-inclusive began on the saturday night. it was now sunday morning at 330am. It was hot and it was a very long day. I was hoping for a snack, dying for a cold beer. neither was available. oh well, we will just get to our room, maybe i will have a quick swim if I dont pass out.

OUR ROOM IS NOT READY YET? a short wait of ONLY 40 minutes was not cool at all.
Like i said above, a beer would have been wonderful but we didnt expect much at this hour. but our room being ready and available was the absolute minimum. as you may have noticed. I am writing this in march and we visited in november. this is this first thing that comes to mind as I begin writing about my visit.

despite our unwelcome arrival, the place was great. It was our first visit to an all-inclusive, so I cant really compare to any other experience. Certainly it was not deluxe like I had always imagined such a holiday would/could be. I also had no delusions that it would be this way. We chose one of the higher priced deals, and compared carefully the reviews from helpful travellers on this wonderful website. I figured we would focus on the food aspect. I love food and I knew I would be eating the same food ( good or bad) for 7 days and nights. The food was good, not great but always a little different and always plentiful. quality was very good. We chose to eat at the main international buffet most days. As Im sure is the same for most all-incl, you also can choose to make a limited # of reservations at the better quality theme restaurants. We ate at the seafood restaurant one of the first nights. I wasnt too impressed. nothing wrong exactly but If I had gone to this restaurant in Vancouver and paid for my meal I would not have been too happy. I ran into a fellow canadian outside this place and remember telling him just that. he mentioned he just came from the steakhouse and was less than satisfied."too much gristle" . we did not eat there. The Mexican restaurant was very good. pehaps a little bland but overall quite good.

I brought my digital camera of course. We have two memory cards, the tiny one it came with (32mb) and the 1gig we bought later.the night before we left I uploaded whatever was on them and did the 1G first, took it out, did the 32mb and then put it back in the carry case and went to sleep.
upon arrival we took some pictures, soon( with only 32mb) the card was full and I went to put in the large card.
of course I left it sitting on the desk by the computer

this haunted me the rest of the trip