Stepping Out of the Boat

We had a nice weekend away from it all. It was great to get away from the noise of the city and the perpetual heat. The hotel we stayed at is called the Barcelo Talanquera, and I suppose we got what we paid for. It wasn't the kind of place you'd want to stay for a week, but it was perfectly fine for the weekend.

The hotel was full for the weekend - full of Dominican families and very overweight European tourists who like to go topless on the beach. Needless to say, by the end of the weekend, we had had quite enough of badly behaved children. I (Claire) have never really liked children in large quantites, but here, I really can't stand them. It seems they're all spoiled bratts - it's socially okay to let your kids act like Tazmanian devils.



Here we are having a game of Dominoes waiting for dinner time on Friday night. Dominoes is the game of choice here in the DR, and people play if often even out on the streets.


Besides the fact that the hotel was full and the food was less than memorable, everything else was pretty much fine. Our room was located right outside the area where the nightly show was held, and the entire show could be heard perfectly from inside our room. That means we couldn't possibly go to sleep until after the show was over. The music here is always very very loud.

Here's John climbing out onto a palm tree. It rained a bit on Saturday, but that was fine with us - it scared some of the people away from the beach. Otherwise, the weather was great!

On Saturday night, we had dinner at an "Italian" restaurant in the resort. It was fine, but not too memorable. After dinner, we played some cards while watching the first game of the world series.
This is my new pink swimming suit, which is fine but for one thing: when it's wet, it turns everything pink. I discovered this last week when I wrapped my suit in my white towel in order to bring it home. The towel was bright pink. So, I thought that after that first time getting wet, everything would be fine - not so. The hotel's green beach towel had pink splotches on it by noon. Later, I accidentally sat on John's shirt. Oops. Now it's pink, too. It's too bad I like the suit so much...

Now, we're back in the city, ready to start another week.
More pictures from the weekend are on our "Pictures and Short Videos" site.