Wednesday 14 January 2015

Mind Picking : Grand Paradise


                         
Mal
Kennedy




After not taking a sun vacation last winter -- and missing the family time with the girls -- we were happy to be in a position to go away again this year. Dave and I decided to tell Kennedy about our plans before Christmas (to make sure that she would be able to get away) but left it as a Christmas surprise for Mal. It was fun letting Kennedy help me choose a trip this time and I was excited for Mallory's reaction -- but she was actually kind of disappointed. She talked about how she had so much homework to do, and since she had decided to work over the break at the pork plant for Christmas cash, she was both behind in the school work she had put off and missing time with her friends. So, yeah, that part wasn't fun for me.

Anyway, we chose the Grand Paradise Playa Dorada in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, and it turned out to be just okay -- neither the nicest or worst place we've ever stayed. (And I thought it would have been interesting to go to Puerto Vallarta this year -- we've never been to a vacation on the Pacific and the girls have never been to Mexico at all -- but Dave dug in on our plan to never take the girls to Mexico while it's still a drug cartel war zone. So, back to the DR for the fifth time.) Because I couldn't book our seats on AirTransat without paying a fee, I decided to go all in and buy OptionPlus: for $30 each (each way), we would have seat selection, priority check-in, priority boarding, extra weight allowance for the luggage, free earphones, a comfort pack with blanket and pillow, and $15 food allowance -- and while I was very glad to have bought it in the end, this was primarily just giving us all the things that airlines used to include anyway.

Because we had priority tags on our luggage, they were the first off the plane, so we were the first family on the shuttle bus and sat at the front, and when we got to the hotel, I told Dave to get into the check-in line while I waited for our bags and that was a master move: with two clerks on and hordes checking in, people from our bus were still in line two hours later. Our rooms were a total surprise: after walking the length of the resort, we climbed up three flights of exterior stairs (the poor bellman carrying three of our suitcases while Dave took his own), and when we got to our room and opened the door, there was immediately another spiral staircase. At the top, the room was condo-style with a small kitchenette (stovetop without dishes or utensils and a minifridge stocked with water and pop), a bed in the main room and a separate bedroom with the bath off of it. (The girls' room at the end of the corridor was the mirror of ours, and for some reason, Kennedy allowed her little sister to claim the proper bedroom -- the only room with a TV.) The décor was modern and the rooms were clean and everything worked fine (except for one evening when, after Dave and I had cold showers in our room, the girls called to say that their water had shut right off -- while poor Kennedy was in the middle of rinsing her hair). We later saw a regular hotel room, and while it was half as big with two beds squished into one space, it would have been nice to have their balcony (and for the girls to have equal access to the TV and the bathroom).


Our ceilings were the vaulted pyramids seen on the top floor here

The food was fine with a main buffet restaurant that had many good options -- Dave thought that the food was overall boring and repetitive, but my only complaint would have been that the buffet restaurant had cheap plastic patio furniture (and I understand that people come to eat in wet bathing suits, but I've never seen this at another resort). The staff were also not particularly friendly or efficient -- and we have always had great service at resorts because we always tip (and to be fair, the bartenders took care of Dave, often ignoring the non-tippers that were waiting if Dave went up to get something). There were two a la carte restaurants and the Steak House was just okay (not that we eat steak, but the décor and service were lacking) and the Italian was very fancy and fine (and the only place to eat at the resort that had actual walls).



 The weather was hot and sunny and the water was warm and clear. Dave had hoped for more waves (like at the last place we stayed in Puerto Plata) but this resort seems to be protected. There are no sun shelters on the beach, but since there are many palm trees, we were able to find shade. Only one day did we not get loungers on the beach, and were really lucky to have gotten a spot by the pool. Out of the beach breeze, however, the air was much hotter and we were happy to move back to the beach after lunch (except for Mal -- she had enjoyed being out of the wind).

Waboba!
 The shows at night were just okay with two nights of professional dancers and the other nights having audience participation events. They had karaoke one night and Kennedy rocked the house with Love Shack. (Honestly, most of the singers were very poor, with people thinking they were better than they were, and Kennedy had people hooting and cheering for her -- she said this song is her "regular party trick", so she knows how to do it.) 

Love Shack, baby!

We were lucky to have found a table in the bar area that faced the stage every night (otherwise, we would have had to sit in rows of those awful plastic patio chairs) and we played Crazy Eights (the only game Mallory will play) and had fun no matter what else was going on. During the karaoke was when I first noticed how many French-Canadians were at this resort, and here's a typical story of how they affected us:

While sitting at our table and playing Crazy Eights one evening, the young couple at the table next to us got up and walked away. Kennedy saw that the girl had left her clutch purse on the table, and Kennedy grabbed it and ran after her. They thanked Kennedy and explained that they were coming back and had left the purse to hold the table, so Kennedy came back and put the purse back. Now, that couple was gone for probably an hour and a half, and in that time, I told a dozen groups that the table was taken. One man who went to clear the purse and glasses off sneered at me when I said that the table was taken, and when he looked like he wasn't going to listen to me, I took a chance and said to him, "C'est occupée".  He gave me a dead-eyed sneer again, then repeated what I said (correcting my pronunciation from "ah-cue-pay" to "ho-cue-pay") and then threw the purse back down and stomped off. Some time later, a whole group of Québécois -- chattering happily in French -- came to the table and began clearing it. A woman picked up the purse and made a step to bring it to the bar so I once again said, "C'est occupée" (with corrected pronunciation), and she smiled and nodded and left to do whatever she wanted with the purse. Maybe five minutes later, the young couple comes back, and when the guy (who was a mountain of a man) asked the people at the table what the deal was, they shouted him down in French, acting like they had no idea what he was talking about; acting like he was the one being rude trying to talk to them in English. The woman kept saying "at the bar, at the bar", and I don't believe for a second that they didn't know any more English than that, didn't know what this guy was saying to them or what I had been trying to tell them. And the Quebeckers only stayed for one drink anyway and then left and the young couple scooted back in. This young couple, obviously, were jerks for trying to keep a table for that long, but the Quebeckers were also total jerks, with that added air of arrogance and cultural superiority. And there were so many Québécois at this resort, travelling in large and loud groups, everyone smoking (including the one group that would push as many tables together as they could get, to set up their three hookas), and we were absolutely scornful of them until…

One night we were in the late night snack bar (where they serve hamburgers and hot dogs but was a good place for us to make tomato sandwiches on the most delicious buns) and this group of people came in, and while the men were putting together hamburgers, the woman said to a waiter, "I hate all of the food here, there's nothing I can eat, and even though I only got here today, I hate this whole place". I turned and raised an eyebrow at the waiter and he shrugged and smiled at me. That group sat at the table next to us, and in between the cursing and the trash talk, eventually mentioned that they live in a town 15 minutes south of us. And the next night, a loud-mouthed, trailer-trash-talking father of four in a tie-dyed muscle shirt came and introduced himself and we learned he's from the town 15 minutes north of us. The point of all this being: I don't know how Canadians have a reputation for politeness when most of the people we met at this resort were national embarrassments.

But we're not embarrassing


Right?

One more example: The girls and I were sitting on the patio chairs in front of the stage waiting for the dinner buffet to open and a couple of little girls (6 and 3 as we learned) came and sat in front of us and started talking to us. Their grandmother joined them, and after I made some remark about how the older girl was lucky to have been able to play hooky from school to go on vacation, the old lady began her crazed monologue. She explained that first one and then the other of the girls had had chicken pox so they hadn't gone to school before Christmas either, and no, they hadn't been vaccinated against chicken pox, and it's not even the law that you have to vaccinate and most people don't know that (everyone knows that). She explained that she's a holistic nutritionist and babies don't need any vaccinations for the first three years of life anyway since mothers pass all of their immunity to their babies through breastmilk. (which totally explains the high infant mortality rates before there was immunisation) and she looked at the girls directly and said, "And that's why you have to breastfeed and not listen to doctors who want to shoot your babies full of poison". She explained that vaccinations don't work anyway because you can't kill a virus (but who ever said that's how vaccines work??) and then she asked if we knew that honey is a superfood. She said that when dogs overdose on prescription drugs, vets inject them with unpasteurised honey because it neutralises bacteria (inject? and what's the connection between ODing and bacteria?) and that's why it's so important to save the honeybees in Canada because they don't like to get sprayed. "How would you like to get sprayed as big as you are and now imagine a tiny bee." (the bees should inject themselves with honey, I guess) Then she explained that all of the food at the resort is garbage, that all of the food we ever eat is garbage, because that's the way "they" want it, "They want to poison us for the first fifty years and then spend the next twenty convincing us to buy their medicines to stay alive" (so…doctors, the entire food industry, and big pharma are ALL in a conspiracy against us? check).  She told us that she stopped eating wheat a year ago and her mind is so much clearer, and when you think about it, 70% of the world doesn't eat wheat, so that proves just how unimportant it is for our nutrition (but isn't it a matter of geography and climate and what grows where? I don't think North America could feed itself if it stopped growing wheat…), and THEN she said, "But do you think I can get a fucking job? They take one look at me and my information and say a big 'fuck you' and…" And that's when I stood up and said, "I guess that's our exit girls, you take care now". And I smiled at the little granddaughters and started walking as the old woman was saying, "Oh, I see how it is, you're one of them…" Now, I can be polite and listen quietly to your conspiracy theories from Google U, but I will lose all respect for anyone who curses in front of little kids, and not tolerate anyone who curses in the faces of my own kids, big as they are.


Dave dancing and playing the coconuts. Still not embarrassing, right?

All this to say: the Quebeckers were totally getting on our nerves until we met worse Ontarians. As Kennedy and I were joking about how many of the other guests we hated it occurred to me, "I wonder how many of them hate us?" Us getting to the front of the line at check-in, throwing our tip money around, grabbing a table in front of the stage every night to play Crazy Eights while their kids were dancing at the Mini Disco (we did put away the cards when the main shows started, but maybe other people thought we should pay attention to their kids doing the Hokey Pokey?) -- there were probably people (if we were noticed at all) who hated us too. Imagine!



                      
                                Mallory harassing a sick Dad 
Poor Dad


We decided not to go on an excursion this time because we've kind of done it all before. Mal said she'd be interested in zip-lining, but surprisingly, Kennedy said that that scared her. (And since Mallory had to sit on the floor of the gondola that took us up the small mountain the last time we were in Puerto Plata, I didn't really think she could handle the heights). That didn't stop the vendors from trying to sell us excursions (and jewellery and paintings and t-shirts and hair-braiding and…) and that was a major drawback for this hotel: it's on  a public beach so the vendors are non-stop, and even when you say no gracias they keep asking, "Have a look? Make a deal? Maybe tomorrow?" It was relentless and hard to be polite about.

This is all I wanted to do, and a book is a great vendor shield

When we got to the airport to leave, that's when I was really glad to have bought the OptionPlus: hundreds of people in line, three employees checking people in, and we zipped through the priority line. I was slightly annoyed that a family we had a nodding acquaintance with at the resort also slipped into the priority line because we knew from the flight in that they hadn't bought the upgrade -- but I got over that soon enough: when we were at the gate area, there was an announcement asking the girls to present themselves to the staff (Dave went with them in case there was a problem), and as it turned out, we were upgraded to first class. Now, Dave flies first class for business all the time, but this was exciting for me and the girls, and if no one actually did hate us before, they probably did once they saw us sipping sparkling wine from actual glasses as they squeezed past us to get to their cramped and dingy seats. This was a late night flight and I spent most of it snoozing, so the constant offers of snacks and booze weren't really a perk for me, but the girls enjoyed having their personal entertainment units (something they missed having on the flight in -- there was just the one big screen showing one movie; this is a pretty basic airline). The first class seats were an amazing treat, however, when we got into Toronto and had delays getting to the gate -- forty minutes waiting for the grounds crew to pull us forward and another ten waiting for the walkway to be connected -- and we were really grateful that our lucky star was shining on us that day.



My lucky star


My lucky star


Overall this was a good time (I guess the negatives just make better stories than the hours spent reading good books with my toes digging into the warm, sugary sand) -- I just wanted to be with my family, and with no wifi (Mal was not impressed!), we were unplugged and together and connected. Sad to say, but this will probably be the last time we make one of these trips; the girls are getting to an age when they have their own lives, and even though Kennedy is always game and appreciative, Mallory made it pretty clear that this was no especial treat for her. (Although Kennedy did point out that she hopes we'll be the kind of grandparents who will go on a trip with her and her future family to act as babysitters -- I promise I won't curse at anyone if they'll let me come along!)

You know there are a lot of Canadians at your resort when there are inukshuks on the beach