Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

Because we had to rearrange all of our flights, twice, we were no longer able to fly out of Punta Cana. The cheapest option we could find to get back to North America was to move up to Santo Domingo for our last few days before flying to Fort Lauderdale. We booked into a great little condo, right on the beach in Juan Dolio. It’s never easy moving cities and flying all in one day when you’re relying on taxis and going to a place you’ve never been before so we decided to give ourselves a couple of days to transition. The ride to Juan Dolio was super easy, we dropped our bags at the new place and went for a look around until we could check in. It was great to have a change of scenery, it certainly helped that the new place had a prey spectacular view.

We spent the rest of our first day getting set up in the new place and hanging out at the new pool. For dinner we walked up the beach to the Cafe del Sol. We all had some pretty great burgers while the kids practiced their balancing routine on fallen palm trees. It’s obvious that Juan Dolio is a better taste of the ‘real’ Dominican Republic. The beachside restaurant was full of locals out enjoying the beach, sunshine, music and some family time on the weekend.

The next day we spent much the same way, aside from Jacob having to travel to the stupid COVID testing clinic to get Mads cleared to fly. They both headed there first thing in the morning to have the test done and then unfortunately, Jacob had to travel back an hour later to collect the results. When we finally got the All Clear to fly we celebrated by heading to the next beach restaurant and booked a cabana to spend the day. It was a great way to spend our last day in Dominican. The kids all had fun in the very warm shallow water, Madeline and Nora made art in the sand. They all found a new fallen log to climb all over. Jacob and I laid in the cabana with our sangria. All in all a pretty fantastic end to 6 weeks of sunshine in the DR.