At around midnight, after working the evening shift, I was debating staying up all night instead of sleeping at all. My parents were coming to pick me up for the airport at 3:45 am and my alarm was set for 3am. I made the decision to sleep. At 3:45 my phone is ringing and my parents are on my front door step. I have casually, in my sleep apparently, turned off my alarm. An excellent start to the trip. I tie my hair up, throw on clothes and toss any last minute things to pack that I can think of and then rush out the door. Before leaving I do the Buttrum/forgetful friends mantra (Rob!) before leaving anywhere for any reason, “wallet, cell phone, bag (I always add on helmet at this point).” I am clutching my passport and I think, whatever I have packed, I will just have to make do. I was so flustered at the airport. There was no one in line and I told my Mother that of course we were way too early. When we approached the teller she let us know we were the last to go through. We raced down to the security queue where I lined up behind an extremely attractive, thin, tall, very put together woman. I felt like someone should take our picture together. I was un-showered, my hair was a mess, my clothes were wrinkled and covered in cat hair and I had tried to put eye liner on with shaky, rushed hands, half asleep. We went through security and I was trying to calm down and focus on getting a very overpriced, mediocre coffee when a security guard came up behind me and hands me my wallet and asks if it is mine. Of course it is. While waiting for the flight, I noticed there was a solid trend of passengers wearing matching lounge travel ware and I vowed that on our next flight, we would follow the ways of the French Canadian woman and don a wonderfully, unicolour track suit for our travels. After a solid 3 hour sleep and a bit of a rude awakening, my Mom and I were on the flight heading down to the Dominican. 

I don’t know why this is, but I tend to pack a ton of food with me while travelling because I am high maintenance in the feeding department. I also have an irrational fear of being somewhere where the only thing available for me to eat will eventually cause me to shit myself. For the trip I had 4 protein/granola bars, 1 bag of snap pea crips, 1 bag of caramel popcorn and 2 scones (maybe 7) from the bakery that fuels my ever present scone addiction, Strawberry Blonde. By the time we landed the only thing that remained was the caramel popcorn and 2 protein bars. Let it be known I cannot be trusted around snacks, at any point. Ever.

When we landed my Mom told me the airport was tiny (she had the window seat), I looked out the window and saw a portable and was like wow, the airport is the size of my grade 7 classroom! My Mom then pointed to the airport which was much larger and an actual building. We disembarked like celebrities down the stairs onto the tarmac and immediately started sweating like the stupid tourists we were wearing jeans, a shirt and a jacket in 30 degrees with  90% humidity. The pilot had given us all this weather information, including the fact that we would be landing in broken clouds. I have no idea where he was from but we both quickly adopted that term into our vocab.

The line ups to go through security/border immigration were endless. 3 planes landed at the same time and there were 4 kiosks working out of a possible 10. I told my Mom that I should find the manager of this establishment in order to offer some critical feedback that they may find useful in the future. On the other side of security there were a group of kids dancing and singing to welcome the hordes of tourists. After the first hour and half I was concerned for them as this felt potentially like child slave labour and when was relieved when they actually took a break and eventually gave up.

We were stuck behind 2 Barrhaven Moms and their kids. I think my Mom and I accidentally photobombed each of the (million) selfies they took. The conversation was hilarious, the kids were annoying and I prayed to the Gods of beach vacations they were not on our resort. The highlight of the line came when as we got to the first check point at the airport and a gentleman took our tourist card, one of the Mom’s asked if the DR was communist and then proceeded to ask the security officer, what sites they should see. We were mortified. Did they to even google the Dominican before booking a trip? Yikes. There was someone from Almonte about 10 people ahead of us – of course there was! Six degrees of Almonte always! I was also horrified that it was almost noon on the first day of my vacation and I didn’t have a strong cocktail in my hand. Serious problems. Just saying.

They played REM and Fifty Cent in the bus on the way to the resort and I was pleased. I will not delve into too much description because this isn’t a TripAdvisor review (and who are those people anyways, those reviews are all over the place). But, except for possibly a trip to the Turkish Riviera I took a hundred years ago, this peninsula that our resort was on in the Dominican, is what I imagine Paradise looks like. The last review we had read before coming on this vacation was that this resort was a dumpster because it had no tennis courts and the treadmills at the gym were rusty. God bless these people who were concerned about doing physical activity on this all inclusive vacation. Let it be known we never even saw the inside of the gym because it had too many stairs (truth!) and we would have not know what to do with tennis courts even if they were present. When we got off the bus and into the hotel we thought we maybe at the wrong place. As we went up the elevator we were sure that the room would probably be a dumpster, but it was beautiful and then we saw the view from the room and we both started yelling start the car! My mother was disappointed that they didn’t make swans or anything out of the sheets on the bed but she was throughly impressed with the butterflies they made out of the kleenexes. I told her confidently that those were just kleenexes shoved back into the box and not any type of origami. She agreed she may be wrong and that they might have just been crumpled up kleenexes. 

Before I get into the hilarious highlights of this trip, it is good to know that my Mother and I have this ability to start laughing and then immediately escalate it into a messy cry/laugh where onlookers may wonder if someone has died or cracked an amazing joke. This doesn’t happen with other people, I have no idea why this is, but when we get going, it doesn’t stop and it’s not attractive. This happened often and most likely made people feel uncomfortable. 

We decided to take a bus into town to check out the local, authentic vibe, off resort. How brutally naive we were. They took us right into this strip mall where a lovely sweet man greeted us and brought us to his shop. He put bracelets on our wrists, talked about how much he loves Canadians, brought over hand carved necklaces for us both and blessed us with this. I am thinking, how wonderful is this this man! I picked out 2 wooden carved items, of course unpriced. I assumed I would only purchase one but I wanted to know how much they were. I met my Mom at the counter. She was holding a baseball and he had a calculator with 7000 on it. Now let me back up here, we weren’t so naive that we didn’t spend 10 minutes back at the hotel figuring out exactly how to convert pesos to CDN dollars. We aren’t exactly math scientists, but we figured it out. So when I walk up to see this lovely man quoting the price of a baseball at $210 to my Mom, I wonder what the fuck is going on. I bring my own calculator out and show my mother the conversion. We are confused. My mom left shortly after. Just walking away from the transaction completely. Then he turns to me. He started with some outrageous number. My brain was yelling walkout like your Mother but the other half was like, get this fucking vase you will never use for a decent price! We went back and forth. Bartering makes me very uncomfortable and I always think I’m being Peter from Family guy yelling random numbers that don’t take sense.

Eventually I bought the vase I wanted, totally overpriced but not in the ridiculous realm. We left the store feeling totally stressed out and upset. The next store was less ridiculous but still stressful. I wanted to know the price of a good bottle of rum. I needed 4 people in the store to conference about it before I got the answer. I assumed they were all just trying to figure out how dumb I looked. The young man in the store told my Mom and I that he was part of the entertainment for the hotel that night. He was whispering and he told us not to tell anyone. He didn’t want his family who owned the shop to know we worked there. After the great rum price conference of 2018 they came back with a price I found reasonable. On older woman rang us through and my Mom looked at the young guy helping us and says, rather loudly, see you tonight! But we won’t tell anyone! As we left I told Mom that I think she had totally blown his cover and she had literally done the opposite of what he asked. After we returned to the hotel I noticed the same rum in the gift shop for $16 cheaper and I thought – he better hope we don’t recognize him tonight or I am taking out an ad in the paper announcing to his family that he doubles as a Michael Jackson impersonator (which he did).

We were so stressed out by the experience in town and constant bartering and price negotiating that we raced home and decided not to talk about the experience ever again and to wash the experience away with alcohol. I also decided I hate the vase I bought there and have no idea what to do with it. PS – my mother kept referring to bartering as dickering and I couldn’t stop laughing because I was sure it was not a word, at least not a word for that, perhaps something sluttier but in fact – word of the day -dickering, *a form of bartering*. The more you know!

Sometimes on resort trips, around day 3 – 4 you have these gaps that you are not sure what to do. You have had too much sun, you are tired, it isn’t a meal time and you are not one to participate in the terrible pool activities. My Mom and I decided to turn to technology. We played a few games of Scrabble before I told her it wasn’t fun to play against her because she knew all the stupid bullshit Scrabble dictionary words that were bullshit and I always lost hard. I remember I had head’s up on my phone so we gave that a go. It was a little awkward as we were on a patio with other people and my Mother and I have the ability to get loud (what?) so we may or may not have been slightly disruptive to the chill beachside vibe. It came to my turn and after a few great acting moments that my Mother guessed correctly I started acting out the motion of throwing a boomerang and then pointed at myself to show it coming back to me. My Mom immediately yelled “MURDER SUICIDE” at the top of her lungs and out of sheer shock, we had to stop the game to discuss how much Law & Order she was watching to go to such a dark place to quickly. I chose to put the game away after this. I sensed we may have been upsetting the other guests. 

To be continued…