We left cold, snowy New York, early Christmas Morning. It was good thing that we had an early flight to the Caribbean, as we later heard that the NY airports had to close on account of the snow. While our neighbors were shoveling snow, we were relaxing on the tropical beach. It was just beautiful in Punta Cana. Our hotel, Breezes, was an all-inclusive resort. We could spend our entire vacation just at the resort exploring and participating in their many daily events. We were really looking forward to some R&R, so we passed on the aqua aerobics classes.
We did enjoy the water sports! Unfortunately we didn't remember the camera when Brad was having fun in the ocean with the boogie boards. We'll leave those photos to your imagination. And our camera is not an underwater one, so we have no shots of all the beautiful tropical fish that we saw on the snorkeling trip. Hmm.. we have no photos of the banana ride either, since we were both in the water... and our only shot of windsurfing is the beach shot of our instructor, Victor, setting it up.
Our hotel had an enormous freeform pool, with many "islands" of plants and a gazebo with a swim-up bar. (more on that later). We have some shots of the water aerobics and of the pool landscaping.
We took a side trip to Manati Park, which is an animal park. The star attraction is the dolphin pool where we were able to swim with the dolphins and then watch a dolphin/sea lion show. We found the dolphins to be quite friendly and gentle with their human swimming companions. Our photo's of the rest of the park include the horse show and the iguanas.
On New Year's Eve, our hotel put on quite a show. They moved their nightly performance to a stage by the pool deck, and they had put up huge white tents full of tables for all the guests to sit at. They provided hats and noise makers and at the stroke of midnight, set off an incredible fire works display over the beach. We were sitting back by the whirlpool tubs to escape from all the cigarette smoke, so it seemed as if the fireworks were directly overhead. We tried to get some good photos of the display.
Of course our big news from our tropical holiday is that on December 29th, Brad proposed and put a stunning diamond ring on Audrey's finger. (She said YES!). We had a very romantic dinner that night in the hotel's Italian restaurant. A trio of musicians serenaded our table, and after dinner we took a stroll around the beach and pool deck. Our hotel was quite lovely to look at during the day, but at night was just magical, with all the lights in the trees. We wandered over to the gazebo in the pool, where we sat and enjoyed the ambiance. Here is a picture of that very romantic setting.
