shopping, shopping, shopping

we've been working hard at furnishing the Blue Fish condo. lots of progress over the last week and a half with decisions and purchases having been made on living room furniture, mattresses, curtains, lamps, bedspreads, decorative pillows, and paintings. the photo shows our 3 seater rattan couch being made. this and a 2 seater should be done this week and ready to be delivered to the condo.

as part of the effort, on Tuesday we went to Puerto Plata and on Wednesday to Santiago. we hit Hidelisa, Casa Nelson, Irene the seamstress, Ochoa Hogar, La Reina, Bellon, La Sirena, and Hache. we spent a significant amount of time in Hidelisa in Puerto Plata, deciding on the curtains. this is a store with all sorts of fabrics. it's pretty chaotic with rolls of material blocking aisles and lots of sales people swarming about you. i noticed in the shops in both Puerto Plata and Santiago that the salespeople stick to you like flies. you move 2 steps, they move 2 steps. and they practically stand on your feet, they are so close. it's a bit annoying, especially when you then ask them for help, and their help is of no help. i think they mainly are sticking to you to ensure that you do not steal anything, so it's not really about customer service.

in Puerto Plata, we saw 3 people we knew from Cabarete and another 4 in Santiago. again, there are only so many shops worth going to for items that foreigners like.

in Santiago, a well dressed, very friendly Dominican decided that he really wanted to hold a conversation with us in La Sirena. i think he heard us speaking English and maybe wanted to practice. he was a photographer and claimed that his brother was the ambassador for Costa Rica. his son was studying in Boston. he gave us his card and told us that it was good to have someone to call in case we ever had any problems. i think we're covered here, so maybe we'll need that contact more if we are ever in Costa Rica...

everything has to be paid for in cash or else you'll pay a whopping 16% to pay with a credit card. you don't really want to walk around with too much at one time, so this makes for many trips to ATMs where it's always dicey if the machine is rigged up for stealing your card number. to help ward against that, our normal drill is to look around at who is nearby and see if there are any lurkers. a slip of the hand along the card slot helps to see if there is a card reader jammed in there.

here are some random pictures from the shopping spree. first up, an old victorian style building in Puerto Plata that was being used as part of a school. there are many buildings like this in Puerto Plata that are run down and you'd love to see get fixed up.



we made a brief stop for lunch on the way back from Puerto Plata to Cabarete at a roadside parada, El Campito, which was a suggestion of Greg's. we got the cangrejo (crab), a Dominican specialty. it was really tasty! neither one of us could bring ourselves to have the chivo (goat) which Greg had also highly recommended. goat is a specialty here but not one i have ever chosen.



just outside Santiago, we saw this guy on a moto transporting a lawn mower. not as bad as the guy we had seen transporting a ladder while on a moto, but still, not something i'd want to have entangled with me, if i crashed.



Christmas comes early to the DR......the shop, Ochoa Hogar, was already displaying Christmas decorations.

rolf's party

usually i keep the blog on topic with DR related stories, but i wanted to post some photos from Rolf's party (Veronica's dad) in Holland. the party was to celebrate Rolf's 70th birthday. they had invited 90 or so family and friends to go out sailing for a day on a huge 3 masted ship. i think the boat was about 180 feet long. it was a beauty and the party was a great success and lots of fun. we had fairly typical Dutch weather with clouds and a bit of a chilly day, but not much rain, so that was good.

here's another picture of the boat:

Veronica, her sisters, and her mother created a song for everyone on board to sing to Rolf and about Rolf of course and in Dutch, so too tough for me to sing along to. here's the family singing it all together:


the sisters each made speeches. this is Priscilla, Veronica's sister, leading off with her speech:


for a present, Elisabeth arranged for a small sculpture to be made of Rolf. the family opened up the present together up in front of the captain's area, which was a great vantage point for all the guests to see them:


and here's the sculpture of Rolf on his scooter - a fairly typical mode of transportation in Holland when one does not feel like biking or fighting the traffic in a car:


here's me with Fiona, Nincke (V's aunt), Carsten (F's boyfriend), and Priscilla:


this is V with her cousin, Barbara, and her aunt, Nincke:

as a side note, Barbara did a semester at UVM when she was in college, which is a neat thing for me have in common with her. we have talked Burlington and Vermont in the past. Barbara studied art history. i took one class at UVM in art history - my only Pass/Fail class. she actually did something relevant with that degree and worked at Sotheby's for a long time and recently starting working at a gallery in Amsterdam.

here's some of the group onboard - lots of bundled up people you can see:


a ship full of former expats....this is Rolf and his friends from the shipping industry that he met while living in various parts of the world during his career - friends from Sydney, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires. they're all Dutch and many now live in some of the warmer areas of Europe like southern France, Spain, and Portugal.


another boat sailing by us, with V's uncle, Jan, looking toward the camera:


Rolf really enjoyed himself. here he is with V's mom:

laundromat, beach dogs, swimming

this is the laundromat where you can drop off your clothes to be washed. it's not a do-it-yourself affair. we use them for pressing our shirts - 50 cents a shirt. kinda high priced, i think, but still way worth it to have someone else iron your shirts. if you do use them to wash your clothes, you can expect the whole world to see your underwear and everything line drying right there on the main road across from Janet's. my bigger concern actually would be if someone decided they wanted to steal one of my favorite t-shirts or something. it's all right there for the taking. there's not much recourse here, if that happens.

i guess their profits are higher when it doesn't rain and they can line dry the clothes versus using a dryer. i always wonder what they do when we have a few stretches of rainy days. does it take longer to get your laundry back as they hope for sunshine to come back out?

people live in the dilapidated structure in the back. i saw a C21 for sale sign there once being used as part of a makeshift door. everything and anything is of use to the many poor people here.

so we did our beach walk this morning - another spectacularly beautiful day. here i am making friends on the beach. the dog i am petting i have named Rebecca. i don't know her real name. she's our favorite beach dog and is not a stray actually, as recently she got a collar. maybe she was a stray and someone made them hers...who knows. we don't see her very often but when we do, she is always out and about on her own. she reminds me a bit of Gromit, at least in terms of sizing and her playfulness. she's a mix of Doberman and Dominican beach dog.


here's v swimming in our secret swimming spot...well, it's not that secret really but luckily no one is ever swimming there. it's right in front of the Ocean Point condos and is the perfect place to take a dip before heading back towards our condo.


we're furnishing the Blue Fish condo in order to help get it sold. lots to get done! we started in earnest today and picked out a bunch of rattan furniture to be made by Otto, the german furniture maker. we've also purchased some items made of wood from a Dominican whose shop is next to Otto's - dining room table, chairs, a mirror, and some coffee tables. most of that will get delivered tomorrow. we found some great pieces of art that will hopefully tap into people's emotions around having a condo by the beach and make them want to buy the place! we bought 2 large sized beach photos that are stretched onto canvas and a couple of oil paintings, one that looks like the Amalfi coast with beachside buildings and boats and another of a tropical flower. we'll be making a trip down to Santiago next week to pick up bedding and other items. it's been a really long time since we've been there, so i am actually looking forward to the roadtrip and going to the normal shops. i'll be sure to post some photos of the condo once we've completed furnishing it. it's going to take like 2-3 weeks to get it all set up. now's the time to do it while it is the low season.

in the meantime, go Greg Norman!

in transit

here's Veronica in Punta Cana while we were in transit for 24 hours. yes, 24 HOURS. here's the story...so we were off to Holland as it was Veronica's dad's birthday celebration. we thought we likely had a stop before Amsterdam but did not know for sure. for some reason, the Martinair ticket did not say where we would be stopping, but the length of the trip was too long to be non-stop. most likely it was going to be Punta Cana on the south coast of the DR. little did we know that the stop would become a BIG DEAL.

we boarded in Puerto Plata, went for 30 minutes, landed in Punta Cana and then had to deplane so they could clean up the plane and put on food. the layover would be for 2 hours and more passengers would be joining us also there. well, apparently upon arriving in Punta Cana, something happened to one of the wheels and all the oil leaked out. they tell us this in 4 languages - English, Dutch, German, and Spanish - about 10 minutes before we are supposed to board. they say it will take 45 minutes to an hour to see if they can fix it and then the fix would minimally take 2-3 hours or POSSIBLY they might not be able to fix it and they would then have to put us up in a hotel and leave 24 hours later. WHAT? :-(

ok, so we cross our fingers and think about all the stuff we will be missing by arriving a whole day later. everyone else on the plane is going home from vacation of course while we are missing a day of our vacation. the hour goes by and of course the answer is we're putting you up in a hotel. they say we'll meet you at the hotel tomorrow night at 5pm to give you the next set of plans. BUMMER!

so off all 200+ of us go to pick up our luggage and go through immigration. the immigration officer does his job very thoroughly for the first 10 people, checking every page of their passports and then stamping them through. i'm swearing, thinking we'll be in the line for forever and to be in the airport on that side, we had to have shown our passports to begin with. there are no other flights now, we are the only plane and the immigration people know the deal. this is the first of Dominican logic that i think we are going to encounter and am wondering how the check-in of 200+ people will go at the hotel.

surprisingly the buses are in front of the airport ready for us and we all go off in 4 buses to the hotel. murphy's law that our bus is the last of the 4 to depart the airport and thus is the last of the 4 to get to the hotel, which means we will be last to check in. Veronica seems to be taking it all much better than me.

well, the hotel check-in actually happens really quickly and then surprisingly the hotel is NICE! the beach is killer! not that we have our bathing suits because remember we are going to our vacation in Holland not coming from our vacation in the DR. we went swimming the next day nonetheless in our underwear that looks close enough to bathing suits and no one noticed or maybe they didn't care, as they're Europeans and can deal with toplessness nevermind unconventional bathing suits.

here's the beach. not too tough to spend a few hours IN TRANSIT, huh?

we didn't actually hang out on the beach. instead we took advantage of being in Punta Cana to tour the area with one of our colleagues from C21, Dean, who just moved there to work within our new office there. so we worked! he took us around to see a villa at the Punta Cana Resort, which was connected with our hotel and is also where it is rumored that Bill & Hillary Clinton are buying. That's in a different part of the resort over by where Oscar de la Renta lives. we both were very impressed by the Punta Cana Resort. that is the original resort that was developed in Punta Cana and the same people built the Punta Cana airport too.

we also went to Cap Cana which is just an ENORMOUS development with golf courses, a marina, condos, villas & bungalows, land, etc. we went up to the area where Trump is selling lots - high up on a bluff overlooking the whole project. i can't say i loved Cap Cana, but i can see how people can be sold on it.

Dean drove us around Bavaro also. we saw the outsides of many all-inclusives and not much of a town, which was in line with what we thought it would be like. we also saw the new C21 office and then had lunch at Hard Rock Cafe which is in a shopping mall. while we were having lunch, i kept thinking how i could be anywhere and certainly not in the DR. i think i like Lax, eZe Bar, and Marabu a bit better with your feet in the sand. Punta Cana would not be for me nor for Veronica. it was fantastic though that we got to see it and now can talk to clients about it from firsthand knowledge versus what we heard it to be like. the thing that struck me the most though there was how much construction was going on. TOO MUCH. with much of it happening away from the beach and with it being difficult to get to a beach as the all-inclusives block you from it. the prices are HIGH for what you get. all in all it confirmed my belief that the North Coast is a better place to hang out and buy. but neither one of us is an all-inclusive type. i am a beach gal - give me access to the beach first and foremost and a funky town like Cabarete to hang out in!

we finally did arrive in Holland yesterday at 1:00pm - 28 hours LATE. they diverted a plane from Cancun to pick us up. more shenanigans around that plane and more delays, but i won't go into that. all in all we could have been stuck in worse places. it was just strange to go 30 minutes away by plane, be in the same country, and then be stuck. when you can't beat 'em, join 'em and enjoy that gorgeous beach and get in a free business research trip!