What a TRIP!

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This was the most interesting trip we've ever made!

SUNDAY
We get up (before the butt crack of dawn) at 3:30am to get our stuff ready, drop our car off in the US Parkplace and shuttle over to the Metro Detroit Airport. STARBUCKS right in the lobby! Yeah, so we grab one and proceed to the security gate. Guess what? You can't take it with you. So we take a seat and sip like crazy (mind you the suckers are HOT!) We continue on through security and they make you strip off your shoes, belts, etc. They scan everything and decide that our camera bags look suspicious so they need to search them throughly. Okay, no big deal. Once all is said and done we get to the gate and wait, and wait. Finally we're called to board the plane. I'm nervous as all sin. I know the take off is hard for me so I'm trying to keep myself preoccupied by watching out the window.

So, we happen to be right above the luggage compartment. I see this cop pull up... ok, nerves are even more on edge. I watch as he makes them open the baggage compartment and search it. Several minutes later another cop shows up and another. GREAT!!! Now what?

They decide we need to unboard the plane. Off we go to the lobby once again, except this time it's packed and the floor is the only space to sit. Me, the busy body that I am, decide to talk to the couples standing next to us. One lady seems to have minute to minute updates to share with us. She told us that the brought the dogs on to sniff the luggage compartments and the taxi itself inside. Nice! The end up finding a cardboard box under the seats that wasn't checked into this flight. Of course they aren't willing to share any info with us... other than the plane is now safe and we are ready to board again! (An hour later). Off we go!

After a 2 1/2 hour flight, we make our landing in Ft. Lauderdale. Easy, peasy! We unboard, find our gate, find some lunch, and wait. We board again (after a 2 hour layover - or as I kept saying - overlay! LOL!). We take off, and now we are getting ready to land in the Domincan Republic (another 2 hour flight)... and the plane is bouncing, and jerking back and forth... I was SCARED!!! I guess it was storming and the clouds were really rough traveling through (obviously!). Then we land and it's super fast down to the ground and slam on the breaks. I guess they have a very small landing strip. Not cool! Hahaha.

We get off the plane and we are unboarding from stairs out in the parking lot area. Strange! We walk to the airport that looks like a huge tiki bar! Palm tree roofs, all open areas... very strange.

It's hotter than HAITI (LOL, as I know totally get the saying! Too funny. Hahaha.) To give you an idea... the temp was over 90 the whole week with 80-90% humidity! HOT! We walk through the door area, show our passports, then we have to buy this visa. Okay, then we walk through the rat maze and hand them our visa card. (What the heck? I give you $10 for this paper card and then turn around and give it back to you only 5 feet away?) So then we find our baggage and get thrown onto a crazy bus! As some of you know, there are no traffic rules there. They don't stop for stop signs, they drive where ever they want and squeeze past items that make you cringe. I'm happy to say that we made it to the resort (1 1/2 hours later and alive!)

I'm a little disappointed at this point. The island is so sad to look at (being a 3rd world country and all). People just sitting out in the woods miles away from any civilization. Animals roaming aimlessly in the streets, and in the fields trying to scrape by. Just so sad... then you come to the resorts and they are HUGE, but aren't quite what the pictures depict online. Maybe it had to do with the long flight and the storming. (12 hours beginning to end makes for a VERY long trip!). So, we get to our room and it is very nice!

We unload our stuff and try for 2 hours to get the phones to work or the internet to work just so we can contact the family and let them know we were safe. No such luck! We go meet with the Bride and Groom in the lobgy (where they present us with a beachbag FULL of goodies - so sweet!) and then we separate and grab some dinner, then come back to the room to give it another shot. Finally, by some miracle, we get through to the SIL and let her know we're safe, we can't talk, and we'll try to contact them later. To the bar we go and grab a few drinks! The resort was ALL INCLUSIVE!!! That meant FREE FOOD, and FREE DRINKS!!!!

MONDAY
We woke up nice and refreshed. We took a tour of the resort and enjoyed our time to ourselves. We met up with the bridal couple and their party and went snorkeling! What an adventure. I'll leave it at that. We traveled by boat, about an hour off the resort to an open area in the ocean where we jumped off the boat and snorkeled. I took photos with a disposable underwater camera that I'll have to post later too, cuz I just haven't made it up to the store to have them developed! (boy that sounds so strange for being a digital family!). Mike ended up getting sea sick big time... and did just fine the rest of the day. We had to attend the rehearsal dinner with the couple/party. That was a blast!!! It started off very professional and ended very friendly! LOL. We were introduced to "Mamajuana" pronounced: mamma wanna! It's the umph drink. "lift the stick" drink (so it says online! lol). And it was so GOOD! Uncle Skeeter called it the Root Juice. This is because the main ingredient was this root only grown in the Dominican Republic.

(this pic came from mamajuanacorp.com)
We liked it so much that we asked if we could buy some and the manager had us meet him the next day to pick some up at the buffet. But their favorite saying through out the resort from that day forward was: "Mammajuana" "Yeah Baby!" Way too funny. We thought at first they called it Marijuana Hootch... no clue how we got that, but must be the spanish/ishy language they speak. Our waiter was a blast too. He had this hip wiggle that was so fun. And I picked on him all night. After all was said and done, we made our way to the center of the resort and took photo's in the dark. SO beautiful. My opinion changed about the resort big time after the day was through.


TUESDAY
Today is the day of the Wedding. Since we have time in the morning, we go swimming in the mile long pool! It's HUGE! And it was almost too warm to cool off in. After a swim, we go back and get ready for the wedding. Talk about HOT!!! I took off with the bride and her family, while Mike took off with the groom and his family. We met up at the wedding... which was absolutely beautiful. Breathtaking! Then more photo's, and off to the reception. What a blast! This family loves to dance and party and we had so much fun with them. Even the staff was out dancing! It was sooooo funny!

After the reception, we went to the casino and spent very little money! LOL! It was fun though... we met up with some of the bridal party and talked quite a while.

WEDNESDAY
Today was trash the dress photoshoot... but not until evening time. We met the manager of the restaurant and got our bottle of MAMAJUANA! It was wrapped so pretty.

Then off to beach until it was time. We swam, sunned, played, took lots of photos of us! It was VERY relaxing!

We went back to the room and took a 20 min. nap... mine turned into over an hour! I guess I was pooped beyond belief! Hahaha. We went off to the photoshoot and it was actually a lot of fun. It looked so pretty out with them all dressed up.

Later, after getting pix of ourselves, we headed to the bar upstairs. Here we met a couple that were super sweet from Canada. We spent a few hours visiting with them. Our bartender Roberto, made me a special drink earlier that day! It was fabulous. He made it himself and it had no name, so we called it Roberto's Special! Well I ordered another one that night. Great stuff. When we got back to our room - pretty late - we packed our bags and got everything ready to go.

THURSDAY
Time to come home. We had a little time after breakfast so we grabbed our cameras and took pictures of all kinds of flowers. Even some of the detail throughout the resort that made it unique.


Then it was off to the lobby where we waited for our shuttle. Another hour trip to the airport... at least this time I think our speed was more bearable! LOL. A lot more traffic on the roads this time than last... think the storm on the way in prevented the scooters from being ridden. So, we finally get to the airport. Here they search our luggage that is being checked in... we get our boarding pass and then proceed to this rat maze that is an hour long. We finally get to the security where we pass through the x-ray machine and they stop us with our camera bags (again!). They thoroughly search and tear Mike's bag apart. They decided that we couldn't take our double AA battery's home with us. I was so upset. But I guess Mike had several more sets hiding in the bag and he pushed me on. Strange stuff. We then wait and wait for our plane to board... all we can grab is a croissant to eat for lunch - not much to choose from... unless you wanted to walk back to the other side of the airport, and we didn't have that much time. So we get onto the plane and sit there, and sit there, and sit there. They finally announce that we have to wait, because a couple decided they were going to stay and they had to dig their luggage off our plane. (I'm sure it was something else, more confidential, that happened.) So we wait yet another hour. We figured, okay, well that's one less hour we have for layover in Florida. (2 hours originally). Now we're in the air... we land in Ft. Lauderdale with about 45 min. to go through immigration and then board the next flight. Oh my gosh. The airport was shoulder to shoulder packed!!! We go through immigration where we sit in another rat maze, hand them our immigration papers, then proceed to yet another line where we present our passports. Then off to baggage claims to get our suitcase so we can dump it off again on the next flight. (Pain in the a**!). We stand in line to get through customs... then off to the other side of the airport to stand in yet another huge line. At this point we have about 10 minutes before the flight leaves. I grabbed a worker and told him we were just transferring and our flight was leaving NOW. He pulled us through, dumped the luggage and sent us on our way to security. Again, here we go with the shoes off, belts off, etc... and once again they have to tear our photo bags apart. UGH! By the time we are done here they are calling "Last chance for boarding, plane is departing now!" RUN Forest RUN!!!! We finally make it to the plane and sit down. And we sit, and we sit... for yet another hour! At this point we're p'd off cuz we've had hardly nothing to eat, we were tired, and rushed to no end... and now we wait cuz there are even more international flights that we're waiting on. (gee, we could've grabbed some food in this time). So we get to eat on the flight. How REDICULOUS! They have cans of pop for $3, and m&m's, pretzels, and pringles as choices of food at $4 a piece! Luckily we sat next to a very nice guy who shared a bag of fruit with us. A nice little nap to pass the time. We finally make it to DETROIT! Thank GOD! We get our stuff and are now finally able to call home to let the family know we made it in and are ok. Into the shuttle to grab our car... to McDonalds for dinner (at 1am)! We make it home by 2am and beat to say the least!

So, in a nutshell this completes our trip!