Another beautiful day in the Dominican Republic

I am relaxing poolside this morning. I've already had my coffee and a light breakfast and am just waiting for Chris to come down and begin this 1st day of February.

Traveling at the end of January means that most of our resort (and the other resorts, as well) are populated with retired couples and relatively few DINKs or couples with younger than school age kids. There are a few multi-generational families here -- parents, kids, grandkids.

Yesterday's shopping trip was a success! We bought coffee beans, some jewelry, the island elixir -- Mama Juana, and -- of course cigars!
I found the shop that I visited a couple of years ago and made another small purchase of good, hand rolled cigars. Another shop that we visited, had some pretty good cigars as well, but I had already spent more than I would normally spend on cigars. No worries, he had me light one up to enjoy while Chris shopped! We ended up with coffee (it's the first place I found with whole bean coffee), some Mama Juana (which is considered medicinal, not alcoholic) and he threw in a couple of the cigars to boot!

We had lunch and called our cab for the return to our resort.

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It is now evening on Wednesday and we are getting ready for dinner.
Today has been brutal!
We moved from our lounge chairs to the pool and back to the lounge chairs several times, trying to find the right balance between sun and shade, resting and activity. At some point, we managed a nice walk along the beach, but were forced to retire to our room to nap and rest before dinner.

The service at the Riu Palace Punta Cana has been very good. It is better than I remember the service on our previous trip to the Dominican. Surprisingly, it appears that Chris is going to pass on a spa day. She says she'll wait until we get home and she is in need of one (which will be before the week is out, I'm sure)!

I'd best shave my face to get ready for dinner.
It's not much, but it is the least I can do to try to look good enough to be in the company of such a pretty woman!

Hasta la vista, baby!

John <><