DR Dominates on Day One

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I relish in travel particularly when I am leaving the cold, wet, rainy weather behind for sunny beaches. My parents and I woke-up early Sunday morning and left in enough time to park the car and take the shuttle to CLT given my mom's just-had-knee-surgery status.

When we arrived we were boarded earlier because of her knee (even though we were in exit rows?! okay!) but I waited until Shannon arrived on her connecting flight from D.C. All seated together and with treats prepared by mom, we hunkered in for the four hour flight. I slept a little bit but mostly planned and caught-up with Shannon. When we arrived I made sure to shed a few layers as we walked to the Caribbean-esque passport control (chaotic line, men playing brass drums, an entry tax no one told us about...) then excited made our way to the rental car facility where the person we were renting the car from was supposed to meet and lead us to the condo in our rental car.

Bad news is when 1) there is no one to meet you 2) their is no car for you. Strangely, even though Shannon had booked two cars neither of them had any available; were were livid. We went to other desks to see if they had any available and the only one we found would have cost $500 (ours was supposed to cost $150). Um, NO! We soon discovered that they overbook their cars and people had been waiting days for a rental. All agreeing that we didn't want to waste our vacation waiting for a car and, once our contact finally arrived, we had a taxi take us to our condo. On the way we made a pit-stop at a bank so I could pay him the $60 it cost to go 10 minutes.

Once we arrived and settled in I asked the taxi driver to take me to the grocery store where we could stock-up on food for the week since having no car nixed our plan to go out in the evening for dinner. Shannon and I hopped in the car while my parents settled in and, to our angry surprise, the market was directly next to the airport. Proverbially shaking my fists at the sky, i wished we'd have stopped on our way to the condo instead of spending another $50 to go to the store! He gave us one hour to shop and, while that seems like plenty of time, it was daunting to think of three meals a day for five days and race around a store you'd never been to in order to find all the ingredients. What were snacks we'd enjoy, a few desserts to liven up the evening, ingredients we could use for more than one meal etc.? After the driver came in to get us, we made the most of what we had and checked out.

Once again to our chagrin, the wifi we'd been promised didn't work so there was no way to research or book any excursions we wanted to do. Shannon and I went up to the main part of the hotel to try and seek  help in getting  a car, trips planned, wifi ... anything and everything! With very little new knowledge to go off of, we all decided to explore the beach, have dinner at the one restaurant in the complex then call it an early night.

DR, please be kind to us.