Mark's Birthday Trip (Finally!)

Since we took a trip for my birthday last year (Vegas and Death Valley) I asked Mark if he wanted to take one for his birthday. He did, so he picked everything out, booked everything, and then the whole trip was canceled because it snowed on the day we were supposed to fly out. Luckily, we were able to reschedule the trip, so a couple weeks ago we both worked a mid, took a short nap, then drove up to Dulles. It was time to head to the Dominican Republic!

Bye, Dulles! We were flying American Airlines this time, so we actually left on time. (Take that, Southwest!) This was Mark's first time using the TSA Pre-Check line and he was pretty impressed.

Crossing the threshhold of Runway 12 at Miami. We flew right in front of that plane sitting on the taxiway (just above the wing).

We had a couple hours to kill on our layover before our next flight, so we wandered around a bit and found some fantastic empanadas. I don't have high expectations for airport food, but wow...those were seriously good. We eventually boarded our next flight and before we knew it, we were in a van, flying down a dirt road in Punta Cana, on our way to the resort.

Mark had booked everything for this trip; I told him since it was for his birthday I was up for whatever he wanted to do. He told me at some point that we would stay at Excellence Punta Cana and he had upgraded us to the Excellence Club, but I kept forgetting to look up the resort online and just figured it would be a typical all-inclusive. I wasn't expecting anything too fancy, so I was blown away when we got to the resort and realized just how nice it really was. They greeted us with champagne, took our bags for us, got us all checked in, and took us to our room.

It was ridiculously nice. We even had a pillow menu.

Apparently, when you've upgraded to the Excellence Club, all-inclusive means that you get unlimited (free!) full bottles of really good liquor in your room. They will replace them with new bottles if you empty them. You also get a mini-fridge full of all sorts of (free!) things, including my personal favorite, Presidente Light (a reeeeally good Dominican beer that is almost impossible to find in the US).

All-inclusive also means free room service, 24-7! It was getting pretty late (it was already after 10pm) and it felt like we had been awake forever, but we were pretty hungry so we ordered dinner. The food was excellent! By the time we finished it was nearly midnight, so we finished our drinks and passed out. I was looking forward to the next morning...if the rooms were this nice, I couldn't wait to check out the rest of the resort!