Vacation in the Dominican – Part 2

I mentioned in my last entry that I would write a bit more about our vacation in the Dominican.

We were able to take an excursion during our vacation into the Dominican, and I’m so happy that we chose the one we did.  We went on a jungle truck safari tour, which took us through the country side of the Dominican (gorgeous!).  The Dominican has only two economic classes – rich and poor.  We were able to visit a local family’s residence, to see how the average person lives.  We then toured a local school, a small farm that made and sold candy, and a village where Haitian refugees live (we only drove through this last one).

The great thing about this company is that 1/2 of their proceeds go to help build and maintain schools for the region they work out of. And they provide income to the families that we visited (the residence and the candy farm).  It is amazing how little they have, and yet are so happy.  It was a truly humbling experience, and everyone agreed that it was a wonderful way to remind us of what is truly important in life – friends, family, and good health.  And I have to say it was quite fun tossing candy at children and seeing just how happy it made them!

School Girl

Lovely Flower

Green Anolis in a Hatched Roof

Making Candy

Haitian Children Catching Candy

Dominican Field & Mountains

Piglets

Grandpa at Home

Kids in School

Relaxing in The Shade

(copyrighted to ensure the protection of those in the photo)

Vacation in the Dominican

As I mentioned in my previous post, I went away on vacation with my hubby, the parents, and my sister to the Dominican Republic.  I’ve never been there, but I highly recommend it to anyone thinking of going.  It’s a beautiful country, and although very few people there speak English well, they are very nice and hospitable!  The resort we were in was gorgeous, and we had the opportunity to take a trip that I’ll talk about in my next post.

Overall,  a great time!  Here are some photos around the resort we stayed at… this is making me miss it even more now!

Ottawa in the summer part 2

I mentioned in my last post that I’d be sharing photos throughout the week from our trip to Ottawa, so here’s installment #2.

Although I didn’t think to take too many photos of food, there was a ton of it, and it was all amazing!  Apparently Ottawa is turning into quite the gastronomic centre, and I enjoyed every moment of that.  There’s even a Cordon Bleu School there, with some of the top chefs in the world studying.  Next trip I”m going to try to get into the chef’s dinner – you sit in the kitchen and watch him prepare your food; that is my idea of a great evening!

There’s an area in town called the Byward Market.  A great place with restaurants/bars, bakeries, shops, artisans, an open market, and small stores.  We spent a lot of our time there, just wandering and seeing what was for sale, and of course… eating.  There was a great little patisserie with wonderful pastries and cookies.  I tried out a chocolate danish – delish!  I’m surprised I didn’t gain 10 pounds while we were there!