Tag: vacation Posts

I had a few people over sort of on a whim last night, and we all sat around listening to music and enjoying Christmas nachos. I’m not sure if this is officially year two or year three for the nachos, but I’ve been trying to up the ante each year to see if I can outdo myself. They Almost Don’t Fit I had a few Christmas decorations sitting around in boxes, so we all took turns throwing a few up on the tree. Keira helped herself to R2-D2, and I think I got stuck with Yoda. Good times. Only five more days of work and then I’m off for a while. I’m getting excited about heading back home for a few days and spending time relaxing with the family. My friend Jan will be visiting from Chicago during the break, so I’ll finally get to see him again (we haven’t […]

I got a call from Canon today about my lens with water vapour in it. They verdict: completely unfixable. To be honest, I’m a bit pissed off. When I shipped it out to them, I followed it up with a call telling them it was rather urgent, and they needed to get to it first since it concerned water damage. The lady on the phone told me they were 5 days behind, and there was nothing she could do. Anyways, when they finally get to it, it was corroded inside and not worth fixing. The replacement cost of the new lens is around $1600, so I’m going to be submitting my first ever insurance claim. The shitty part is that I have special insurance on all my camera equipment, except of course that lens since it’s rather recent. Had anything else bit the dust, I would have been able to […]

Well, I’m currently sitting in my boxers in a Montreal hotel about to go to sleep. I spent most of the day either thinking about traveling, or actually traveling, so when I landed in Montreal at 7pm, I was a bit tired from the whole ordeal. Leaving a foreign country where the rules of leaving aren’t really clearly defined is a bit stressful for me. The whole tourist card thing turned out to be not a big deal, and eventually I made it through customs and security. It’s amazing how less anxious I become whenever I land back in Canada — there’s a certain comfort with knowing your bank card will always work, and you speak the primary language of the country. The currency in the Dominican Republic is a bit strange. Like most Caribbean places I’ve visited, locals generally prefer to accept payment in US dollars. Unfortunately, the bank […]

This is, unfortunately, my last full day at the resort. Tomorrow I get to wake up, pack my bags, and start the long journey back to Vancouver. While this place is really pretty amazing, I always get a bit excited whenever I get on a plane that’s heading for home. I get into Montreal tomorrow evening, and will be staying overnight in a nice hotel near the airport. While the rooms here are fairly nice, the beds are unanimously hard and I haven’t had the best sleeps. Hopefully the bed in the Hilton is nice and soft so I can get a really great sleep tomorrow night. I was originally going to have to get to Ottawa (by plane or bus or something) on Monday for a 4pm flight, and then have a three hour layover in Toronto. That would have put me at my place in Vancouver at around […]

To be honest, I’m not such a big fan of pre-arranged adventures at resorts. I’ve been on a few, and most of them are pretty basic and you kind of feel like it wasn’t money well spent. However, I heard a lot of good things about the safari adventure, so I decided to check it out for the low price of $60 USD. We left the resort at 9am, and proceeded to head into the lush Dominican Countryside. It was absolutely gorgeous, full of rolling hills, lush green vegetation, and a ton of friendly Dominican people. The safari jeep was loaded to the brim of soft drinks and booze, and nobody had an empty glass the entire time. I have spent most of my time here stuck by the pool, which is nice for a few days, but to actually hit the road and actually get to see some of […]

Thankfully the clouds are overhead today, because yesterday was absolutely insanely hot. So hot in fact, that most people didn’t even hang out by the pool bar. I’m pretty much all pooled out I think, so I’m going to find something else to do today. I’ll probably walk down to the Plaza and book an excursion or two. They have an all-day catamaran trip to a remote island (with an open bar I might add) that sounds fairly appealing, as well as a safari trip to a waterfall you can swim in. Talking to people around here, it sounds like nearly everyone has had a lackluster summer back home, so don’t feel bad all you Vancouver people. As of tomorrow I’ll be more than half-way done this trip, and it’s gone rather quickly. Around Friday I’ll start to figure out just how in the hell I’m getting home, since there […]

This will be a short entry, but I just wanted to say how great this place is. The people I’ve met have been super friendly, and the weather is pretty amazing. I took a pile of photos yesterday from around the pool. Unfortunately, upon waking up this morning, I’ve encountered some fairly serious camera problems. The first is that my DLSR body refuses to turn on now. It was working last night when I went to sleep, but now it just refuses to do anything. I suspect that due to the heat and humidity it’s being stubborn, but it’s not looking good right now. The other serious issue is that my 70-200mm f/2.8L is full of water vapour. I have no idea how that happened, since it was in my bag the entire day, and my bag wasn’t really near the pool. I was taking shots with the 17-40mm f/4L […]

Well here I am, in the Dominican Republic, taking a quick break from drinking to write a small blog entry here. This is the first time in quite a while where I’ve just relaxed and been content with reading. Last night I tried to use the wireless internet here, but it wasn’t working. And as soon as I learned it wasn’t, I almost felt a bit anxious. And that’s when I realized just how important it is that I just put the computer away this trip, and enjoy my time by the pool. So, I doubt I’ll do more than a quick blog entry a day, most likely in the morning on my way to breakfast. The weather here is pretty perfect — around 34C during the days with a slight overcast in the afternoon, dropping to a humid 21C in the evenings. I woke up today around 9am, and […]

The first thing to note is that I cannot seem to find my little Canon camera, and it’s the one I took all the photos with at Rob and Anna’s wedding. So while I’m pretty sure it will turn up, unfortunately I do not have any photos to go with this entry 🙁 Oh well. The wedding was quite lovely, and it was absolutely great to hang out with old friends again. It was a bit shocking to me to remember just how good some of these friends were. I guess my time back in Vancouver has sort of dulled my memory of what Ottawa life was like, but I received a lot of hugs and a lot of people went out of their way to come over and say hi during the reception. I spent a lot of time catching back up with Francois and his wife Christine. Francois […]