Hey Pat - our holiday at the Palace likely overlapped with your stay there......we were the family with 2 young girls who loved the beach!!

We too did not enjoy the a la carte dinner we had at the Mare Nostrum...for our 11 yr old it was much tooooo long of a wait for her dinner!! As well did not really like the food.....as a matter of a fact we did not eat much of the food there but then went over to the buffet next door and had another dinner.

That was our only "complaint"..........we truely enjoyed our stay at the Palace and will definately return.......that was our 3rd trip the DR....it was our girls first.

Did you hear of anyone getting sick at the resort?

Hi Pat7501

Thanks for the information. Four of us are booked at the Palace Feb. 26. Did you have any Noroviurs - like illness? Did you take any malaria medication?

Are there any premium liqours available? I know at the Royal Suites you get them, but can you pay extra at the Palace and get them?

We are really looking forward to our week in DR.

Thanks for the post.

chipper

Kentville NS

You seem to know the area pretty well, so i thought i would ask you a question - did you see the Sirenis Tropical by any chance? We are heading there on Thursday and I am nervous that the beach isn't going to be as nice as Bavaro and ocean. Any thoughts?

we stayed at the Royal suites. You can get free internet service there but there are only two computers and you can never get on. Our balcony had ocean view and it was lovely. It rained hard two times and then we couldn't use it as it flooded. The air conditioning smelled real bad so we didn't use it much. We left our window opened instead. Probably wasn't a good idea as we killed at least 10 mosquitoes in the room. Take your meds. We all had bites coming home. Out of 13 of us three were up all night once going to the bathroom. I was good but ate mostly bread and rice. The food is not good. If you are young and looking for a good night life this is not the place to go. I was ready to come home. I picked up a sore throat half way through vacation and didn't have anything with me. Not sure if it was from something there or on the plane flight down. All in all it was fun to get away and enjoy the sun. Party all day on the beach and turn in early. If you speak english only take a good book as no one knows how to talk to you.

Pat - I love my coffee in the morning and I heard their coffee is strong with hot milk. I understand there are coffee makers in the rooms. Do these take filter packs or just regular filters with ground coffee?

Hi Everyone,

I will try to answer all your questions as posted to date:

Chartodd ��� no I did not hear of anyone sick at the resort either.

Chipper ��� we did take Chloroquine and did not have any side effects that we are aware of to date having taken 4 weeks of them so far. We did hear of some people who had taken Lariam that felt they had slight nausea and headache. As for premium liquors, yes they are available. There is a liquor menu on every table in the Lobby Bar with prices listed in Dominican pesos (as a rule there are approx. 30RD pesos to $1US)

CuriousToronto ��� Sorry I do not have info on any other resortsKitchenerTraveler ��� I read all of your posts before we left and found them very helpful, so thanks. I also ate a lot of rice and some bread although I did not feel ill at all. It was just my way of keeping to a simple diet that might prevent any illnesses. There are a great many choices of dishes at every meal, about 9 rows of them in fact. After a while I always find my stomach prefers simplicity. The night life was average; seen better but also seen worse in Cancun. We only stayed up for it one night as we enjoyed the early mornings and therefore, early bedtimes.

Beachluver ��� Coffee ��� an entire subject for us in the DR. We do not drink alcohol but love our early morning coffee. Each room has its 4 cup coffee maker and 2 packets of Santo Domingo coffee in filters per day. Drank black this was not too bad although we found we could get 12 cups from one filter packet! The breakfast/buffet coffee however can only be described as tar-like. He Dominicans drink their coffee half and half with HOT milk. He only way to get cold milk is off the breakfast cereal table. Even then, I found that 12, yes, 12 teaspoons of whole milk barely altered the shade of the coffee and for me it still remained unpalatable. So, for us, we would definitely take Maxwell House filter packs next time. But I must stress this is all to do with personal taste.

Hope this answers your queries.