My Review of Casas del XVI in Santo Domingo

My Casas del XVI Review

After kicking myself in the head for spending as much as I did per night at the Eden Rock Cap Cana, I made my way to Santo Domingo, the capital city of the Dominican Republic. My trifecta of hotel sites (Jetsetter, Splendia, & Mr. & Mrs Smith) had directed me towards Casas del XVI and boy am I glad they did.

Because I honestly never wanted to leave this hotel. I wanted to hire their decorator to come to my house. I wanted to kidnap their breakfast chef. I wanted to drink all their honor bar rum. The hotel is super small but super sweet. All of the staff were amazingly lovely. And when I had a bit of a mix up with my transport back to Punta Cana at the end of my stay that left me sitting on the side of a busy roadway for 90 minutes waiting for another driver, without hesitation, they refunded my ride. Casas del XVI is a class act. If you ever find yourself in Santo Domingo — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — stay here.

Here’s a video of my lovely room to support my Casas del XVI review…I loved the tile work, the ceiling, and the art work. Very well done and well-curated.

The Breakfasts at Casas del XVI

Delicious oatmeal

The food at Casas del XVI was fantastic. The breakfasts were FANTASTIC. Honestly, even the oatmeal was good and who says that about oatmeal? Enjoying my breakfast each morning in the hotel’s courtyard was a really lovely way to start each day.

The Honor Bar at Casas del XVI

Honor bar rum selection

I’m normally not a huge spirits drinker but when in the Dominican…it was hard to stay away from the rum. Casas del XVI has a lovely honor bar where you can try a number of different rums. Such a fun experience.

The Courtyard

My breakfasts were served in the lovely courtyard. Definitely make sure you ask for mosquito spray but honestly, life doesn’t get much better than this. This was a lovely space to pass the time. I just felt so PEACEFUL and away from it all.

The Verdict: My Review of Casas del XVI

I loved it here. I want to go back! Thank you, Casas del XVI for a lovely, lovely stay. Click here if you’d like to book Casas del XVI.

I stayed three nights at Casas del XVI in April 2015 at a rate of $260.35 USD per night. 

You Might Like These Other Posts

• Staying at the Eden Roc Cap Cana
• Why It Pays to Comparison Shop: My Dominican Republic Hotel Search

The post Casas del XVI Review, Santo Domingo first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Eden Roc Cap Cana Review: Beach

Eden Roc Cap Cana Review

I really should really know better. Luxury hotels in the Caribbean are for honeymooners, not solo travelers. I would have been better off at the Westin and I bet the wifi would have been faster too. But I was so pulled in by the Eden Roc Cap Cana. The photos online, the reviews, the private pool…everything was so tremendous that once my overworked brain found a (relatively) good deal on Splendia, I had to book it. And I did book it. And I confirmed with them my name and that I was traveling alone for a few days before my cousin’s wedding and wanted some peace and quiet to hang out and brush off the jetlag.

Bed and seating area at the Eden Roc Cap Cana

Still, the envelope in my room read “Mr & Mrs. Passportdelicious” and everywhere I went, the staff wanted to know if my husband was joining me. “Nope, it’s just me,” I would chirpily reply before delving into whatever dish or cocktail they put down in front of me.

Traveling solo in some parts of the world requires firm belief in oneself. Yes, it does.

Lounge at the Eden Roc Cap Cana

I wanted to like Eden Roc. And I did, kinda. But it wasn’t my favorite hotel ever which at this price, it really should have been. (There’s a Grand Hyatt in Doha that currently holds pole position.) Here are my pros and cons and my overall Eden Roc Cap Cana review…

Private pool at dawn

Eden Roc Cap Cana Review: Pros

• I loved the golf cart that came with my villa. Me and the golf cart had a lot of good times, driving around Cap Cana, checking out the new construction.
• The bartenders in the bar were the sweetest and nicest to me and made me all sorts of lovely rum concoctions.
• The bath products in the room were really really nice and in plentiful supply.
• The TV in the room was huge. If you’re into that sort of thing.
• The beach was lovely and small and private. People online complain about this, but I really liked it.
• I got a really good gel manicure at the spa.
• I had a “private” plunge pool.
• Cool iPad that controlled the lights in the room. (Although sometimes, I just wanted a switch.)
• The hotel slippers were cute and green.

Eden Roc Cap Cana Bathtub and outdoor shower

Eden Roc Cap Cana Review: Cons

• No Dominican rum in the minibar! Seriously…where am I??
• Staff on the beach were fairly absent and had shorter-term memories than I do. I just wanted some water. One day, it never arrived. The next, it arrived ages later.
• The pool area was seriously lacking in atmosphere and waitstaff, although the club leading into the pool was gorgeous and the staff there were friendly and nice.
• Dearth of bottled water. You are not supposed to drink the tap water at Eden Roc but you’ll be lucky if you get two bottles of Dasani a day. Small bottles.
• Late-running turn-down service. I was ready to crash by 8 pm and turn-down still hadn’t arrived by then, meaning I missed out on additional bottled water. (I suppose I could have called and asked for some, but I didn’t.)
• $20 surcharge for room service. Seriously? I think when you’re paying this much for a hotel room, $20 extra for room service is a joke. Especially when there are golf carts.
• My gel manicure cost $65 USD.
• SLOW wifi, particularly during peak periods at breakfast and dinner. Again, if you’re paying this much for a hotel, the wifi better be the super-super-fast kind. (My speed tests at Hotel Wifi Test — my new favorite website — came in at a very average 2.5 mbps.)
• My private pool was surrounded by wasps. Also, re the “privateness” of the “private” pool, anyone could have walked into the pool area at any time. And indeed they did, on my first morning when they were cutting the grass and spraying for bugs and on the 2nd morning when they were cleaning the pool.
• Housekeeping took at least one hour to clean my villa. Yes, I counted. I came back from the beach one afternoon to see that housekeeping was inside my villa. So I drove around and around and around on the golf cart waiting for them to leave. Finally, after an hour, I gave up and just went inside. They needed about ten minutes before and then they were done.
• Food was only so-so. At this price, I wanted to be wowed. I wasn’t.

So in the end…would I do it all over again? No. I mean, the golf cart was fun but I bet I could have equal fun somewhere else for a lot less money. The golf cart was just a bonus. Pay attention to my upcoming post on my stay in Santo Domingo for more on this topic.

I stayed at the Eden Roc Cap Cana for three nights in April 2015. Check out this post for details on my hotel stay research.  If you want to book the Eden Roc Cap Cana, click here. 

The post Eden Roc Cap Cana Review, Dominican Republic first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

I had no set expectations of Santo Domingo, the capital city of the Dominican Republic. I just knew that as long as I was flying all the way to Punta Cana, I might as well see Santo Domingo too. It’s only a 2 hour and 20 minute drive from Punta Cana to Santo Domingo — trust me, I did it twice — but the two are worlds apart. Punta Cana is all mega-resorts and all-inclusive and casinos and beaches and spray tans. Santo Domingo is all colonial charm and street hawkers and pot holes and  UNESCO World Heritage.

In a crazy way, Santo Domingo reminded me of Damascus, without the crowds and with less clothing.

I arrived in Santo Domingo in the heat of midday. Not a good look. It took me about two hours of roaming around to shake a weird feeling that I can’t explain. There’s a pedestrian street that all the guidebooks talk about, but I wouldn’t really recommend it unless you like the cat calls. I do not like the cat calls, even when they are the multilingual cat calls. Dominicanos like to chat, which is a good thing I suppose, but a weird thing when you are on your own. Better were the quiet side streets and the lovely little doorways and alleyways where everything was quiet and peaceful and I was able to shake the weird feeling.

Within an afternoon, I fell so much in love with Zona Colonial that I barely left it. This makes me a bad tourist. A convenient tourist. But I talked to a lot of people in Zone Colonial and I learned a lot of things about colonialism and immigration and Haiti and rum and I was enjoying myself so much that I really didn’t want to leave. Even though it was hot. So hot. The Spanish brought windows that closed against the heat to Santo Domingo. The French brought the balconies to escape the heat. But on the street, where I was most of the time, there were no windows or balconies and the heat was inescapable.

Christopher Columbus discovered Hispaniola in 1492. The island was inhabited by native people at the time, and the story goes that diseases from the new world decimated the native population. But ask the locals and they will tell you about the small villages inland in the DR, where the people look like no one they have ever seen before.

I tried to ask my tour guide where his family was from originally. “Oh you know. A man came from Portugal many years ago. He had a baby with one lady and a baby with another lady and then a baby with another lady. We think there were three brothers.”

The guy you never heard about in history class — or at least I never did — was Christopher Columbus’ brother, Bartholomew. Bart was the guy that established Santo Domingo as Santo Domingo. But Spain, according to the Dominicans, eventually abandoned Hispaniola and the short story is that the French took over and things went downhill quickly. Colonialism is a tragic thing and people have a lot of opinions about it, even 500 years later. Almost as many opinions as they have about baseball.

The only thing everyone I talked to in Santo Domingo could completely and totally agree on was that Julio Iglesias is not a nice person. I am not sure how he has managed to piss off so many individuals in one country (especially taxi drivers), but he has. (Julio has had a home in the Dominican for many years.)

Oscar de la Renta is held in much higher regard. Excellent regard. A good man. May he rest in peace.

These are the things I like to know when I visit a place. Santo Domingo delivered. I think it is at a tipping point. Give it some high speed broadband and the Digital Nomad expats will follow.

Book a Santo Domingo Tour

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