A Slice of Heaven

Club Med Punta Cana, Dominican Republic

By Brad Keywell

These deserve their own section, because of how central they are to the Village. The pool is the centerpiece of the village, and it is enormous, with two islands and a dedicated kids section. Given the ages of our kids, we spent at least four hours each day in the pool, often well past sunset.

The ocean is literally steps away from the pool, so we often built sandcastles, went for a quick dip in the ocean and then a minute later were running around in the pool playing with the many floating toys that seemed to be everywhere. The accessibility of the pool and ocean make this destination a special place.

The Food

The Club Med food, while notoriously fantastic, was only satisfactory, in our humble opinion. We are not food connoisseurs – in fact, like most parents of two kids under 5, we rarely have time to eat anything that takes more than five minutes to prepare. But the food did not seem to break out of the mediocre range. The quantity is exceptional – think cruise ship. Each meal had at least eight different main course options, at least 10 different appetizers and dozens of desserts, as well as all the beer and wine you can drink.

For kids, each meal had their own kid-friendly area with hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken nuggets, pasta, peanut butter and jelly, French fries and ice cream – perfect if you want to make your kids happy and keep them quiet. Meal times are generally two to three hours long, and you are seated with another couple or family at every meal (as all tables seat either six, eight or 12). This forced you to meet many other people, which was one of the high points of our trip.

For families, it is important to know that he Club Med dining room staff is not just experienced in the craziness of kids, but seems to almost expect the inevitable broken plates, crying children and spilled ice cream. Any preschooler's parent can relate to our relief when we discovered that mealtime was not a time for every other perfect family to stare at our family in hysterics. Rather, mealtime is a time when the kids are fascinated looking at and meeting each other, and the occasional outburst does not rock any boats.

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