Luxury Apart-Hotel Review: Presidential Suites Cabarete.
This blog post was made in collaboration with Lifestyle Holidays Hotels. All opinions are my own.
Between work, family, and ministry, we have been working nonstop for two years since we moved to Wisconsin. It was about time for us to schedule a family vacation. For two weeks, we took our very first International family vacation to the Dominican Republic— and we had a BLAST!
We spent the first week in the city of Santo Domingo, the capital, eating good food & spending time with my family. See our Santo Domingo adventure on my Instagram stories. The second week, we took a road trip to Cabarete and spent a wonderful week in paradise.
Getting to Presidential Suites Cabarete
Since we spent the first week in the city, we decided to rent a car and drive it to Cabarete. It was a 4-hour drive from the capital. In all honesty, the drive was terrible for us, we took the route that went through the mountains. Bad idea. The view was incredible but an entire hour of crazy loops through the mountains made a few of us super sick. I got extremely dizzy, almost fainted and our three-year-old threw up in the car due to the high altitudes. The scenery was beautiful but I definitely DO NOT recommend..unless you like that sort of thing lol. We did take a different route on the way back since we flew out of Santo Domingo and that was way better!
I do recommend flying right into Puerto Plata International Airport which is 30 minutes from Presidential Suites.
When we finally arrived at Presidential Suites Cabarete, we were warmly greeted by the staff who would be taking care of us for the next 6 days. We walked through their gorgeous lobby and walked over to our suite. Presidential suites consist of two sides— the Presidential side which has a garden/pool view and the Imperial side with an ocean view. We stayed in the Imperial Suites side. The two sides are separated by the main street, but there is a bridge that easily connects one side to the other.
The Stay
*Disclaimer— think of these suites as more of a luxury apartment and not your typical hotel. The suites are equipped with a full kitchen in case you want to cook meals during your stay (we saved a ton of money cooking- who doesn’t love the sound of that?!) This was perfect for a family vacation! If cooking on vacation isn’t your cup of tea, the Suites have various restaurants right on the property along with a spa…relaxation anyone?
Since these are apartments, housekeeping doesn’t come every day. There’s a daily fee for additional cleaning and towels to be washed. We had an abundance of towels in all the rooms and didn’t need housekeeping (also because of COVID, extra contact in our rooms is something we wanted to limit)— so this was no problem for us!
Another thing to note is that Lifestyle Hotels are Timeshare based (they call it VIP Membership) which means that they offer extra perks at all of their hotels when you become a member. We got invited to a “free breakfast” a few times which we declined since we already have a Timeshare. If you don’t want to sit through a presentation during vacation, nicely decline.
Where are the apartments located?
Cabarete is a town in the Puerto Plata province of the Dominican Republic, noted for its tourism and beaches. Directions: Presidential Suites is 30 minutes from Puerto Plata International Airport.
Favorite restaurants in Cabarete:
There are so many restaurants in Cabarete! I recommend using Bocao, for any restaurant recommendations in the Dominican Republic. Here were my favorite restaurants right on the beach:
Casita De Papi, about a 6-minute walk via the beach- Try their Langostinos de Papi.
Our Afternoon Date at Casita De Papi
Nectar, about a 3-minute walk via the beach- Try their, fried fish,pasta with shrimp, nuggets & fries (for the kiddos), cheesecake,Venezuelan bites & brownie with ice cream.
Like I mentioned before, we mostly cooked our meals during the week. We spent about $130 USD in groceries that week for the 5 of us (CRAZY RIGHT?). In just a short walk from the hotel (about 7-minutes), you’ll find Janet’s Supermarket which has a vast selection of food. We had no problem finding everything we needed for the trip there.
Best Travel Apps For Visiting DR
Dress // Shoes // Bag // Sunglasses
COVID-19 restrictions:
Something that I really appreciated about travel to the Dominican Republic is the COVID guidelines. Wherever we went, everyone was wearing a mask. And while you don’t need a COVID test or vaccination card to get into the country, many places like grocery stores and tourist spots do require proof of a vaccination card to enter (this was very strict in Santo Domingo).
If you decide to visit a different country, please make sure to respect the guidelines and culture of that country— Be courteous, respectful, and mindful.
Favorite things about the Luxury Apartments:
Video of Our Beautiful Beachfront Apartment
The entire suite was beautifully decorated and as you can see so much care was put into its design. Our suite had 3 bedrooms and 3 baths. Enough space for all 5 of us! Zion had his own room which was wonderful! It was a little crazy that our toddler had a huge room and bathroom to himself on a vacation, definitely not complaining.
And the view, WOW. I can’t stress enough how incredible it was to wake up to the spectacular ocean every single day.
My favorite thing about visiting my sweet country is definitely the beaches. The beaches and the food are what I miss the most since moving to the States.
Cabarete is known for its surfing, so I was concerned that the waves were going to be too rough (that’s what everyone told me). It turned out that the surfing beaches were further down so that’s not something we had to worry about. The beach right in front of the apartment was extremely swimmable (toddler friendly) & beautiful!
Travel Tip – Go to DR at end of October/November. Hurricane season ends around this time & most places will be less crowded. We traveled from Oct 23rd to Nov 7th & it was a dream. It was also amazing to escape the Midwest weather for a bit– coming back to Midwest weather was a different story *insert thumbs down emoji*.
Book Presidential Suites Cabarete
This family vacay was one for the books! Thank you to Lifestyle Hotels for the great experience!
Happy Travels!
xo,
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