well merry christmas everyone happy holidays if that is something you celebrate we're very
excited today we're in the mood to get festive yeah we are in the city of puerto plata we came
to visit just for a little bit of a day trip might come as a shock to some of you as we travel a lot
but this is our first christmas outside of canada and obviously our first christmas in a tropical
location so if you happen to be new around here my name is anna and trevor is behind the camera
we are the delightful travelers we have been in the dominican republic for about two-ish
months now we have full intentions of spending the majority of the winter in this beautiful country
in the past we have actually done some christmas videos a few years ago we were in europe and just
christmas markets it was so amazing last year we were in lockdown in canada so we did some
cooking videos of places we've been in the past it was a lot of fun but this is super exciting
christmas in a tropical warm location with palm trees so i have to say i'm very impressed already
with just how decorated this area is we're right in the central park in here in puerto
plata and take a look at these reindeer they're enormous they're just they're and they're gold
i even noticed one of them one of them has the red nose as well so they might have rudolph but
my only critique is that there's only four of them how many are there supposed to be
be a dasher dancer france or nixon comic cupid donner vixen and then rudolph so nine really
in total oh yeah you're only four how do you know the reindeer so well
so check this out there's all these colorful little huts around the square here i'm just
really digging the vibe believe it or not this is our first time coming into the area here in puerto
plata this is the historic area as i said it's central park but i'm really digging the vibe you
probably can hear the music in the background it can be really loud but it's a lot of fun it's like
festive fun all right i'm gonna check what this is all about a guy on a horse horse there is a
but this is neat look at this big structure it's like a gift huh like it's like a whole
bunch of gifts with like bows on the top and it does have lights and they're actually i think
maybe the only ones i've actually seen lit up but of course at night time it would look really
cool in here well it's almost like a little uh maze in here you can kind of go from present
to present it's very very cool what do you think come with me i think i have a very good idea for a
tropical christmas thing maybe sort of ah i think i think i might know what she's up to over here
so you can get fresh coconuts pretty much everywhere they obviously
grow on all the trees here palm trees did you know that palm trees there's no shortage
of popcorn exactly when you're on the beach people are selling them on the streets but
oddly enough as much time as we typically spend in warm locations we hardly ever do this i don't
know why well let us know how this little guy tastes look you can see the hole there
i kind of wish it was a little bit colder but of course that would mean they have to put these in
like a fridge or something but otherwise it's delicious this guy is heavy it's one of the
heavier coconuts that i have helped for sure but one thing i want to just touch on really quick
so we're curious how many of you guys watching travel during christmas so in canada i don't feel
though as it's quite as common to say in the states it feels like whenever we talk to our
u.s friends and we tell them this is our first time away for the holidays and christmas they're
always shocked they're like what why don't you go away for the holidays but in canada i don't think
it happens as much and i'm very curious to why i wonder if it's something to do with american
thanksgiving because i know that's a much much bigger deal than canadian thanksgiving it's also
closer to the holiday here in december so i don't know we're just curious what you guys think can
i just point out again how much i'm enjoying the christmas decorations that are in this square they
feel like they're a little bit of like traditional combined with like tropical so you have those hats
and they're all like different colors but more tropical colors that kind of match the buildings
around the square then you have like this kind of walkway thing that's traditional christmas colors
it's got lights around it it's really really pretty well well well look what we found yeah i
guess you can have a big square that's decorated for christmas and not have a christmas tree we
found it it's over in this corner it's beautiful and it's also very festive and i don't think we
mentioned that because we're down here renting an apartment we of course don't have any christmas
decorations we didn't really want to spend money on that but we'd just leave down here and not be
able to take with us or decorate you know it seemed like a waste of money basically so it
makes it feel a little bit more festive to be able to come out and find really cool decorations like
three and can i just point out that this thing is at least 30 or 40 feet tall it's very very tough
whoa look at this is an alley that is completely yeah so we heard about this
there's a few interesting streets in downtown plaza and one of them is all pink i can safely
say we've never been on a little street that was all entirely i think especially this pancake
very cute what's unique about it is it's just like a really narrow little alley so look at the
color of us right now in the camera everything just has this tint this shoe it's really cool
uh we're making a youtube video not an instagram post this isn't what you want to put on instagram
i know look at this perfect square it is kind of kind of cool it has the likes i mean you can
leave a comment maybe they should leave us a comment a thumbs up or maybe you should follow
us on instagram so we realize this alley isn't the most christmasy but i mean if you're coming
if you're coming to florida plata this is a must this isn't yeah it's really cool i
think there's another really cute street that we're gonna go visit after this but speaking
of like pink not being christmasy trevor do you consider yourself an overly christmassy person
so i think some people maybe because we're here think we're not we do like christmas
but i'll tell you what we don't do when we're home in canada it's starting to get cold we're
not people that put up the tree in november are you are you guys november tree people
yeah we're definitely not we usually wait until at least december first to put our time i mean
even then we push that i think we push usually a week or two curious what you guys do in the
holiday season but one thing we never do is put the tree up in november no way no
well we have found another street and there's something that you well can't not notice umbrellas
this seems to be becoming a thing around the world to do a street with all the colorful
umbrellas they've done one here in puerto plata also just like the king street is very very pretty
on a side note i think we maybe timed our visit poorly today we didn't look at the cruise ship
schedule and i've seen a lot of walking tours you can see one cruise ship huge cruise ship
down the end of the street i also saw a carnival people walking around so maybe we time maybe we
should have looked at the schedule but as you say this it's pretty empty behind you okay so
it's they just there seems to be different groups okay there is one more thing that i want to bring
up with all this christmas and holiday talk you're never gonna believe it one of us has a birthday on
christmas day not christmas eve not boxing day i mean christmas day and it's not yours truly
it's me so something i guess exciting for me to be down here is that normally you know we spend
christmas at home in canada we're with family there's lots of stuff going on we don't really
get to celebrate a birthday you know kind of gets overlooked so maybe this year we'll just
forego christmas entirely until my birthday it's gonna be kind of like that yeah i think
it's gonna be a lot of fun yeah it'll be your birthday forget christmas it's all about canna
so we just came over to this place called cafe and it looks like an old house there's old victorian
furniture in here beautiful tiles and there's lots of christmas decorations as well there's little
trinkets there's a whole courtyard and there's like christmas balls hanging from the palm trees
what a special place this is so after walking around the hot streets for a couple of hours we
decided we needed a little bit of a pick-me-up we ordered i guess the most festive drink we could
come across this is a bailey's frappuccino i think bailey's is maybe the most christmasy liqueur you
can get i would say you guys can maybe uh debate that if you want to but i think in my opinion it's
definitely up there it looks like it's going to be very good no calories in this clearly
no calories no it's clearly no calories at all this is very very healthy but oh that is so good
oh my goodness the question i have is can you actually taste the bailey's does it come true
it does this is the nice thing about bailey's is that it doesn't taste like too
alcoholy like it's not too strong probably dangerous thing but it just tastes really
you know it gets that irish cream flavor it's a little bit sweet but not too sweet
it's super cold which is perfect on a hot day like today all right i'm gonna try this guy out
that is good it's actually getting quite loud in here a whole tour group
just walked in after we had the whole place to ourselves but i want to talk a little bit about
this christmas for us and specifically commitments because we don't have decorations at our rental or
condo that we're renting we don't have a lot of obligations we don't have to be anywhere there's
no specific times it's just going to be a very lazy a very beachy christmas full of palm trees
we will buy some baileys for our apartment because there's going to be lots of that
it's funny how many people just came in here we literally had this place for ourselves for
probably 20 minutes we went around and like got all the b-roll that you saw just a minute or so
ago sat here for a little while waited for a drink it was super quiet now there's a big big
big group here anyway i wanted to talk a little bit more about what trevor was just talking about
don't get the wrong idea like we love spending christmas at home that's why we've done it for
years and years and never been away for christmas we love being with our families but at the same
time it's like there's parties there's a certain times you have to be you know like dinners be here
at two o'clock the next day at four o'clock and you're always trying to plan things and figuring
out how logistically things are gonna work this year no planning we're just gonna like maybe
maybe we'll make some you know plan some meals in advance and figure out what we wanna eat but
other than that we're just gonna like be on the beach be by the pool hang out with some friends
if we want to or not so we've just come down to a place called the malachol it's i think the
boardwalk area it's great on the water and as far as i know this boardwalk or malecon goes
quite a few kilometers i think you could easily like get quite a bit of exercise if you did it
in a future video we'll definitely come back to this area report a plan into the old area
into this waterfront area as well and do a proper explore video that's not christmas focused but as
you'll see behind me there is a puerto plata sign so this part of the city is really colorful i mean
it is extra vibrant and it's also a lot bigger in this section than i thought it would be yeah
there's quite a few streets very colorful very colonial that beautiful architecture we might see
a little bit like san juan or something like that we just came back over to the little uh pink alley
the pink street because when we were here earlier in the video we saw a very cool looking little bar
uh right on the street here so we thought we'd go check it out i mean we need another drink we just
had a coffee it's time to get another drink well here we are we thought we'd uh finish off with
a little dominican drink it looks like a shot well it is in a shot class but this is called
a mama wanna mama wanna and it's a very typical dominican drink it is made with red wine
uh rum honey and some special herbs apparently and when we ordered it they actually laughed at us i
think it's considered kind of an aphrodisiac yak so i i think it is however it seems to be a very
typical um dominican drink so let's give it a try i don't think you're supposed to shoot the whole
thing but if there's dominicans watching please do absolutely let us know that's actually really good
this actually tastes christmassy i did not expect that it's got like nutmeg or something
in it does not taste like cinnamon it does taste like cinnamon oh wow oh we didn't even know that
we were like what are we gonna do at the end of the video expect it to be christmassy but
the even better it almost tastes like a mulled wine yeah so i highly suggest if you can get a
wanna wherever you're at in the world you should try one i think the ingredients
are basic but um yeah cheersies cheers to another uh great year another great christmas hopefully i
just want to say thanks to each and every one of you for following along as always we hope you are
safe and having a great holiday if you celebrate christmas if not we hope you are great either
way but we're having a lot of fun here in the dominican republic lots more to come and cheers to
2022. 2022 is on the way and we got some big plans and it still feels so good to be
on the road all right guys that's it from port de plata wishing you delightful travels see you soon