Dominican Republic: Celebrating New Year's Eve, Caribbean-style

In the Caribbean, New Year's Eve feels like pretty much any other day. And that's a good thing.

We walked on the beach, sipped our usual afternoon Cuba librés at a beach hut, and then, considering Las Terrenas' strong European influence, decided to try a authentic-looking Italian restaurant for dinner.

In summary, the food was simply amazing. We shared a margherita pizza- which we got to see being hand-thrown and fired in an outdoor stone oven- and the best mushroom risotto I've ever had. And to top it all off, the risotto was served with a side of freshly grated Parmesan cheese... yeah, I was pretty much in awe of our dinner.

Pictured: Margherita pizza and a shrimp cocktail from a second night back there

(Not pictured: mushroom risotto)

So, if you're ever in Las Terranas, go to La Capannina: you won't be disappointed.

Restaurante El Capannina on New Year's Eve: These diners know what's up

After dinner, the evening remained pretty low key. There were no spectacular fireworks besides some firecrackers being set up on the beach (we made up for that last year when we were in Australia's Sydney Harbor). However, people did stay up later and play their music even louder than usual (including our local next door neighbors).

Like I mentioned before, we already knew we weren't exactly in the most tranquil place, nor were our accommodations exactly the most comfortable, but then, I guess you get what you pay for. Also, we woke up in the middle of our first night there getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, despite the swath of bug netting draped around the bed. Yeah, it wasn't pretty to be woken up that way at three in the morning but we swatted as many of the suckers as possible and somehow managed to doze off again until a more respectable hour.

Miraculously, after that night the mosquitoes all but disappeared inside our room. We guessed their presence might have been caused by the water pipe repair job that was going on before we arrived, resulting in the door being left open a lot. For the rest of our stay we were hyper-vigilant about making sure to quickly shut the door behind us.

And to use this...

This natural stuff actually worked! (Thank you, Mom :)

After two days of being there, rain arrived. It was a steady, tropical shower that pelted down on us on our way home from breakfast and washed the dust and dirt from the streets.

 Rainy day in Las Terrenas

The ocean waves picked up a bit too and changed color from the city run-off. With swimming out of the question for the day, we decided to take a little road trip.

Tomorrow I'll be back with a recap of our day trip to the far end of the Samaná Peninsula!