Excellent property in an awesome location

This was our first trip to the Dominican Republic and other than one negative incident related to driving in a highway, Darsena 22 at Casa De Campo made it a very special visit. Firstly, Casa De Campo itself is a special location – excellent facilities, great restaurants, the ambience and the overall “taste” of the entire place is excellent. We had an opportunity to visit Cap Cana and that too to a very exclusive part of Cap Cana and I must say without hesitation that Cap Cana cannot hold a handle to Casa De Campo. On the house itself, the place was in an excellent location in the resort with fabulous views of a coconut grove followed by the ocean – the Marina was a 4-5 minute walk but never felt like we were close to any kind of “loud action” and so in a way best of both worlds – if one wanted to, they can always make a quick walk to restaurants or the impressive supermarket or even a movie theater. The house was great and had a very nice sitting area. Updated kitchen and bedrooms all made it great. Wifi was consistently great and the overall experience very favorable. Guillermo the house manager was excellent, easily accessible and always responsive including arranging for excellent in-house massages or a maid/butler or even a driver (who could even drive your car if needed or bring his own car) To make this a balanced review, a couple of nits: 1) The kitchen was very well equipped except that their pots/pans need to be clearly updated - plenty of great quality other stuff but for the pots/pans. 2) And a few more paper towels/toilet rolls please (and if that is not possible, please let guests know they need to bring their own since one paper towel may not cut it for a week). 3) Lastly, it wasn’t straightforward to be introduced to Guillermo and that created some stress in the beginning – I give the owners the benefit of the doubt here since I understand this is their first time on Third Home For the curious, the negative incident during driving was related to a police shakedown with a strenuous and somewhat scary demand for a “monetary amount” for apparently driving over the speed limit. We were exceedingly careful by driving 75 kms/hr in a 100 km/hr zone – upon conversations with others, we understand that this is unfortunately “par for the course” in the DR which I guess is “what it is” but it certainly taints the otherwise amazing experience we had during our first visit. ”