The Barcelo is an average hotel with some excellent qualities, and some issues. I had an excellent vacation even with some of the limitations of the hotel.

The rooms are huge. I asked for a room on the 3rd floor as I loved the slope of the ceiling and the natural wood. My room resembled a suite and was beautiful. I had an incredible view of the mountain and tropical vegetation.

This is a hotel in a Spanish colonial style and is very dated. The common areas are not nice - the lobby is darkm hot and shuttered. The buffet dining room is sealed with windows because it is air conditioned and is really unpleasant to sit in. The grounds are fairly lush with palms but other than the pool area, there are few areas to sit.

The food was excellent. I didn't pay a lot for this vacation, and was not surprised to find there was no lobster on the menu. But for $20, you could attend a wine and lobster dinner on the beach. The food at the buffet at times reappeared at another meal, but on balance, the food wad delicious, and very well prepared. The buffet did not have copious amounts of choice for breakfast and other meals, no smorgasboard style, but good selection of choices and very good food.

The staff was amazing - warm, friendly, very sweet and I was happy to make some friends, both tourists and locals, who I will look up next time I am in DR. Do tip generously - hotel staff in North America make little, they work 6 days per week and make MUCH less.

Maid service - I did notice that the room, other than the bathroom and floors, was never really cleaned. Just straightened, and I don't have the sense that they were very clean. Yes, very tiny bugs on one of the bedroom tables. I didn't panic and asked the maid to wipe all the tables down - she did, bugs were gone. These are mealy looking, flour type bugs, nothing to get excited about, but not good either.

The location of the hotel is very good. There is a boulevard with a golfcourse, man made pond, some shops and other hotels with a lot of lush vegetation which is quite beautiful and just outside the hotel which makes for a very pleasant walk. There is a very good disco - Coco Bongo which is a 2 mnute walk from the hotel.

I likely would have returned to this hotel until I had the experience with the weekend Dominicans. I was open-minded, interested in meeting them, and looking forward to the party. It was chaos. The limited resources of this hotel are maxed to the limit with the incursions of hundreds of people. It is not pleasant. The buffet becomes a riot. The Dominicans were very aggressive about food - they eat as much as they can, drink as much as they can, and on balance, were not pleasant to be around. I don't think I or any of the tourists should have been exposed to this. I also saw tourists treating Dominicans badly. There was vomit on the floor, a woman changing a diaper on a beach chair at the pool. If you do go to the Barcelo, don't arrive on a Saturday or Sunday as you will have to go through the Dominican weekend incursion twice.

This hotel was very well priced. As I mentioned, but for the weekend passes for Dominicans, I probably might have gone back for a week. Now, having had that experience, I won't. There are other hotels similarly priced that are infinitely better.

The beach was adequate - neither bad nor good. Rancho Lorilar was a fantastic horse ride - do bring sausages for the dogs and bananas for the horses. The cable car to the mountain was a mind blowing experience - worth doing again.