Victorian House and Sosua Bay Beach Resort share the same grounds and amenities. Victorian House is a colonial property that has been refurbished and converted into a hotel and Sosua Bay Beach Resort is a new hotel. Staying at either hotel gives guests the same access throughout. We stayed at Victorian House and had a nice one bedroom unit. The unit was clean and in good shape. It had a kitchenette with 2 burner stove, sink and small bar fridge as well as cutlery and china. It looked like the kitchenette had not been used in a long time (why bother when the resort is all inclusive?). There is a large buffet style restaurant which functions as the main restaurant and serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. The variety and quality of food was very good. There are 4 a la carte restaurants: Italian, Mexican, Asian and French, which are open for dinner only. All a la carte restaurants require reservations and they fill up quickly. We could only try the Italian and Mexican since the Asian was always booked or closed and the French requires an additional fee of $30.00 per person. Both served very good food and had excellent service. Wine, beer and soft drinks are included. You can also buy a bottle of wine from a selected list. There are also a few restaurants and bars a short walk from the resort.
The resort is nice and clean but there were some irritating details that all travelers should be aware:
1. The hotel’s beach is extremely small and unusable. It was rebuilt during our stay with several trucks of sand, however, there lots of rocks in the water. So many that nobody would bathe at the beach. It is at the end of the resort so local vendors would line up at the property line to offer their services to the tourists. The large and nicer beach is a short walk from the resort, pretty much adjacent. Problem is that chairs are for rent. The resort’s description in the RCI book is definitely misleading as you cannot call this a beach.
2. The pool area is too small for the size of the resort and the quantity of people. We stayed on the new year week, which is probably the busiest, but the resort should be able to handle its capacity. Getting a lounge chair after 9:00 AM was nearly impossible.
3. There is very little shade anywhere in the resort. A few “palapas” on the sun deck by the ocean and a few umbrellas by the pool. People would get up at who knows what time to book their spot so if you slept in past 8:30 you were penalized with being in the scorching sun all day.
4. Hot water was very scarce. Taking a shower past 4:30 PM meant with cold water. I realize that this is warm weather and a cold shower is not a big deal, but not every day. Besides, as a paying guest of the resort I should have a choice if I want to shower with hot water.
On the good side, all the people working at the resort were exceptionally friendly and did they’re very best to make us feel comfortable. The activities’ group was very energetic and competent. Even though they are not professionals, they performed a different show every night. We enjoyed every one.
Expect to be approached by a few sales people selling some kind of “vacation experience”. They were not too pushy and left us alone after turning them down 3 or 4 times.

We stayed here on an RCI trade. We booked a 2 bedroom unit. They said they only had one 2 bedroom unit and this one needed refurbishing. It had no views and the patio was right where all the workers walked to into their workplace each day.
We asked to be moved to another room, since they had no other 2 bedroom units, they put us into 2 deluxe hotel type units. They were ajoining rooms so that worked for us just fine. One room had a king bed and the other two queens. Beautiful views looking over the ocean and a nice patio large enough to sit and relax on.
The food was good, not great but good. We were able to go to the buffet any time for breakfast, lunch or dinner and even snacks from midnight to 6 am. There was also a snack bar that served hamburgers and pizza. There were 3 restaurants that you could book spefic days of the week. We did not hear good things about the asian restaurant so we did not go there, but the Mexican and the Italian were very good. We did not pay the extra to go to the French restaurant.
There are several bars throughout the resort and a swimup pool bar too.
There were a lot of Europeans at this resort, not a lot of Americans. We were there in September the off season and it was not crowded at all.
Overall we had a very nice time and it was a very relaxing resort. the town of Sosua is right there within walking distance. We usually rent a car when we go on vacation, but the drivers were really crazy here with lots of motor bikes. We did not want to kill someone, so we did not rent a car, but took a taxi tour one day. The beach is right there and it was nice, although we spent most of our time at the resort relaxing. The nightlife in Sosua was suppose to be very good, but we did not check it out.

Don't need to exchange your us dollars for pesos right after you arrived at the airport Puerto Plata. It is expensive in the airport. The resort has a bank counter for you to make exchanges.

There is no way you can get to the resort except taxi, which charges us$25 from the airport to the resort, although it is only 5 miles in between. Car rental is not necessary if you want to enjoy the resort. The taxi charges you us$20 from the resort back to the airport. If you ask a taxi from the front desk, it will be $25 as $5 goes to the staff.

We paid $55 per day per person for all-inclusive for 7 days at the time we checked in. The American Express card was accepted as well as other credit cards.

This package include the clean towels, so perhaps you don't need to bring yours.

The thing we loved the most was the crystal clear water, which yo u can see everything. We did mostly snorkeling everyday. The rental shop in the resort allowed one hour rental free of charge for the snorkel mask and fins, so you'd better bring your own equipments.

The water was calm all the time, so it is very safe to swim around with snorkel equipments with you. There is a big floating board at center of the water, which took about five minutes to swim from shore to there. The water where the floating board is located is about 12 feet deep, which is perfect for diving.

There is a medical clinic in the resort. We visited it when my wife got a cut on one of her toes. Fortunately, there was an American doctor helping us there and taking care of most of the claims filing for us, so we did not pay anything for this medical attention. Only thing we did was provide some documents, such as health insurance card ( United Health Care), driver license, and passport for them to make a copy.

Banana boat riding is popular there, which is US$7 per person. But it is negotiable if you use vendors outside of the resort.

Diving boat riding is also popular there, which is us$15 per person. It took us to a place with a big coral reef, which we snorkeled and fed big fish. It was fun.

The first thing everyday in the morning was bring our towels to the beach front where there are beach chairs laying out there for us to use. However, the chairs are so limited, we had to get there at 8:30 sharp to use towels to reserve chairs.

One bad experience that we had was that people smoked at the beach and we once had to get rid of our chairs for not breathing the smoke. Strangely, all the people smoking there were not speaking English, but some European languages.

One more thing, don't try Asian restaurant. It is not even close at all.

My boyfriend and I booked this resort through RCI, and I admit we were a little worried after reading some of the reviews. But, the property was in great condition, the service was excellent, the pools and the beach were both wonderful and we had an awesome time!

Because it was all-inclusive, we paid everything up front and didn't have to worry about money for food or drinks the rest of our stay in the hotel.

Victorian House shares facilities with the Sosus Bay Hotel, which was just fine. There are several restaurants on site, each open on different days, and you have to make reservations for them at the front desk. If you don't want a formal dinner, you can eat at the main buffet, which does not require reservations. During our stay we ate at Sabatini (Italian) and El Patio (Mexican) and found the food to be delicious. The buffet also had an excellent selection of tasty foods at all times of the day.

We enjoyed the two pools very much, as well as the pool bar. My boyfriend especially enjoyed the national drink, Mamajuana, every night as we listened to the music poolside before dinner.

They have entertainment every night at 9:45 pm and the shows were fun and lively. The dancers are very spirited and fun, and they had an interesting selection of themes, Phantom of the Opera one night, Tribal music the next, and they even performed Moulin Rouge...it was lots of fun.

The town itself is a little seedy if you go out in the evenings. We went to a club just up the street to dance, and it seemed the only people there were prostitutes. My boyfriend said that when I went to use the restroom, they stood behind him stroking his neck and touching him, which he did his best to ignore. So, that was kind of gross...the town is packed with hookers at night, and we were once asked if we wanted to buy drugs while walking back to our hotel.

And if you go shopping, the storekeepers are relentless. We are learning Spanish, so we welcomed the opportunity to practice with the locals and chatted with them, but if you don't want to shop and you don't want to chat, you must be very firm or they will be very pushy and harrass you to no end. I walked the Sosua beach shopping strip alone early on my last day and had little trouble because I had no pockets and no money on me, and I simply told them that.

Avoid booking tours through the hotel as they will rip you off. The best thing we did was finding Mel's Tours up the street, and we booked three excursions. We did the jeep tour to Damajagua waterfalls, a city tour and a bus/boat trip out to Paradise Island. They were all excellent, although the bus ride to Paradise Island was very long! The best was the jeep tour which I would highly recommend to anyone in good health. It was a little strenuous but definitely the highlight of our trip.

The only downside to the hotel is the Lifestyle Vacations people trying to sell you something...I'm not sure what as we avoided the guy like the plague. The have representatives who sit outside the buffet restaurant waiting to pounce on you after breakfast. Fortunately, we always had somewhere else to be, so we were able to dodge him everytime he tried to stop us.

They also have two photographers on staff at the hotel, Julieta and Sebastian - both awesome. We did a 1-1/2 hour photo shoot with Julieta - the pictures turned out great and we had a wondeful time during the shoot. There is no obligation to buy any, but you probably will because they are both very good photographers. We bought 23. They are $8 each, but you get a discount the more you purchase. Altogether, our photos came to about $150 U.S.

Last, but certainly not least, Clive at the dive shop there is FANTASTIC. I'm SCUBA certified, but my boyfriend is not. They have free lessons at the pool each day, which we took, and then went out on a dive. We had an excellent time, saw lots of fish and all in all it was a great way to spend a few hours. I would definitely recommend it for first time divers or those who just want to see what diving is like.

One last thing...we had a one bedroom suite, with a limited view which we didn't mind because we were rarely in the room. The room was well-
maintained and the jacuzzi bathtub was nice, but if you would prefer to have an ocean view room and a larger patio, I would suggest going with the smaller studio rooms.