Martin um die Welt: 1) Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Donnerstag, 17. Dezember 2015

1) Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

On Wednesday (16.12.) Franzi and I left Boston for the Caribbean. After a stop in San Juan, Puerto Rico, we arrived delayed in Santo Domingo. The airport has no proper public connection to the city forcing people to use the airport taxi whose monopoly has extremely inflated prices (40$ to downtown). We stayed in Antiguo Hotel Europa in Santo Domingo's zona historical. The hotel was ok with breakfast on the roof top being the a nice treat. It was already past sunset, but we wanted to stretch our legs and went for a walk through the main shopping street Calle Conde. Although it was just past 9pm the streets were pretty empty and we were approached by a number of beggers. We went for dinner at Grand's Cafeteria and had some good Italian food (quite typical for Central America including the Caribbean). Somehow we lost some of our money there - maybe fall out of the pocket. Not a good start overall, we were hoping for the next day. Early morning (17.12.) Franzi and I walked down to the malecon (promenade) where Franzi went on a run while I enjoyed the sea breeze at Plaza Juan Baron and did some first sightseeing on the way back to the hotel. The grafitis scattered around the city were impressive and stood out. There we enjoyed a really nice breakfast at the rooftop together. Then we went on a walking tour through the city starting at Plaza Espana where we saw a big coca cola christmas tree. From there we walked along Calle Las Damas past numerous museums to Fortaleza Ozama where we enjoyed some fine views. We then walked along Calle Padre Billini viewing multiple churches and then got fresh lemonade and ice cream at Calle Conde before we finished our sightseeing tour in Parque Colon in front of Catedral Primada. Back in our hotel we ordered a taxi to bring us to Caribe Tours station. The bus took us in the afternoon to Las Terrenas... well kind of^^ We were dropped in Sanchez, the closest town to Las Terrenas on the route where we should catch a small local bus to Las Terrenas. The last one of course left 5 min before we arrived. Two guys took us on their bikes promising to catch the bus, when they didnt they offered to drive us to Las Terrenas for 20$ per person... quite an extortion, but at least the ride has been a lot of fun and brought some adventurous vacation feeling :)