Sunday, May 17, 2009

Santa Domingo - DR Capital City

Love this picture of us in front of Diego Columbus' house
Joey hanging out on Diego's balcony. The view was lovely.


Sitting at a cafe with Diego's house in the background. I felt like I was in Greece or something.
Leaning on a cannon near the fort in Santa Domingo
I don't know why but I just like this picture. This was by the gift shop we stopped at
A very, very old cathedral constructed in the early 1500's!
Our day started out with the worlds worst and smallest cup of coffee...not a good sign!

Santa Domingo is the largest city in the Dominican Republic and it is also the capital. As a result it is extremely crowded..ummm, imagine Los Angeles on Steroids and that pretty much sums up Santa Domingo, at least according to mine and Joey's experience. There is a lot of history in SD though because Christopher Columbus's son, Diego, resided there. Joey and I booked the tour thinking we would get a good dose of history and that we would get to see lots of neat things...it didn't go down quite like that. We got up at 4 AM in the morning, were picked up at 5 AM and then proceeded to pick other people up for an hour and drive another 5 hours (6 hours total) just to get to Santa Domingo. It was a grueling ride in that bus lemme tell yah. Then when we got to SD, we only saw a couple historical things, ate lunch (that wasn't included in the tour even though our brochure said it was), visited a cave and headed home for the 6 hour ride back. Ummmmm, if you go to the DR, do not waste your money on this tour. Drive yourself or have a taxi take you and do your own tour. The one good thing that came from that trip is that we got to visit Diego Columbus' house. That was neat. Joey and I were so exhausted when we got back and that was the night that Joey started feeling really sick so we canceled our tour for the following day to recover:). Live and learn right:)

A little history blurb on Santa Domingo:
It was founded in August 1496 by Columbus' brother Bartolome, who moved the temporary capital from Hispaniola's northwest coast. Christopher Columbus set up it's first settlement, Navidad after discovering the island in December 1492. Columbus later established a community he called Isabela in the northwest, which Bartolome later moved to present-day Santo Domingo

4 comments:

  1. Wouldn't it be so cool to just do this for a living?! To just go on vacations and then come back and right reviews saying what's worth it and what's not!! Wow...yup...I think that's for sure what God wants me to do! Hehehe!

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  2. Wow! That sounded like a great tour and well worth the money. NOT!! I guess you win some, you lose some. :-( I like the pictures though. And I think America is the only country that sells big, strong, cups of coffee.

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  3. oh my gosh!!!!
    this has to be my FAVORITE bunch of pictures and stories from your trip!!!! you do such a great job with photos...gosh! inspiring! :)
    i love the new header on the blog, by the way. BEAUTIFUL!

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  4. the pictures don't show a terrible time... you can at least pretend you enjoyed it in the years to come when you look back on this trip:)

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