Check out our Top Rewards Cards to boost your points earning and travel more!
Landing 1:14 am on Saturday is one way to stretch out a weekend. Blurry-eyed I collected a rental car and drove into Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Not many road signs and no one out and about, fortunately some Google Maps printouts steered me into the old town for a few hours’ rest at the Hotel Mercure Comercial Santo Domingo. For personal travel I favor non-chain hotels, though a B&B would not have been happy with a 2:30 am arrival and the location of the Mercure cannot be beat. Rooms are small and functional; the breakfast is excellent, I helped myself to some fruit that others may have supposed to be ‘display only’. I used Wandering Aramean’s Hotels.com 5% rebate to book, support a super blogger by booking travel with his generous rebates.
Santo Domingo is the oldest continuously inhabited European city in the Americas, founded by Bartholomew Columbus, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The centerpiece is the cathedral, one of many ‘oldest in the Americas,’ don’t miss the chorus of dogs in the back. All the key elements of the living colonial city museum are present: fort, squares, churches, house museums, and ruins. I ditched the guidebook and wandered in a rough loop, not that I could have read much with the sweat stinging my eyes. Nothing stood out as must-see that cannot be found in similar colonial cities.
Commercial areas and apartment blocks are interspersed and are rather run down compared to the well-preserved historic sites. It did not strike me as place to hang out, the dining/entertainment/shopping options are fairly limited, and there is not much of a international tourist scene. For a day or two stop to/from a flight to Santo Domingo, though, the city is well worth a visit.
Related posts:
Check Out Our: Top Rewards Cards ¦ Newsletter ¦ Twitter ¦ Facebook ¦ Instagram
[…] Domingo, Dominican Republic: underrated old town, head southwest, opposite the tourists, with a stop at the Caves of El Pomier, and on to deserted […]
[…] a morning stroll through Santo Domingo and a stop at the Caves of El Pomier, I drove along the lonesome coast. A […]
Santo Domingo is really lovely. Unfortunatelly I was there only for 2 days because I had to travel a lot. But from what I’ve saw it’s definitely destination that worth to be visited.
[…] highlight of my morning in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic is the view from behind Columbus as he strides to shore of the […]
I was in Santo Domingo over Thanksgiving. I thought the Zona Colonial, while not substantially different from other Spanish colonial cities, was quite charming. But the real highlight of my 3 might trip there was going to a baseball game. For a 200 peso taxi ride from the center of things, you can see current and future major leaguers and get more of a sense of the Domincan spirit.
@Miriam – that’s great, I did see a village baseball game driving through the west of the country and I agree it really shows the spirit.
What flight did you take. I’m going to BQN next weekend – landing at 1AM and departing at 3AM. Basically, an overnight 4 hour flight. I wonder if the same option is open for SDQ.
@Travel Bug – this trip was back a few months in the fall, I have been tardy in getting up my posts, it was a Delta flight from JFK with nearly the same schedule as your BQN flight. I don’t know if it was seasonal or Delta just dropped it. Have fun in BQN, I have not yet been to PR.
Nice to see dr without the beaches and the girls.