The Dominican Republic
This is us when we got off the boat that day.
Santo Domingo was the city we arrived in, and since I arrived so late we didn't get to sign up for any of the tours, so we decided to go out on our own and have a look around. We ended up getting a cab driver to give us a guided tour of everything you'd see on a regular tour. He took us everywhere we wanted to go, and we set a rate for the day and by the end we gave him more just because he was so good.
Coming into the city was beautiful, a cool lighthouse stood on the point surrounded by lots of palm trees and that wonderfully blue water. This building is also supposed to be a lighthouse, big isn't it. I guess at night it gets all lit up and is very pretty.
I liked the look of these buildings, kind of Roman, and middle eastern. Then here's a close up of the big lighthouse.
Me at the lighthouse. The other one is a government building, I think it's the governors mansion or something like that. It's hard to remember all this stuff, it's been a while.
Cool lion statues in front of the mansion. We had the guards take pictures of us with both cameras, they were all in uniforms and looking all scary and stuff, they handled it quite well I thought.
After the first shot they got the hang of the camera and got a close up for us. Nice guys! This is the tomb of Columbus I believe, it was heavily guarded and you had to pay to get in so we just got a picture from outside.
This is a very cool obelisk that sits in the middle of a main street that goes along the coast. It was decorated on all sides with brilliant colors and designs. Getting pictures was hard, it was sunny and we couldn't get too close because of traffic and it would never all fit in the frame.
As we walked around the main shopping areas, we took little treks off the beaten path to cool places like this. A very old church and monastery. The building had intricate statues and details all over it.
This is another statue that looks out towards the sea, mom says it was given to them by Mexico as a symbol of friendship. This next building is to commemorate the four founders of the island. It's guarded as well, but not like the other one. It's free.
Me at the entrance, you can only see one statue, but trust me there were four. They have this thing about women wearing shorts or short skirts in special places, so because I was wearing shorts I couldn't go into all the buildings we went to, bummer!!!!! Us at dinner that night, it was a formal night, I was finally starting to feel like I was on vacation.
I just wanted to put this pic in, I like it alot!!!
Next up Barbados