La Zona Colonial and Santo Domingo

     The Zona Colonial area of Santo Domingo contains many buildings from the colonial period of the DR's history that are hundreds of years old.  The narrow streets are loaded with Spanish colonial architechture that is quite unusual.  If you shop with a careful eye and bargin a bit, you can successfully purchase some of the most unique and beautiful jewelry pieces of Lorimar in the DR, and at reasonable prices.  (Lorimar is aqua-blue variegated precious stone mined only in the DR.  If you're a fan of Amber, there is a lot of that too.)  Look in the larger souvenir shops around the central plaza.  Santo Domingo's Hard Rock Cafe is located right on the side of the main plaza as well.  Nightlife gets very active there on the weekends.

     The government has been trying for many years to preserve the area's archetectural history.  The Hotel Palacio in the Zona Colonial is an example of such buildings you can actually stay in.  It is less than a block off El Conde, the pedestrian-only boulevard, and within walking distance of the main plaza.  From 1812 to 1844 it was owned by Buenaventura Báez.  He was elected President of the Dominican Republic five times.  It can be booked on the internet at reasonable rates (I've stayed there twice) and is an altogether lovely boutique hotel.  They serve a cooked to order included breafast of the side of a beautiful garden courtyard.  On its modern construction side of the property it has a cool rooftop pool.

     As a small sidelight, I stayed in Santo Domingo's Ambassador Hotel a couple of nights just for the experience.  It opened in the early 60's as the DR's first modern 1st class hotel and was a source of pride for the then president Manual Trujillo.  As a brutal dictator over a 30 year period, Trujillo was assasinated by a group of army generals not long after the hotel's grand opening.  I was fifteen when then President Lyndon Johnson gave his famous "My fellow Americans, I come to you with a heavy heart" speech.  After being defeated by a US senator from his own party in the first state primary over anti Vietnam War sentiment, he stunned the world by announcing that an imcumbent American president would not seek reelection.  As I walked through tha hall of the administrative offices there on the wall was a photo of then Vice President Johnson and his wife Lady Bird in attendance at the Ambassador Hotel's grand opening.  He may even have been aware at the time of the CIA's plan to smuggle M1 carbines in small pieces into the country inside restaurant sized cans of fruit.  Trujillo had such tight control of all weapons used in the military, these were the firearms the generals used to assasinate Trujillo.  Trujillo's son managed to hunt down all but one of the generals and summarily executed the ones he captured.

          Were you to decide to be adventurous, a new highway was recently constructed allowing four lane freeway travel and drastically reducing travel time to the capital.  A day tour can be easily booked.  We suggest using Claudio at Living Punta Cana.  It's very safe just to email or call him even before you travel to the DR and trust he'll take good care of you.  (We've put a link to his website on our links page.)

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