Its been a long weekend at work, and as this is my fourth day in a row of taking phone calls from the distressed I feel like a photo tour of last weekend's walk around the capital of the Dominican Republic. Christopher Columbus founded the capital city of the country he called Hispaniola, which island he so named because he thought that its verdant coastal plains looked like the homeland of his sponsors in Spain. He called the city Santo Domingo, and domingo means Sunday in Spanish. In Columbus' native Italian domenica also means Sunday, so for whatever reason this Dominican Republic is tied into one particular day of the week. I had thought it was related to Easter Sunday, but Columbus landed here in December. We took our self-guided tour on a Saturday, because that was when we were there. Here's Columbus hailing a taxi while a pigeon rests on his head:
This picture of people, live ones, enjoying the 85 degree day in Columbus Park, fulfills the stereotype industrious northeners like to make of more relaxed residents of the tropics. I say, at least they weren't locked up indoors oogling Saturday morning cartoons and other inanities on television.
Downtown Santa Domingo is a wild and crazy place as we shall see, but the heart of the city hidden behind medieval walls is a taste of old world charm. Its perched on the corner of the cliff overlooking the mouth of the river pouring out into the Caribbean Sea, a place where the streets are narrow and clogged with cars, lined with tourist knick-knack shops and assorted attractions. There is even a long straight street called "The Count", El Conde, that has been transformed into a splendid pedestrian mall.
We used the Lonely Planet guide Of course the further you get from these delights the tougher the scene gets. Suburban Santo Domingo, alongside the four lane highway leaving town looks like this:
So, in my opinion one wants to be wealthy in the DR, and live in an apartment somewhere around here, serene at night, lovely without neon, littered with top rate restaurants offering stewed crab which my wife enjoyed, and stewed goat which went down a treat for me with a pile of mashed potatoes, and an ice cold Brahma beer:
The guide book also gave us the location of a fine breakfast hole-in-the-wall on El Conde, the Cafetera Colonial which served up omelettes and cafe con leche in the same location that comforted the Socialist refugees from Franco's Spain after he defeated the Republic in 1939. That historic plaque on the wall outside the cafe was a piquant extra on my wife's breakfast omelette.
After breakfast we strolled El Conde enjoying the cool morning air and the bustle of Saturday morning in the city. We enjoy bringing home a little something from our trips to stick on our walls and my wife likes bargaining so she checked out the Taino-style art on the street.
Our stroll led us past churches and museums, shops selling Amber (yellow) and Larimar (sky blue) jewelery and inevitably to the Square of Hispanic-ness (Plaza de la Hispanidad) above the old city walls overlooking the cruise ship dock on the river.
It was being tarted up for the New Year's celebrations to come but it struck me as rather sterile and unappealing. Compared for instance to the hustle and bustle of Avenida Mella where all the action was loud and brash. I have no idea what this dude was offering to his enraptured audience, but everyone could hear him:
Street vendors were setting up food to go, including delicious fried chicken, fried slices of spam, remarkable Dominican sausages and the ubiquitous tostones, slices of savory fried plantains:
Sidewalk vendors are an inevitable part of life in a country with high rates of unemployment, but we found a simple "No thanks," cleared the way.
We made our way to the covered mercado where the guidebook bless its little heart, advised us that bargaining was the order of the day. My wife loves to bargain so I knew we were in for some tough times ahead. The market was absolutely packed with stalls tightly squeezed in, and we had to shuffle down these narrow alleys surrounded by impatient shop keepers.
There weren't any other gringos, and not many customers generally at that hour, as far as I could tell, so we were prized bait. My wife bargained valiantly, a practice I find distasteful (much to her scorn), especially in a hard up Third World market. Noblesse oblige, she says and blames my well-to-do upbringing!
And if you needed to spruce up your home there were aerosols aplenty with all the necessary variations. The pink one caught my eye as it's supposed to be a love potion. I didn't have the nerve to ask how it might be applied. I imagined a bunch of friends coming over for dinner, exhibiting my aerosol and who knew what the results might be? Divorce? Suicide? Another love potion...?
To think the ancient art of Santeria has been reduced to an aerosol. Whatever will they think of next? Why, a wooden fighting cock of course.
I think Key West and its chickens could use some of these as public art works scattered in the ruined flowerbeds around town. Its tiring work going shopping and refreshment is always to hand, I think the overflowing white stuff is coleslaw, or possibly white cheese, but I didn't look too closely.. 
We tried some of the fried chicken shown earlier, I like to eat locally and though baseball and hot dogs are big news in the Dominican Republic local chicken and sausage seems somehow more appropriate.
It was just a curiosity but we flashed past this reminder that the Chinese are everywhere and in some places in large numbers. This was to me, a reminder of San Francisco in a most unexpected place.
After we finished shopping and walking around downtown I was dreaming of our five star room and soft bed at the Hotel Intercontinental on our splendid fifth-floor overlooking the south coast.
Instead my indefatigable wife found a bus stop where the gua-guas (minibuses) gathered and we ended up taking a half-dollar (15 peso) ride that lasted about ten minutes in wild traffic across the river to the Faro a Colon, Columbus' Lighthouse.
The huge white block on a hill is Columbus's reputed grave site (disputed by Spain and Italy) inside a massive monument built to celebrate 500 years of Europeans in the Americas. Fascinating stuff but that is a story for another day.
