Santo Domingo

Air Florida brought me to the land of dusky girls, Trujillo, bananas, colonial architecture and shoe-shine boys. On the terrace of the small and cheap Victoria Hotel in Santo Domingo I had breakfast with Alice, a no-nonsense American business-woman. "It's safe to wander around Santo Domingo. This is a dictatorship," said Alice. In the Plaza Colon, as I viewed the outside of the cathedral which 'contains the tomb of Columbus', I had my brown suede shoes turned black. I had been grabbed by Junio, a small, ragged, fair-haired shoe-shine boy. For much of the morning I was followed by Junio and his little black ...  Read the complete review

The Spanish ladies used to parade along the cobbled Calle Las Damas in the evening, and the many colonial facades still afford the imaginative scenes of bellowing ball gowns, fluttering fans, and accompanying conquistadors. On the second voyage in 1496, Christopher Columbus' brother, Bartholomew, founded Santo Domingo, the first capital in Spanish America. Christopher's son, Don Diego, became the first Spanish Vice Roy of the New World in 1508, and in 1510 he built his two-storey residence beside the Ozama river; in which four generations of the Admiral's descendants were to later dwell. Don Diego's marriage to Dona Maria ...  Read the complete review