This summer, I spent 10 days in the Dominican Republic.
I'm not sure why it took me so long to make the trip; my flight from New York City to the country's capital of Santo Domingo was shorter and cheaper than my last flight to visit my parents in California.
The food was delicious and inexpensive. The people were kind. And aside from a pretty serious sunburn, the only thing the sparkling turquoise water left me with was a hankering to come back.
Here are my top recommendations for what to do there.
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Visit the Ciudad Colonial, the oldest permanent European settlement in the Americas and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in the country's capital of Santo Domingo. Founded by the Spanish in 1498, the colonial city was designed to follow a grid pattern. This would serve as the model for virtually every city planner in the Americas.
Source: UNESCO
While you're there, check out the Fortaleza Ozama, a 16-century fortress built at the entrance to Santo Domingo and overlooking the Ozama River. It's the oldest formal European military building in the Americas.
Keep in mind that many of these structures were built using the labor of indigenous Taino people, hundreds of thousands of whom were enslaved by the Spanish and forced into horrific conditions. Just a fraction of them survived, so in 1501, the monarchs gave the colonists permission to kidnap and enslave Africans and bring them to the island.
Source: "The Struggle for Democratic Politics in the Dominican Republic," 1998; UNHCR
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