Santo Domingo is the capital and largest city of the Dominican Republic, and where I spent the most time. I actually worked my day job for a while here from my AirBnB, saving precious vacation days.
Speaking of my AirBnB, here it is:
The city is vibrant, a bit dirty looking, but respectable. In between the streets and sidewalk are dangerous gutters.I stayed in the Zona Colonial and hardly left it; this neighborhood has most of the touristy things, and is kept pretty safe by the law.
For all its bustle, life, and noise, the DR is full of places to chill. Even Santo Domingo. El Parqe Mirador del Sur is a long, beautiful park (and I know long and beautiful) and here’s what it looks like:
The food was great. There was traditional Dominican, less traditional Dominican food and what I found to be a surprising number of Italian restaurants (this is true for the whole country). I guess Italian food sounds fancy and can also be quite cheap to make? (The menus were full of spaghetti and cream sauce, not osso buco.)
Sugarcane, La Casa del Ron was my favorite. I went there three or four times. Everything I ate was delicious and they had about 30 different Dominican rums. 
They had a magical non-overflowing barrel 
and a nice rooftop view 
And some chef-made treats 
These skewers were so good here. 
Someone took a bite of my fritter! 
Finishing up the Sugarcane pics, coconut flan 
At another restaurant, stewed conch. Conch was pretty common in the DR! 
A touristy place in the Zona 
Soncocho, a tough, meaty stew 
At one end of the long Parque Mirador is this fancy schmancy place 
at which the fanciest tables of all are underground 
in this cool limestone cave 
where they serve you all this on Sundays 
and this 
and also provide bathrooms. 
A short taxi ride away is this iconoic place 
where I had sausages and mofongo. 
Near where I lived was this tucked away bakery/cafe 
which had regular bakery/cafe food 
like this, including that desert made from corn. 
They had plenty of fast food choices – somehow I thought the chicken at this KFC had more flavor than in America. 
And in a mall, I even found a place that serves healthy salads and wraps.
So, there’s a couple food places I’m going to give their own slide show too, because they were their own adventure. (Maybe I should have given Casa del Ron its own slideshow? Too late now!)
I wanted to go to this well-known fast food fried chicken place, which meant crossing over the bridge into … East Santo Domingo! Not the Zona Colonial! 
The bridge, like many others, has water under it. 
On the other side a cop asked me where I was going, and warned me that it was dangerous on the east side … I shrugged her off and continued on to get my gas station chicken. 
It looks like a fast food chicken place. 
And tastes like one! Nothing special I’m afraid. Anticlimactic much?
Besides the very phenomenal Sugarcane, House of Rum, I found a few other watering holes as well! Go me.
AND, there are the oldest European-built structures in the Americas.
There were parks, and pleasant places for a seside stroll.
There was theater and arts. Well, some, anyway.
I went to see this at Teatro Guloya. 
This dapper dan took my ticket and was deLIGHTED that I wanted his picture. 
Next few pics are from the play, which was an adaptation of an old Spanish classic, apparently. It was hard for me to get what was going on, other than in broad strokes. 
So damn proud of themselves. 
This guy was playing violin next to his blind dad(?). 
Larimar is a gem found only in the Dominican Republic! They have lots of amber, too.
One very touristy thing I did was go to the Kahkow experience, where I learned about the history of chocolate. And, I got to eat chocolate fruit! Like, the fruit that grows around the cocoa bean. It exists.
People were friendly and easy to talk to. I enjoyed my time there.
But I did not enjoy my Dominican neighbor ladies.. All goddam day shouting into their telephones, and playing the radio when they weren’t doing that. So I decided to leave and go to a town where maybe I could get some sleep.