Day 2 Santiago

In the morning I went to the local bank to trade $300 into Dominican pesos. They gave me SO MUCH money back! The “mall” was right near my hotel and I walked over. Then I walked through the mall. Today I caught the taxi to and from the hotel, La Palmetto, to the monument, Monumento a los Héroes de la Restauración (Monument to the Heroes of the Restoration). It was pretty and had an amazing view of the city of Santiago. After, I took a horse drawn carriage ride around the city. Pedro was my driver and he told me all about the city in Dominican Spanish. His horse was Ramon. I understood some of it. One lesson learned was that we didn’t set the price before we took off, and we should have. He had the price translated by another guy who tried to charge me $10 to take a picture of me. They charged $60 US which was a fortune, and I think I got ripped off, but oh, well, it was amazing anyway. The other guy tried to charge me for taking a picture of me at the monument, but I declined. He started to get aggressive, but I walked away. I headed back to the hotel in the taxi, rested a bit and then went to the restaurant. The rains began, pouring rains. I did my exercise all day in spurts. For dinner I had frutas and a Dominican sushi which actually had chicken and plantains — it was such a strange combination of flavors with shoyu and seaweed and sweet and rice. What an experience.