Customer Reviews

Frommer's Portable Dominican Republic

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I know this a "portable guide" to the Dominican Republic, but still it is extremely bare bones and basic. It includes a decent section on Santo Domingo but absolutely nothing on Santiago - the country's second largest city. The rest of this thin volume includes only a couple of short sections on the DR's tourist areas - the North Coast, Punta Cana and Boca Chica. To someone attempting to explore anywhere else in the DR this book is virtually useless. Even for my brief one week trip to Puerto Plata I found nothing in this guide that I had not already discovered on the Internet.

I am usually a fan of Frommer's guidebooks. But this one just doesn't cut it.

The Frommer's Dominican Republic guide is a good guide for anyone making a quick trip to the DR. The book does overexaggerates on the crime issue. Crime in the DR is relatively low, maybe even lower than in the USA. Other than that, the book is excellent.

I know it's a "portable" edition, but the only part my wife and I found helpful and adequate was the hotel section -- which you need before will be carrying it around anyway. The hotel section in Punta Cana and Santo Domingo were accurate and useful.

In Santo Domingo, its walking map of the Zona Colonial was badly off. Points of interest were on different blocks than indicated, the map was not to scale from one block to another (on the same map), and not to scale to the distance guide on the map. In the narrative sections, restaurants and Points of Interest were often not described adequately to find the place without asking people along the way.

We tried one of the book's top restaurants and found it laughably lacking: waitstaff that couldn't identify an oyster or cook the tableside flambe, a room that was devoid of any patrons on a Friday night, and old decor from a 1970's era hotel.

For nightclubs, it failed to mention that it's number one choice of clubs doesn't get going until 11 ("takes off at 9pm" was what the book said). Combined with a hotel concierge who led us astray, we had to sit around for over an hour as the early birds.

Overall, it's the worst Frommer's I've ever used.

This book contained almost all the information I needed. However, it gave the impression that U.S. - Punta Cana flights were few when actually AA has several regularly scheduled flights to and from Miami each day. The book also was light on what immunizations are advisable for travel there.