The first time I tried to convert cash in Santo Domingo, I walked into a casa de cambio clutching a sweaty fist of U.S. twenties
I used to track my Spanish progress the way kids measure height on a doorframe—random pencil marks whenever I felt taller. One mark came after
The first time I froze mid-sentence in Spanish, I was standing at a Santiago de los Caballeros colmado, trying to ask for change. I managed
I was bargaining for coconut earrings on Santo Domingo’s colonial Calle El Conde when my backpack vanished—one distracted selfie and ¡plin! gone. Panic pitched my
The last time I swapped Caribbean palms for European platforms, I landed in Madrid’s Atocha station at 6 a.m. with a jet-lag brain and a
I stepped into the Museo de las Casas Reales on a humid Thursday, eager to escape the Caribbean heat and pretend I’d time-traveled into a
The breeze smelled like fried fish and sunscreen when I strolled onto Playa Alicia in Sosúa, clutching a half-melted limoncillo paleta. A vendor in a
The sun hadn’t cleared the conifer ridges of the Cordillera Central when our Dominican guide, Don Roberto, halted the small group beside a river the
The first time I tried to book an Airbnb in Santo Domingo, I was sitting on a plastic chair outside a colmado, balancing my laptop
The December heat in Santo Domingo wraps you like a flannel you never asked for. I was stringing blinking lights around our mango tree when