The first thing to attract the traveler's notice is the excellent condition of the city streets. Though the macadamized streets and the sidewalks are narrow, they are clean, well kept and well lighted at night. In streets, schools and public squares the city is in advance of most of the other cities of the Republic. This is attributed to a great extent to the presence of many cultured foreigners as well as to the progressive natives. The inhabitants of Puerto Plata boast that what Puerto Plata does the rest of the Republic does. They point as an example to their plaza. Formerly the plaza of Dominican cities was a bare, shadeless tract of ground in the center of the city. Puerto Plata was the first to plant trees, lay out a garden and provide its plaza with a music stand. This plaza in the center of the town is the oldest and prettiest of the city's three public squares and is now shaded by large, leafy trees and embellished with beautiful flowers and varicolored bushes. On Sunday nights on this plaza and on Thursday nights on one of the others, band concerts attract crowds of people, young and old, who promenade to the strains of the music. The belles of the city are very handsome and owing to the intermarriage of natives with foreigners from all parts of the world widely different types of beauty are to be observed at such concerts. On one side of the principal plaza is the church, on another stand side by side the theater, the government building, where the provincial offices are located, and the city hall, on the first floor of which is a well-attended school. The three principal clubs of the city are also located in commodious quarters fronting on this plaza. One of these clubs counts among its members most of the merchants and staid and elderly people, another is the club of the young men and a third is the ladies' club. The ladies' club is open only in the afternoon and evening, but in the clubs frequented by gentlemen games of billiards may be seen going on at almost any hour of the day.