Puerto Rico, pt. 3 – Fun in the City… and then Home

After leaving the gorgeous beauty of the western Puerto Rico Caribbean coast, we headed east to San Juan and Old San Juan.

Some of the blue bricks that make up the streets are original. The blue color comes from the slag used as ballast in Spanish ships.

 

San Juan is a large metropolitan city, like any other in the U.S. Old San Juan, on the other hand, has a Spanish New Orleans French Quarter vibe. The Spanish colonized the island, taking the native inhabitants ‘under their wing’, 600 years ago. Old San Juan was their first city and remains the capital where the Governor lives.

I knew M would love the city and want to photograph all of it. So we scheduled 2 days to explore the old city and the old Spanish forts that are now a part of the National Park Service system.

Really awesome brick streets and gorgeous painted buildings

my ‘island wear’ blended in nicely with the local colors

Taking a much needed shade-break and looking out into the harbor

Religious iconography is everywhere

Old San Juan really knows how to do fountains

and statues!

 

The old city is surrounded by walls that are 20-30 ft thick and have Garitas, or lookout towers spaced along the way. The Atlantic side of the city was protected by the walls and the two forts, El Morro and San Cristobal.

Garita, high on wall

I’m standing where the wall ends on the southern side

This is one of 6 original gates through the wall from the water. This one is the ‘fancy people’ gate. Only the rich and aristocratic were allowed entry through this gate. If this was the fancy gate, I wonder what the commoners gate looked like…

inscription on door of gate

 

I’d been to El Morro before and not too much had changed in this 600 year old fort.

El Morro selfie

Even though I don’t envy the soldiers stationed here, they got excellent views!

lighthouse from 1902…. The fort was used by the U.S.A during WW1 and WW2

M and the garita

Looking down into the main plaza

city cemetery with El Morro and chapel in distance

entrance to El Morro

the only place to get a shady breeze…

really old walls

more awesome Atlantic views

these aren’t replicas… they’re the real things!

 

Next we visited San Cristobal, which I thought I hadn’t been too previously but then I remembered attending an evening dance performance there. Still, needed to tour again!

A man held prisoner drew his ships on the wall of his dungeon. They’ve been preserved

M in the dungeon

Creepy mannequin in barracks

View from a WW2-era turret

 

We stayed at a pretty kick-ass hotel… the Moroccan-inspired Hotel Casablanca!

the main lobby

the room was small (realtors would call it “cozy”) but really cute!

the roof has TUBS to chill out in

the roof had a seating area

View from the roof – that’s San Cristobal in the distance

view from the roof

Chilling in the tub on our first night in Old San Juan

 

We ate at a lot of really amazing restaurants. We ate lots of Spanish food and tapas (and SANGRIAS!) in Old San Juan. We found some great criolla spots too for Puerto Rican cuisine. (had to get my mofongo fix one last time…) At one restaurant, I overheard the Indian-American mother-daughter duo next to us who were so very cool, say “this trip is all about honesty. And if we are honest, we like appetizers and dessert.” I died and wanted to hug my new best friends. I completely agree and look forward to more ‘honest’ trips. 🙂

From our rooftop bathtubs we could see a rooftop cafe a block over so we thought we’d check it out on our last night in town.

M in blue

the street below

 

The next day we walked the streets one last time, hit up the Puerto Rico history museum (awesome!), and then headed to the airport. They didn’t lose my luggage and none of our flights was delayed more than 20 minutes, but it was still a long day.

We had an amazing vacation and now I need to begin planning our next one. Not sure where the winds will take us yet!

Here are a few zen videos to chill to…

View and Sounds of El Yunque from my Casa Cubuy porch

Watching a perfect cloud drift by our Casa Cubuy porch