{"id":5146,"date":"2024-01-10T12:32:46","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T18:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/awanderingjill.com\/?page_id=5146"},"modified":"2025-01-14T15:37:34","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T21:37:34","slug":"puerto-rico-old-san-juan-dering","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/awanderingjill.com\/?page_id=5146","title":{"rendered":"Puerto Rico – Old San Juan-dering"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Today we’re wandering around Old San Juan. Doing real touristy stuff, which I’m down for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’m really loving these blue cobblestones. Not sure why, maybe it’s how it adds to the colorfulness? They’re all over this particular district.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our first stop is the second oldest cathedral in all of the Americans, the Catedral Basilica Menor de San Juan Bautista. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No idea who that guy is. Pretty modern painting though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I wish these were still intact. It’s harder to keep them in good shape on an island – lots of mold on the walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The cathedral is close to our next stop, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, an old Spanish fort that overlooks the main bay of San Juan. It’s a national historic site for the USA – and I absolutely recommend seeing it. It’s impressive and definitely worth the half-a-day visit. There’s another fort on the other side of San Juan that is very neat too, but not sure they both require spending half a day at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I don’t know if this was ever a working moat but it fits the bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Iguanas everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is the view from the ladies’ bathroom window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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JA for scale. He definitely would have had a hard time living most anywhere before the 1900s with his size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Me for scale! I can fit most places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nothing exciting to see behind those bars. It used to be storage for ammunition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is the view over the ramparts from my eye level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Must be nice to be tall like JA and MJ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So…how cool would it be to ride your bike down that? Definitely wouldn’t be fun to go up but down…probably lots of fun until the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ryan is an asshole. And so is everyone else who marked this and other areas up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These are additions from more recent wars – artillery guns could be mounted here and swiveled around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The lighthouse was off limits unfortunately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Again, I highly recommend going to the fort if you are ever in Puerto Rico. I think we got our fill – spent most of our day time here, and there’s still lots to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Puerta de San Juan!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The other side of the Puerta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That pretty white house overlooking this bay is our next destination – Casa Blanca, built for Juan Ponce de Leon (which apparently they don’t teach Texans about in school, just us New Mexicans). He never lived in it, so not sure why it’s considered ‘his’ house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The way up to Casa Blanca isn’t direct, we have to go up a lot of steps through a lot of alleys. Where the locals apparently set out dishes and little homes for the local cats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So. Casa Blanca was a mixed bag. It’s very pretty, but in a plain way. Not really much to see in it and not really any history besides it’s construction. They’ve got a neat garden that was unfortunately partially destroyed by the hurricane that ripped through in 2017 and it’s not really getting restored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’m not sure JA and MJ enjoyed Casa Blanca much but I did. A local humanitarian group is trying to grow food there to donate to impoverished folks and that seems like a great use of the space. And there were a lot of little single room areas for artists to do their thing in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We ended up grabbing an early dinner between these to fend off the hangries. Unfortunately we ate at a very tourist-trappy restaurant that was mediocre at best, to put it nicely. I don’t recommend eating in Old San Juan if you can avoid it. It’s food for tourists and very, very plain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterwards, we made our way to the other fort, Castillo San Crist\u00f3bal. Again, neat place, you get access to it when you purchase tickets at Morro. There’s not as much to look at here as the other place, so we spent maybe an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Neat views of the city though! We headed back to our place afterwards and spent the night polishing off almost all of a half gallon of rum, which I thoroughly enjoyed at the time and even more thoroughly regretted the next day. But if you’re going to have a massive hangover, why not have it on the beach?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Puerto Rico \u2013 Contact<\/a> | Puerto Rico \u2013 Rainforest<\/a><\/a> | Puerto Rico \u2013 Beach!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today we’re wandering around Old San Juan. Doing real touristy stuff, which I’m down for. I’m really loving these blue cobblestones. Not sure why, maybe it’s how it adds to the colorfulness? They’re all over this particular district. Our first stop is the second oldest cathedral in all of the Americans, the Catedral Basilica Menor de San Juan Bautista. No idea who that guy is. Pretty modern painting though. I wish these were still intact. It’s harder to keep them…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":5083,"menu_order":12,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5146","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/awanderingjill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/awanderingjill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/awanderingjill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awanderingjill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awanderingjill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5146"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/awanderingjill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5340,"href":"https:\/\/awanderingjill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5146\/revisions\/5340"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awanderingjill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/awanderingjill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}