Saturday, March 11

Since we skipped the walking tour of old San Juan – we opted to get up early so Andy could run payroll for his company and then go on our our own version of a walking tour. Once Andy wrapped up payroll, we finished packing up and started exploring.

We made our way to the Callejon de la Puerta Bandera – a brightly colored aisle way that ends with the vivid colors of the Puerto Rican flag. We walked up when no one was there and did a little photoshoot.

Once we wrapped up in the alley, we started walking to the Plazuela la Rogativa (a monument). It has an incredible view of the San Juan bay – and has a pretty cool story. There had been a British invasion in the city, and a priest had gathered a group of women who marched with torches. The British thought that there were more people who had arrived to defend the city – so they gave up the attack. We thought that statue looked pretty cool, what do you think?

The San Juan gate is a very short walk from the statue. This gate used to serve as an entrance to the city for Spanish dignitaries. Now, large amounts of tourists pass through this gate in order to get closer to the water – or to walk along the shoreline.

From here, we made our way to Castillo San Cristobal, which I affectionately kept calling it “crystal ball.” How exciting for us it was managed by the US National Park Service! More stunning views! This was a fort that had been built to protect the city from the east – it took over 150 years to build!

We even got to walk through a tunnel that led us to the dungeons. It was a cool experience – but we were running out of time. We probably could have spent 1-2 hours there, but we had to power walk through the whole thing rather quickly.

After the fort, we wanted to get a little bite to eat before our time to board the cruise ship. We had found a restaurant that looked great and had some empanadas (crab and chicken).

After our snack, we made our way to the cruise ship. It was so easy to get on board this time! When we got on the cruise ship in Alaska there were still a lot of covid protocols in place.

Our boat had been renovated – and looked really nice! It was slightly different than our last cruise, which was not a bad thing!

We met a couple that was from Virginia in the hot tub. We all sat in there for maybe a little bit too long – and then decided to make our way to clean up for dinner. We had booked the “Anytime” dinner slot – which has its pros and cons. Pro – you can go whenever sounds good to you! Cons – when you get there you may have to wait for a table to come available. After dinner we hung out for a little bit, but the seas were pretty rocky so we parted ways.

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