Oh, how beautiful it is to travel...we had a full day of airplane rides on Thursday and got to Puerto Rico around dinner time. After checking into our hotel (and finally settling on the 4th room!), we walked down to get dinner. Dinner was so fabulous - I think our first meal was our favorite, and the only one we didn't get a picture of! We were two blocks from the beach, but we'd been warned not to walk around too much at night. We followed what we thought were the directions and it was a very scary alley. Instead we hit the Walgreens on the corner for water. The next morning was a delightful breakfast outside at the hotel and then off to the beach! I was very prepared with lots of books on my kindle. I brought one book for Andy - his task was to finish the 'fun' book before we got home. Well, walking to the beach brought us about 100 yards from the Ritz Carlton! $10 later, we had two chairs, with 3 towels set up on each chair and the beautiful ocean just steps away. PERFECT!!!
Since Andy lived in PR for 21 months as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and wasn't able to freely tour, there were a lot of things he planned to do. I told him to pick his top 4 and we would get to them! Friday we left the beach by 1 to have lunch, shower, and take the bus to Old San Juan. Oh, it rained...we waited in this very wet bus stop for an hour...because the buses just come and go as they please. Then we got caught in crazy traffic. I thought we were going to die many many times - as I had my first experience with PR drivers. Holy COW!!! Inches from each car and horns blaring like crazy. Our 10 mile drive lasted almost 90 minutes...
Needless to say, Old San Juan was really cool. We walked around most of it and spent lots of time exploring El Morro.
Love the streets - they are a beautiful blue brick. Houses were very cute and quaint - then you walk two streets over and seen the slums, where missionaries were forbidden to go into because of the plethora of drugs (although Andy's mission president didn't use that exact word) and the crime.
Because of our bus issues, we had to hustle through our touring to check this out before it closed. Awesome! I had no idea why it was so important that the US take over PR and how that controlled the Caribbean - until now!
We took many pictures of the signs inside to show the kids (ie Ben) how the guns worked and what protection/defenses were there. My favorite part of the castle was an inside little room that had incredible acoustics. Andy said they came one times as missionaries and sang Nearer My God to Thee inside the room. We checked it out and sang a hymn, but I couldn't make it through - overpowering experience!!!
We walked around some of the shops (and found me the awesomest hat that I was so excited to have!) and found one shop Andy had been in 13 years earlier - same layout! We got the kids a few trinkets and were strongly advised to stay in the tourist areas as gangs came out at dusk...great! We went for an okay dinner - with FANTASTIC dessert - those people know how to use sweetened condensed milk! Yes, I actually loved a dessert made with cheese! It was just awesome...wish I could remember what it was called...
Back to the bus station for what should have been a bus, but that driver didn't want to make anymore runs for the night. (Seriously????) There were a handful of us that had been together on the bus out and chatted a bit. We waited and waited until another driver finally decided it was worth the fair. I was warned about the speed with which Puerto Ricans move...definitely not in any hurry - unless they are driving!!!
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