Ok, I’m a liar. We rolled out of bed somewhere around 8, ate breakfast, went back to the room and took a nap. We went out to the pool for a quick dip and it was WAY too cold for any form of dipping. So we walked out to the little public beach outside the gate and took a dip in the ocean. That was much more enjoyable.*
We headed back in and took some quick showers, packed up our stuff and checked out with about a minute to spare. Since this was a pretty swanky hotel, they were more than happy to store our luggage while we went exploring San Juan.
Now, Tom is infamous for his dislike and distrust of public transportation, but that’s probably because he only ever dealt with what passed for mass transit in northern Jersey. Which isn’t much, and isn’t very reliable. But I insisted that we try the bus system, which was simple and straightforward. It took about ½ an hour for the bus to show up, but it was $.50** and took us to the Old San Juan Casino, which was where we stayed last time and knew exactly where we were.
We headed up for El Morro, the fort at the bay entrance to San Juan Bay. Even though we had been here before, I naturally picked up back alley to walk down where we were both convinced that knocking on any of the doors would have gotten us just about anything we wanted. Homegrown. We quickly got off that street and found another that lead us up to the top of the hill that San Juan is on, and to the Plaza Las Americas. Or I think that what it was.
Now, I would like you to notice the sky in that picture. It had been sunny all morning, until we emerged on to this plaza. It looked, from what we had seen on the Weather Channel in the hotel, all the storms were going to go south of the city, or dissipate before it hit the city. So, we shrugged it off.
We headed up for the castle in El Morro.
Yeah, the thing that’s under construction.*** Note the clouds.
We hiked up the hill. The surf was really high and breaking in beautiful surfing waves, and I would have been tempted if the entire coast hadn’t be completely covered in rocks. We were rewarded after walking with one of the most famous sights in all of the Caribbean:
This is one of the guard turrets from El Morro. This is on every brochure for Puerto Rico and Caribbean cruises that has ever existed. And it’s OLD. One of the oldest European fortifications in the North America. Somewhere around 1610, 1625.
We walked up to the gate to see if we could go in to the castle (that was under construction).
Naturally, being administered by the US Dept. of the Interior, there was a $10 charge to go in. Um, no thanks. So we started to head back to the Casino where we could catch the bus and go back to the hotel to retrieve our bags.
Now, look at the mountains across the bay. What mountains, you say, everything is blurred by rain.
Precisely.
By the time we got back to the shopping district from El Morro, it had started to drizzle. About 6 blocks later, as we were heading down a cobblestone street****, it was pouring. By the time we were about a block from the casino, it was tropical torrential downpour… the kind even your underwear isn’t safe from. We hid out by the post office for a moment, but I knew that it wasn’t really worth it; we were already drenched.
It was nearly 3 p.m. and I knew that Tom wanted to get on the boat as soon as possible. Now that I was drenched and disgusted by it, I was anxious to get on there too. We were heading back to the bus stop we originally got off at, when I looked over to my right. There, lo and behold, was a covered bus terminal. Since it was still pouring, I dragged Tom over and we sat down waiting for our bus.
I am completely convinced that the Puerto Ricans are descended from penguins; the bus, which you expect to be poorly temperature controlled, was freezing. Now, instead of being just miserably wet, we were miserably wet and cold. Yeay.
We got off the bus a stop too early, which thankfully was only a block from the stop we actually needed. We headed back to the hotel, and collected our things. They were nice enough to call us a taxi and I ran to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror and decided that it was hopeless; I would embrace my drowned rat appearance.
We hopped into the taxi, and it was only a 10 minute ride to the PanAmerican Pier. It might have only been about 4 minutes, except for this construction zone we had to go through. I think that the construction has been there for a long time, because I remember it from 7 years ago.
The taxi driver dropped us off and before we walked in to check-in for the cruise, I grabbed a dry shirt for both of us and shoved that in our carry-ons. We dropped off the luggage and headed into the building. They had vastly improved their check-in techniques since we had last checked in. We were in, on the line, checked in and onto the gang way within about 20 minutes. Last time, it took nearly two hours to even get on the right line.*****
As we approached the first check point on the way into the ship, we were halted by photographers. I knew they were coming, I was hoping to get by without getting my Drowned Rat Status documented, but they were somewhat unrelenting, and I knew that I wasn't going to buy the photo anyway. We did it quickly and got onto the ship.
We headed up to our stateroom and once we were there, I quickly got out of the soaking wet clothes. We headed up to the Windjammer Café and grabbed a very large, very late lunch. A foolish idea, really. Dinner was going to be at 8:45, and here we were packing it in at 5:30.
We just wandered around the ship for about two hours and checked the place out. We then headed back to our cabin for the muster drill and discovered that if the ship was sinking, we’d be some of the last people off. Hooray? We were in a very fancy dining room in the interior of the ship for our muster station. If we were going down fast, I don’t think we’d made the boat. But the likelihood that we would be hitting an iceberg were slim.
We headed off for dinner, and enjoyed ourselves a bit too much. During the dinner, we pulled away from the dock and we were given no warning. We just started feeling sick until we realized we were moving. Then we felt better.
After that, we were tired and worn out and knew we had an early excursion the next morning. We checked out the Schooner Bar for a quick drink, then headed back to the room.
Adios, San Juan.
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*except for my watch. It was supposed to be water resistant to 50 meters. I looked at about an hour after this and the crystal was fogged. I was pissed. By the end of the cruise it had stopped working. I’m looking for the paper work for it; that thing was under a year old and it shouldn’t have taken on water or stopped working.
**A wonderful thing about Puerto Rico. 80% of the population speaks English (despite what you might think!) and they use the US dollar. No exchange rate! Woo hoo!
***If it’s famous, and I’m vacationing there, it’s under construction!
****Cobblestone is SLIPPERY when wet, and I’m not talking about a Bon Jovi album here.
*****That was with NCL, and it was a complete disaster. It took a total of 3 hours to board, which closed two hours after it was supposed and we were so held up on the line that we missed the muster drill. That was just the beginning of it, too. It went downhill from there.
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