Old San Juan
Joey and I are up early today (what’s new?) so rather than wait for the rest of our pathetically lazy gang to get ready, we decide to head out on our own and explore the old city a bit. There is a strange yellow ball in the sky that’s hurts our eyes if we look at it, but no one here seems to notice – or care as the case may be – so in the interest of blending in, we just pretend its not there.
The area where we are staying is inside the defensive walls and full of old cobblestone streets and restored buildings painted in an array of vibrant colors. It has a very Caribbean feel to it, and once she is out of bed, Ang finds it enough to her liking that she gives me false hope she could live here in one of them. We spend the rest of the morning just wandering around along the waterfront, on the wall and through the different neighborhoods before settling down for lunch and some much needed air conditioning. Not really knowing what kinds of food Puerto Rico is famous for, we try a couple of different things, but don’t come across anything that memorable.
In the afternoon we walk over to El Castillo, which is the main fort that used to defend San Juan from seaborne invaders. It takes about three hours to explore it all (including some time for a pre-scheduled conference call – sigh), so by the time we finish, the boys are ready to get back to the hotel for a bit of a break and some time in the pool.
We finish our day with a stroll back through the old town where we come across a city park swarming with pigeons. One of the locals has a bag of feed and is kind enough to give each of the boys a handful, which immediately gives them avian rock star status.
After a shot break at the hotel, we head back out to find a restaurant for dinner. There are much fewer places to eat than we seemed to recall from earlier in the day, but we finally come across a gritty looking place full of locals and decide to give that a try. We don’t really recognize any of the items on the menu, but the little people are all good sports about trying some new things, and even though they didn’t end up liking much, the all get a solid A for effort.
Tomorrow we are headed to a small island to the east called Vieques, so after setting up some transportation for the morning, its time to call it a say.