December 7, 2012
Now I will get into the day-by-day review of my trip. I am currently living in Tucson for work, so I had a very long journey to get to Puerto Rico. I left Tucson at 4pm on Thursday afternoon to head up to Phoenix, where I boarded my JetBlue red-eye flight to JFK airport in NY. The flight was uneventful, although my tv set didn’t work and I was unable to fall asleep, so it seemed like a very long flight. Then at 8am on Friday morning, I flew from NY to Puerto Rico, landing at about 1pm. Luckily, I was able to drift in and out of sleep throughout this flight, although I doubt I slept more than 2 hours total.
I took this vacation with my friend Beth, and we met up at the airport in PR to share a taxi to Old San Juan. The taxi cost $21, plus $1 per suitcase, and that is the government regulated price for the entire taxi, not per person. We stayed at Hotel Milano in Old San Juan for the two nights prior to the cruise. The hotel was a small boutique hotel, but the rooms were clean and air-conditioned, and the hotel had an elevator (unlike most of the other hotels in OSJ) and a mini-fridge in the room. Here are some photos of the hotel room and bathroom:
Luckily, our room was ready for check in when we arrived at about 2pm. After quickly dropping off our luggage and changing into shorts, we headed out to explore OSJ. The man sitting at the hotel front desk was very helpful with giving us directions on how to get to El Morro. It took us about 20 minutes to walk there, but we are relatively fast walkers. It was a fairly easy walk, with a few parts that are uphill, and there were sidewalks the entire way. Here are a few photos from our walk:
Of note, when you leave the Hotel Milano and go to the right, just passed the first side street there is a dollar store on the left side of the road. This store was a great find! They have tons of things you might need for your cruise and either accidentally left behind or didn’t have space to pack… shampoo/conditioner, razors/shaving cream, toothpaste, but no suntan lotion. Not everything cost only $1, but the other items were very inexpensive. Beth forgot her water bottle, so she got one from here for $1.50. And I was able to pick up a towel for $3 to bring along for Saturday’s excursion and a souvenir shot glass for $1.
We got to the fort around 2:30pm and paid the $3 per person entrance fee. It was fun to walk around and explore all the different rooms in the fort, and the views were beautiful, despite the cloudy and windy weather.
We covered the entire fort in a little over an hour. There were lots of stairs to walk up and down, but they were not steep and many of them hand hand railings. After we left the fort, we walked along the water to see the big red gate to OSJ and some of the other views of the original outer walls of the fort.
Our original plan was to walk around the forts and OSJ until our 6:15pm dinner reservation, but we finished the fort earlier than expected so we decided to grab a few things at CVS before dinner. The CVS across the street from the piers stocks the same things as a regular CVS at home, but it was EXTREMELY crowded when we were there! Also, it is located across the street from pier #2, but the Victory docks down the block at pier #4. It isn’t a far walk, but be aware that it’s not as close as I had anticipated (so we were glad we got our shopping out of the way on Friday and didn’t wait until Sunday morning when we boarded the ship). I bought a large bottle of CVS brand suntan lotion with SPF 70 for $10, a bottle of Sutter Home wine for $8, a small bottle of aloe for $2, and a box of Natures Valley trail mix bars for $4 (in case I needed a snack during one of my excursions). Next, we walked across the street to pick up some Subway sandwiches for our excursion on Saturday (the mini-fridge in the hotel room came in handy so we didn’t have to leave time on Saturday morning to buy the sandwiches then). I ordered the cold cut trio because I saw so many commercials at home about how they are on special this month for $2… well apparently Puerto Rico does not participate in the same specials that the mainland US does because they charged me the regular full price. Oh well! With our CVS purchases and Subway sandwiches in tow, we headed back to the hotel to drop everything off and wash up for dinner.
A few weeks before the trip, we used Open Table to make dinner reservations at Barrachina for 6:15pm. We originally wanted 7pm reservations, but the system wouldn’t let us book at that time (possibly due to the flamenco dancers??). We were seated immediately at an inside table. We both ordered pina coladas (Beth’s was a virgin, and mine had the mid-level rum).
For dinner, I ordered the chicken caribeno and thought it was very tasty with a light pineapple almond sauce which was not too gingery despite the menu description. It also included rice, veggies, fried plantains, and a bean sauce on the side.
After dinner, we walked around OSJ a bit more. There was a huge festival that ran up and down our street, which meant the street was closed to traffic. It was a lot of fun to see all the locals outside enjoying the festival. All of the bars had their doors opened and were blasting music into the streets, and the restaurants all set up booths outside selling samples of their food. Fortunately, our hotel room was in the back, not facing the street, so we couldn’t hear any noise in our room, but I imagine it would have been a bit loud in one of the street-facing rooms. We walked around the festival for a bit, and then headed back to the hotel to get some sleep.
Up next, a day in the rain forest!!
Dana's Destination Diary 