Old San Juan

Tuesday afternoon, we decided to catch the bus to Old San Juan. Unfortunately, city buses don't go all the way into OSJ because they could damage the amazing blue cobblestones (picture somewhere down below), and it's quite a hike mostly uphill (really? uphill to the ocean? who'd have thought????) to some of the best attractions. Turns out there's a trolley, but we ended up on the wrong street and never saw it.

Also, Tuesday while Char napped, it rained. A lot. And the rain merely brings out the humidity. And holy moly is it humid in Puerto Rico! I mean, I've lived my whole life in Tennessee, where they say it's not the heat, it's the humidity, but I've never seen anything quite like it. It was only in the 80's but it felt at least 100 after a rain! The only good thing about the humidity is that it made Charlotte's hair curl up GORGEOUSLY! By the time we walked all the way down to the end of the islet and explored El Morro, we were done. We hopped a taxi back to the hotel. Best $15 we ever spent!

I apologize for these pictures being out of order. In fact, they're essentially backward, because that's what Blogger does. Sigh.

El Morro lighthouse


View of Old San Juan and the north shore from the grounds of El Morro.


El Morro turret.

These steps may not have slowed Charlotte down, but they sure wore my fat butt out!

I kind of like this one! I would have rather made the aperture smaller so that DH and Char would be in focus better, but it was getting late-ish so the light was getting poorer and poorer, so some of these shots reflect that I had to use f-14 and less.

Peering through the binoculars with the El Morro lighthouse in the background.

An city wall to OSJ. These old walls were so cool, with plants growing out of them at odd places.

Just a cute picture of Char outside El Morro (it has a very large, mostly flat-ish piece of land in front that is like a big park. Lots of locals having picnics and whatnot). In my exhaustion, I named the picture for the building in the background "yello building". LOL

Char exploring a turret.

LOVE! Wish I would have taken more time to adjust the focus so that I could have a companion shot of her in focus and the front not, but she ran out pretty quickly.

Again, LOVE this picture of her dancing. That's the port of San Juan in the background, which El Morro was built to protect the entrance to.

These 2 were inside an enclosed circular staircase thing. Thankfully, she never noticed the staircase, because it looked just like going down into a dungeon in movies!

Just a pic outside El Morro.

Because, who DOESN'T need a picture of their 2 year old riding a 500-year-old cannon?

The amazing blue brick cobblestones from OSJ. So cool to think they're nearly 500 years old!

Grounds of El Morro

DH wearing Char. Love the hair!

Walking down the path outside the city walls along the sea.

On a staircase above the main gate to the city.

A cool fountain.

Also, we did go back to OSJ on Thursday night for dinner. It was dusk when we left, and the city was starting to come alive with nightlife, which was pretty cool. We got our picture taken with 3 parrots (Char was SO excited to "touch the carrot, mommy") which I will scan and upload at some point. We ate at Sofia's, which had great Italian food. The only decent food (outside of Starbucks) we had while there!