Around The World

We slept well last night. We both felt the ship moving around during the night but still woke up pretty refreshed.

We decided to start the day by going to the gym rather than indulging in a big breakfast. We worked out for about half an hour before going back to our room to get organised to go into San Juan, where would be docking around lunchtime.

San Juan is the capital of Puerto Rico and is the 57th largest city in the US jurisdiction (since Puerto Rico is a US territory), with a population of about 340,000. Founded in 1521, San Juan is the third-oldest European-established capital city in the Americas. The islands of Puerto Rico were inhabited by the indigenous Taíno people before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1493. Puerto Rico was ruled by the Spanish from 1521 until the Spanish-American war of 1898, after which time it was ruled by the Americans. In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act, giving Puerto Ricans United States citizenship.

After getting ourselves organised, we disembarked from the ship and hopped on a small tour bus to drive around San Juan. We started off down Av. de la Constitución and did a loop around the prominent buildings of the area. We stopped near the Altar de la Patria statue (in front of the capital building) for a short walk around the area.

We then got back in the bus and drove into the newer part of San Juan. We stopped at La Ventana al Mar, a park by the sea, and had a walk onto (the very crowded!) Condado Beach.

We then departed for Castillo San Cristóbal, considered the largest fortress constructed in the Americas. It was built to protect the city of San Juan from attack by land from the east. It has three levels and an extensive series of outer defenses and took over 150 years to complete. We spent about 45 minutes exploring the fort, which was very interesting. The climb to the top provided great views of the city.

From Castillo San Cristóbal, we left the organised tour and decided to wander the streets of the old town part of San Juan on our own. It was very lively and very interesting. We even walked past the bar where the Piña colada was invented in 1963.

We walked to end of C. de San Sebastián, and found some more nice houses in that area.

We detoured up C. del Cristo to the remains of Capilla del Santo Cristo de la Salud (Chapel of Christ the Saviour). The church was built in the 18th century and saved from demolition in the 20th century and is now a cultural icon of Puerto Rico.

From the church we meandered back through the San Juan old town to the port, where we boarded the ship and returned to our room to relax. By this stage it was nearly dinner time and we’d not eaten all day, so we broke into the chocolate supply to keep us going!

After a short rest we headed to dinner in the Compass Rose restaurant.

Our meal was fabulous but those of you counting the desserts above may be wondering how or why we had four of them! Keith had briefly left the table with explicit instructions regarding the transferring of the washing into the clothes drier. By the time he returned, Andrea had ordered desserts but was not entirely clear about what Keith was having, so she ordered three of them. (And she wants to make it known that she ate only one and that Keith ate the other three!)

After dinner we relaxed briefly in our room and then headed to the theatre for the evening’s entertainment, a show called “The Great American Song Factory”.

The show was a lot of fun. It finished around 10:30 pm and we headed back to our room. We thought about having an early night but decided to go out again. We went upstairs to the Galileo Lounge on deck 11 to listen to the band and enjoy a cocktail.

By the time we got back to our room we were ready for bed after another big day. We’re sailing tonight to Saint Barthélemy in the French West Indies, where we’ll be anchoring mid-morning tomorrow before we head ashore to explore.