Puerto Rico Surprises Us How Nice It Is

Our cruise is over - and we are spending two nights in San Juan before flying to Philadelphia. We spent Saturday walking around Old San Juan. San Juan reminds one of Key West except San Juan is much bigger and has many more people. Puerto Rico has almost 4 million people. I doubt if all of Puerto Rico is like Old San Juan - just as all of France is not like Paris - but we like San Juan a lot. It is a little like - New York - Rome - Hawaii - Key West - Bermuda - but probably more like Havana than any other place we visited.

After expecting the people to be right out of West Side Story - we have stumbled into a very sophisticated city. It has plenty of high end shops - nice places to eat - and a very clean appearance. There are lots of very pretty girls and like the rest of the USA - they all carry their cell phones and ipods. The streets in Old San Juan are made of blue glazed cobblerstones. There is decorative tile everywhere. The weather is superb - sunny - tropical - and at noon we experienced our shadow going directly down under us - not north - south - east - or west.

Puerto Rico is a land of extremes - one end has a tropical rain forest - the other end is arid. The mountains go up to 5000 feet - and the Puerto Rican Trench just off shore goes down to 30,000 feet - the second deepest place in the world.

We have been using the local bus system - very inexpensive - and similar to any other major city bus line. We are staying in a Holiday Inn Express maybe a mile from our cruise port. We have two more days to enjoy. We are able to use our Verizon cell phones here with no extra charge.

Pictures - 1 - One of the ramparts of the 500 year old El Murro Castle - 2 - Our cruise ship Grandeur of the Seas leaving us behind as it goes to the Virgin Islands and then to Baltimore - some of our friends stayed on board - 3 - Nancy and me in El Murro Castle - very similar to the fort in St Augustine - 4 - In a church in San Juan we stumbled onto the burial site of Ponce De Leon - Tallahassee and Leon County's "patron saint" - 5 - The tour guide in El Murro Castle practices her English on Nancy.