Recently Richard and I visited sunny Puerto Rico. It was a fantastic trip. I had never gone anywhere tropical before and I absolutely fell in love. Why Puerto Rico? Why not Hawaii? I can't really say. I had just always wanted to go there. There is something really bizarre and cool about a place where the grass is so lush that it almost obscures a horse standing in a field but where you still see U.S. postal trucks tooling around.

Interesting Tidbits About Puerto Rico

  • Puerto Rico has an extremely stable temperature. Apparently there has never been a recorded temperature below 60 degrees or above 100. How is that for consistent? Better yet, it is breezy.
  • San Juan has the most enormous malls I've ever seen. They were epic. Puerto Rico is being rapidly "Americanized". You see typical fast food restaurants and drugstores all over. You also see a lot of baseball stadiums. Apparently the Puerto Rican love of baseball has not been overstated!
  • You will fear for your life on the roads. We rented a car and drove all over the place, including a trip to the other side of the island to Ponce. At one point we were stuck in a massive traffic jam due to a Shakira concert. People freely drove over medians, cut across four lanes of traffic, and ran red lights. People drove flat out down busy, tiny little roads. It was vaguely terrifying and sort of fun. Driving in San Juan is not for the faint of heart.

Photo Album

A small portion of the many pictures we took on our trip. Please take a look if you are interested.

One of many decorative lions in Ponce. The city was named after Ponce de Leon, hence the abundance of lions. Ponce has gorgeous old colonial buildings and an excellent art museum. (The well-known "Flaming June" painting is displayed there as well as a huge collection of "pre-Raphaelite" art.)
This is the view from our hotel room. I was amazed at how turquoise the water was and how different the sand was from the typical grey sand from around here.
This is a frog from the garden at the "White House". The Casa Blanca was built for Ponce de Leon in 1521, though he never lived in it. The furniture was all restoration since the original pieces were burned by the Dutch in the 1600s!

There were numerous plaques and educational pieces talking about the attack on the city by the Dutch. We were sure to tease my brother-in-law (who is Dutch) about this.
The famous blue street tiles in Old San Juan. The cobbles are adoquine. They were brought over a ballast on Spanish ships. Old San Juan is full of restored buildings from the 1500s and 1600s, which is awe-inspiring when you're from a young city like Seattle.

It is just a quick ferry ride from Old San Juan to the Bacardi distillery. It was originally located in Cuba but is now a large contributor to the Puerto Rican economy.

My favorite part of the trip was El Morro. El Morro is Puerto Rico's best known fortress. Spanish troops used El Morro to keep seaborne enemies out of San Juan. Look at the people in this picture for a sense of scale. It is so epic--it really is amazing that it was built in the 1500s.

Since it was built so long ago, all of the doorways were short and the passageways narrow. It was strange to have to duck to get through doorways. I got to pretend I was tall!
We got to hike through the tropical rainforest. It was only a few miles down to the waterfall but we got to see beautiful tropical plant life and could hear the "coquí", which are little tree frogs.
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