Buenos Dias from San Juan!!

It’s been two wonderful days at sea! I sympathize with the tough weather y’all have had around the country. For our cruise, we can’t have had better weather. It’s been sunny and 85 degrees pretty much the whole way……sorry to rub it in.  So far, the big challenge has been staying active in the midst of great food and drink that is available 18 hours a day.  I have scoped out the gym and Pat has a new playlist on the MP3, so all is well.


We are traveling on the MSC Poesia from Ft. Lauderdale to our final destination of Barcelona, Spain. MSC is a line that we have not traveled on before….mostly an Italian crew. So far so good. We plan to post a review on TripAdvisor.com (we will also do the same with the recent Princess Cruise. As we have said before, cruising seems to be a reasonably trouble-free way to see several different destinations quickly, pick out your favorites and visit for an extended time later. We are familiar with the Caribbean but have never crossed the Atlantic by ship. The route also covers the Straits of Gibraltar and a couple of southern ports of Spain that we have never seen. The trip ends in Barcelona (one of our favorite destinations)….we will spend a few days there, go to Madrid to visit the Prado Museum and then home.

San Juan is the largest city in Puerto Rico with a population of 1.8 MM. The territory of Puerto Rico covers an area 110 miles by 35 miles and has a population of 4.5MM. Puerto Rico is a US territory…..they pay taxes, support a National Guard detachment and became US Citizens with the passage of the Jones Act in 1917. Having said that, Puerto Ricans are fiercely proud of their heritage which is a three-way extraction of African, Indian and Spanish cultures. Many Puerto Ricans have lived in the US but don’t consider themselves Americans in any way.

San Juan has several areas of the city that are worth visiting but we like old town the best.

Old Town San Juan is what remains of the walled portion of the city. Named a National Historic Landmark, Castillo San Felipe del Morro is the center point of a series of fortifications built by the Spanish to defend a very strategic location in the Caribbean. Work began in 1533 and took over 250 years to complete. El Morro repelled many attacks over the years, one of the most famous being the final British attempt in 1797.

The Spanish ruled Puerto Rico until 1898 when it lost the territory to the US in the Spanish-American war (Along with Cuba, Guam and the Phillipines). Puerto Rico’s status as a commonwealth is a continuing anomaly for both the US and Puerto Rico.  I love these little nuggets of info......

Pat and I took a short tour of the City and had a great lunch at the Café La Princesa which is located near the wall on the south end of Old Town. We really recommend this place if you get here.

Finally, as I do wherever I can, I took a short run down a magnificent trail that winds it’s way around the city wall at the base. It’s about a mile walk from the harbor but well worth it.

Tomorrow, we are off to the British Isle of Antigua and the Nelson dockyards…..more history and a convenient time to sign off now before I bore you to death!!



Regards,



Chris and Pat