Puerto Rico

Planning a vacation with Dave's job is rather difficult.  For one thing, we can't plan too far into the future since we never know when he will deploy again.  The timing seemed perfect after he was to return from his last deployment.  So we jumped right on it and planned a cruise!  The cruise we chose was departing from San Juan, Puerto Rico and had stops in St. Thomas, Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Kitts, and St. Maarten.  We had our friends Jason and Janene Cobia join us and we had fun looking forward to it and planning everything out.  It didn't disappoint!

Since we were leaving from San Juan, we decided to get there a couple of days before the cruise departed, so we could see a little bit of the city.  Boy, am I glad we did.  It was absolutely beautiful there!  We flew in, took a taxi to our hotel, and then got to find someplace to eat lunch.  We found an Italian restaurant near our hotel and decided to eat there since we were starving and didn't know where any other restaurants were.  It was actually quite yummy.  We then spent some time on the beach walking in front of our hotel and the others next door.  It was so warm and beautiful!  The sand was so soft and the water so blue!  We felt like we were in paradise!

 We were at the airport by 4:30 a.m.!!!!!

 Our Hotel (of course a Marriott....thanks Amy)

 The beach in front of our hotel

Our second day in San Juan we took a taxi to Old San Juan.  It was so beautiful there!  The buildings all were unique with different details and in every color!  The roads were narrow I'm not sure how I would every park a car there.  Our first order of business was to find a bakery to have breakfast.  We found a place where we ate a Puerto Rican specialty, mallorca.  This was a breakfast sandwich with powdered sugar on top.  Yummy!  We stumbled upon a free museum and decided to go in.  We learned a lot about the first inhabitants of Puerto Rico and it's history.  We then made our way over to El Morro, a huge, old fort built by Spain.  We enjoyed going in an exploring the place.  It was so big and I was amazed at it's features.  It took a couple hundred years to be built and was even used during WWII.  After the fort, we stopped at a Ben & Jerry's eatery for lunch and then found the oldest cathedral in San Juan to see.  It is still in use today.  By then our feet were tired and we took a taxi back to our hotel to spend the rest of the afternoon laying on the beach!  Awe what relaxation!!!

 The streets of Old San Juan

 Loved these buildings

 A mallorca for breakfast

 Near El Morro was an old cemetery that we had to go see

 Inside the cemetery, huge burial sites

 View from El Morro looking at the San Juan harbor

 My handsome hubby 

 Janene and I going down a pretty neat circular staircase

Dave cracked us up with this!