San Juan

Day 4:

Tuesday afternoon brought us to our second port of call San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico. We had all been to Puerto Rico, but I personally had never spent time in San Juan. I was very excited for our shore excursion that would take us through old San Juan as well as a tour of Castillo San Felipe del Morro (aka Fort San Felipe del Morro) a 16^th century construction used to defend the Port of San Juan. The tour would then conclude with another popular destination Casa Bacardi, the distillery for Bacardi rum located in Cataño, Puerto Rico.

Although it was slightly overcast, it was a very warm day- beautiful weather to be outside in! We loaded up into our tour bus and caravanned through old San Juan. We passed by the “Avenue of Heroes” outside the capital building in which Puerto Rico commemorates many United States presidents by building bronze statues in their honor. The statue honors every United States president who ever visited Puerto Rico dating back to Theodore Roosevelt. Obama became the ninth statue to be erected after he visited in June of 2011. 

 Our first major stop on the tour was the famous Morro Castle. We had forty-five minutes to explore and take pictures which still did not feel like enough time! I could have spent all day on the grounds which had an amazing view of San Juan as well as the ocean (and our cruise ship). No wonder it was referred to as "The Key of Antilles" (meaning no enemy ship could navigate its waters without fear of capture). The "fort", retired in 1961 by the United States, became a part of the National Park Service to be preserved as a museum.  

The Bacardi plant also captured its own bit of history (I was definitely in it for the history and not the Bacardi at this point in time). Bacardi is the largest privately held, family-owned spirits company in the world. The distillery that we visited was more popularly known as the "Cathedral of Rum." We were dropped off at the center of the property where they was a full service bar serving a variety of Bacardi inspired drinks. Everyone was given two drink tickets that could use before or after the tour to sample any drink of their choice. And yes my tickets were happily accepted by Chris and my parents. After everybody had their respective drinks we began a forty minute tour that took us into the museum where we toured several rooms of the Casa de Bacardi as well as watched a short presentation film on how Bacardi was created and became the landmark drink it is today. Another cool feature of the museum was they had these "scent barrels" where you could smell all the different kinds of Bacardi drinks they had to offer. Bacardi Gold made me cough, but I will have to add Bacardi Dragon Berry as a drink to sample in the next year or two. It smelled very sweet and not like rum at all. Lastly, we were taken to an old-fashioned bar where we were given a briefing on the three most popular Bacardi mixed drinks: rum and coke, mojito, and I don't remember the other one because the first two sounded good enough. We completed the excursion by going back to the drop off point where we used the rest of our drink tickets (I just drank bottled water) before caravaning back to San Juan on our bus.
This wound up being a five hour tour with the driving time factored in so we made it to the ship just before the sun set on San Juan. I don't even remember what we had for dinner that night because I was so exhausted by the end of the day, but I am sure it was something terrific. We did wind up going to the Piano Bar afterwards so Chris could get his favorite glass of scotch and I could enjoy my favorite glass of water. ¡Salud!