Back in Action and Puerto Rico Trip, Part 1

We're back from Puerto Rico and I just dropped Robbie off about an hour ago to officially start his second year! It felt great to get up this morning with him and have some breakfast together. We spent some time praying about the coming year before heading out. I'm definitely the type of person that likes having a routine so it was especially nice to be up instead of sleeping in so I could get some cleaning done around our apartment (I think we were still in vacation mode the last few days because it was a little messy!).

Puerto Rico was an absolute blast and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to travel somewhere tropical without spending a load of money. We decided to not rent a car while we were down there and did not have any problems getting around on the public transportation. I think we spent at the most $50 getting around. $40 of that was to pay for the taxi to our hotel from the airport and back only because you can't take luggage on the bus. The bus was only 75 cents per person and it went to all the areas where we were wanting to go in San Juan.

We stayed in Le Consulat which is a little boutique hotel about two blocks from the beach. Our first night there our airconditioner broke. We told them that morning before we went out for the day and when we got back it was already fixed! Talk about speedy! They also mopped the floors everyday in our room which was great because we dragged a lot of sand in from the beach. The room was a little small, but it was clean and comfortable and that's all we needed.

Our first full day there, we took the bus into Old San Juan and visited El Morro, a fort built by the Spanish in the 1500's to protect the port of San Juan.

It was only $3 per person to get inside the fort.

Here's the lighthouse that's within the fort walls.

This is looking back towards Old San Juan from inside the fort.

After touring El Morro, we walked back into Old San Juan and had lunch at a place called Mojitos. I had some delicious chicken with creole sauce and Robbie had the traditional Puerto Rican dish mofongo. Mofongo is a savory dish made with mashed plantains. He chose to have his stuffed with pork and it was absolutely wonderful! I also got a side of amarillos, fried sweet plantains which were our favorite part of the whole meal. You can see one of the amarillos towards the top left of Robbie's plate.

From Old San Juan, we took a ferry boat (50 cents each) to another part of San Juan called

Cataño to visit the Bacardi Distillery. We got there too late to go on the tour but they still gave us our two free drinks each!

I had rum punch and some sort of coconut rum something or other. They were quite tasty!

Robbie had rum punch and a Cuba libre (rum with coke and lime).

And that concluded our first full day in Puerto Rico. I'll write a couple more posts about the rest later.