Steve and Cathy's Blog

We are very excited to be visiting Puerto Rico, even if it is just for a few hours. We know so many people who came from there to the Wallingford-Meriden area, and are anxious to get a glimpse of their homeland. Granted, this is such a short time, and we will only have an opportunity to be in part of San Juan, but this is still special to us

We are scheduled to arrive in port at 8am, but the ship appears to be early, as we pass El Morro Fort (Castillo San Felipe del Morro), at the entrance of San Juan Bay shortly after 7am.

The sun is just coming up, but already we can see this most famous symbol of San Juan. 

We dock at the cruise terminal opposite the Carnival Constellation cruise ship. It looks immense compared to Insignia, and indeed it is, because it can accommodate 2,150 passengers, compared to our 694. 

We begin our day at Waves Grill. Our excursion, which will begin at 10:20am, which is titled Culinary Walking Tour, is sure to provide plenty of food, so Cathy suggests we eat light. Breakfast rolls and fruit meet that requirement. 

Back in the room, Cathy reads and Steve writes. Around 10, Steve is getting antsy because our instructions for the excursion are to meet in the cruise terminal. Of course, getting there is easy, so we are a few minutes early. Lots of tours beginning, but all except ours are for Celebrity Constellation guests.

Right on time, here comes our guide. She introduces herself and leads us out of the terminal. There are ten of us. We are the youngest, it would appear, except for a young man around thirty named Joel, who is from the Albany NY area. Our guide’s name is Cristina. She explains that we will be stopping at four restaurants in the Old San Juan area to sample four very different, but very authentic, foods of Puerto Rico. She will be calling each of the locations on her cell phone a few minutes prior to our arrival, and also that we will be asked to wait outside upon arrival so she can check with the staff to make sure everything is set, rather than having us jam up the restaurant standing there waiting for our table. Very organized!

Off we go. Very quickly, we are taken by the beautiful colonial architecture and the beautiful condition of the buildings.

First, Cristina takes us up to Plaza Colón, which is one of the central tourist spots in Old San Juan. Columbus “discovered” the island in November of 1493. He first encountered the Taino indigenous people, who had arrived here around 500 B.C. from the Amazon region, tells our guide. Both disease and battles with the Spaniards decimated the natives in the ensuing years. The Taino called the island Borinquen. When the Spanish arrived in 1521, they named the location San Juan Batista after John the Baptist. [Cristina tells us Columbus came up with the name, but Wikipedia says otherwise. We prefer her interpretation because it sounds like something Columbus would do.] 

Whatever the actual history is, the statue is very impressive, and was originally erected in 1893 to celebrate the 400^th year of Columbus’ arrival. However, we are on a walking tour that must keep to a schedule, so our stay there was very short. We are off again, but not before Cristina tells us something about Castillo de San Cristóbal, an impressive fort built by the Spanish to protect against land-based attacks on the city of San Juan.

At one time, El Morro at the entrance to the harbor was connected by an enormous wall with this fort, the theory being that the city was protected from attack from the sea by El Morro and by land from San Cristobal.

As we walk along, we admire the wonderful colors of most of the buildings. Cristina explains that in San Juan, an organization called the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture has developed a pallet of colors that every building owner must use when they paint the building. Local regulations require that no two adjacent buildings may be of the same color. The effect is dazzling, and the streets are really cheerful with all the different-colored building facades. 

In a very few minutes, at 10:45, we find ourselves at our first stop: ChocoBar. Cristina checks in, comes back out to get us, and leads us through the restaurant to a nice room at the back called the Storybook Room.

We all sit around a long table and introduce ourselves to each other while Cristina, serving as wait staff and guide, served us Chocotinis, a combination of chocolate, Bailey’s and vodka.

Whoa, no one expected this tour to include cocktails, but, then again, no one was complaining either! What an icebreaker for our group. Cristina explains that this bar serves nothing but chocolate from the Caribbean’s most popular producer of such things, Pedro Cortes, Inc., also the owner of the ChocoBar. In addition to the cocktail, we enjoyed a Majorca, essentially a chocolate sandwich: rich melted chocolate in a delicious soft sweet roll.

We’re there about thirty minutes, and then we head to our next restaurant. On the way, we pass through Military Square, which is all decorated for the Christmas season, as is the adjacent City Hall. A question about them gives Cristina an opportunity to explain how this important season is celebrated in Puerto Rico. It begins at the end of October and runs through the third week of January, and sounds pretty much like a long series of parties, traditional family gatherings and celebratory events. It sounds wonderful … but exhausting.

As we head for our next stop, we take note of the beautiful architecture of the buildings in Old San Juan. We see how rich in history and culture the area is. Many of the streets are paved in blue stone, which we have learned was originally ballast for ships coming from Spain. These streets are a beautiful feature of the area, and historic in their own right.

We move on to Eaverdura Restaurant. We are seated at two tables, and Cristina alternates between them explaining the food we are enjoying. She introduces the restaurant and its fare by enthusiastically saying “This is the closest you will get to my grandma’s kitchen.”

First, we have a rum cocktail with either passion fruit or Caribbean cherry juice. The food is a staple of Puerto Rican cuisine: Shredded pork shoulder with beans and rice. There are two sauces served on the side. One is really hot spice, and the other Cristina calls chimichanga. It is fabulous, and really does taste like home cooking.

We are here for forty minutes, and Cristina fills us with interesting information about food and Puerto Rican culture. She is also responsible for serving and clearing. We are enjoying ourselves so much that she has to finally urge us to move on, and so we do. 

It’s a short walk to our next restaurant, Consular Restaurant and Bar, located within a small hotel. We are led to a very attractive courtyard, and are all seated at a long table.

A waitstaff person immediately serves us a refreshing Mojito, followed with a scrumptious dish of ceviche accompanied by cassava chips. We were starting to feel full after the pork shoulder and beans and rice, but this cool dish revives our appetite.

Another very convivial half an hour visit and we are off again.

Enroute to our next stop, Steve has the opportunity to compliment Cristina on her flawless and practically accent-free English. She relates that her family moved from the island to Orlando FL when she was five, where she essentially grew up. She returned to Puerto Rico after high school to complete her education (“College is free here. No college debt for me, thank you. Plus, all the rest of my family is here.”). Good planning! She is also going to be married next year.

Now we are gratefully beginning to head back downhill to our last restaurant, Juanes Restaurant.

We are ushered in to the back of the restaurant near the bar. Almost gratefully, we are given bottles of water rather than another drink. We have been eating, drinking and walking for two and a half hours by now, and the water is definitely needed. Cristina had told us to leave room for this special Puerto Rican favorite, Mofongo, shredded plantain stuffed with chicken and topped with an incredible sauce, followed by flan that was more like cheesecake. We happily devour every bit of it. 

Alas, it is time to return to the ship. Cristina takes us down to the port, and as we regroup, Cathy and Steve spot a necessary stop across the street– a Walgreens drug store. We ask Cristina if we can end our tour now rather than returning to the ship. She agrees, and, being responsible for us, takes down our names to tell Insignia staff as to our whereabouts. 

Apparently, we aren’t the only ones seeing this as a necessary visit, and half our party give her our names. We ask if Steve can have his picture taken with our delightful Cristina, as all of us have become very fond of our guide. Cathy snaps the shot, and then others ask her for the same favor.

It’s been a busy end to a busy and fun excursion. We haven’t seen a lot of San Juan, but we certainly have tasted Puerto Rican cuisine, and feel we have, well, tasted some wonderful Puerto Rican culture as well.

It’s 1:30pm and time to head back to the ship to relax and recharge. On the way, Steve discovers that, in the confusion of ending the excursion and having his picture taken with Cristina, he had inadvertently failed to give her our $10 tip. Not good, and he is upset with himself for such a boneheaded mistake. Cathy is none too pleased either.

We do return to the ship and to our stateroom. It’s 2pm by now, and everyone must be back on board by 4:30 for Sailaway at 5:00pm. Steve tells Cathy that he wants to take a few more photos, and heads back out to the cruise terminal. He does want to take photos, primarily of Castillo de San Cristóbal, which we viewed when we were in Plaza Colón. 

But first, Steve has another mission: to try to get that $10 tip to Cristina so he can stop kicking himself for making his original blunder. She had mentioned that she has another group to guide at 4pm, and that, in the meantime, she would be returning to Juanes Restaurant, our last stop, to have lunch. So he heads directly there, arriving around 3:30. She isn’t there, but will be returning with her other group, so he leaves the $10 bill with Natasha, one of the bartenders. He also knows the company that Cristina works for, Spoon Experience, and will contact them by email to relay a message to her as to what he had done. 

Okay, that done, he does make his way to take some photos of the enormous Castillo de San Cristóbal, keeping a close eye on the time.

He takes a couple of photos, makes his way back to the ship and boards around 4pm. He sends his email and then both he and Cathy watch as we sail out of San Juan Bay and past the El Morro fort. 

The significant downside of cruising is that we get just a small taste of a place and then have to leave. In some cases, that’s fine. In the case of San Juan, it’s regrettable. We actually have friends who come from Puerto Rico, and we know well of their love of this special place. We haven’t done it justice. But who knows? It certainly has been intriguing enough to keep it on our list of places to which we want to return. In the meantime, at least we better understand the affection our friends have for their homeland.