Puerto Rico

Thursday 8th September - Wednesday 14th September 2011
Zaid, Carmen & Mia's Place

                                

From Mexico we headed to Puerto Rico to visit my cousin Brenton's little girl Mia and stay with her family! Here we were spoilt rotten with home cooking, tours of the island and lots of mischief! 

Our favorite place here was definitely Old San Juan. It was the older part of town but it had so much to see and do. Two of our days here was spent wondering the streets looking at all the old souvenirs and buying lots of different styles of pottery. We really enjoyed the fact that we weren't hassled here... oh and people spoke English! 
 

We also did a walking tour through the city with audio head phones and visited a few of the sites… 

We started out at the Paseo La Princesa which used to be a jail cell but now it is the home of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company. The building is open weekdays to the general public, where you can take a tour of the cells.

 
Next we headed to El Morro  which is a National Historic Site maintained by the US National Park Service. Inside we found a chapel, kitchen, latrine, barracks, all with informational displays. We even got to watch an informative movie ahha
 

Finally we headed to San Cristobel Fort which was built in 1634 – 1771 and again was to protect San Juan from sea invasion. San Cristobel is actually bigger than El Morro and it is made up of smaller units that are connected by tunnels, with each unit being self sufficient.

We had a really good day here and loved looking around the city. There was so much to see on the way and we looked at many churches, and old historic buildings that took our break away... The colours of the buildings here were amazing!! 

Overall it was a full week but the best thing was getting to know Mia, a beautiful 5 year old with so much energy and heart and her amazing generous family. We couldn’t have had a more hospitable place to stay and we really enjoyed our week there!