the long and winding road...

Forts!
Day 2 we checked out some of the historical sites. We started with El Morro which is the larger of the two forts in Old San Juan (OSJ). Its really beautiful and the weather was so nice. We walked all around the fort, upstairs and downstairs, over and over for about 2.5 hrs. Then we walked down into OSJ to find Bobby a hat, then back up the hill to El Morro, then down the coast to the second fort, San Cristobal, then up and down the streets of OSJ wandering, shopping, stopping for snacks, then finally back to our hotel. We left our hotel at 9 in the morning, returned at about 7 and had only stopped for about an hour for lunch. Yes, you calculated it right, that makes about 9 hours of walking. The good news is I'm feeling pretty good about all the food I'm probably going to eat on our cruise :-)

This is us in front of El Morro. The lawn area on the sides of us was the battlefield in the 15 and 1600s. Kind of cool. Now, people use it as park area. Its pretty windy so people fly kites!
G overlooking a little island area. It used to be a leper colony hundreds of years ago but now is being turned into a resort area.
G doing one of her many funny poses in front of actual canonballs --400 yrs old +/- 100 yrs. Overlooking the beautiful Caribbean Sea. These pix do absolutely no justice for how gorgeous it was.

Bobby and G in one of the garitas (watch towers). Only a few of the original ones remain. I don't think this was one of them. G has a pretzel in her right hand but her left is a pretend gun!

The lighthouse. I've always loved lighthouses. This one is quite a bit newer than most of the fort. I think it was originally built in the 1800s and has been rebuilt several times.

This picture cracks me up! I have no idea what she's looking at.

My beautiful girl! She had lots of fun running all around. Then she'd crash in the stroller for a couple hours.

More fort. It started to rain suddenly and we sought shelter at the stop of one of the stairwells with another family. Five mins of rain, just enough to cool things down, then the sun came back out. Nice!

Georgie just loves these pay a quarter telescopes. Mind you, she can't see out of them worth beans. I think she likes the idea of them more than anything else. "Oooh, a telescope!! Can I have a quarter Daddy?"

Another pic of the roads in OSJ. This one from about 1/3 of the way up the hill. Yes, we started our walk all the way down at the bottom by the ocean!! There's a reason there are no chubby locals in OSJ.

We came around a corner and saw this park filled with pigeons!! My first words "Georgie, do not scare the birds. Do you understand? Do NOT run toward the birds." Luckily, the pigeons are not too skittery and she didn't run at them, thank goodness. That could have been ugly. I guess they live there all the time and aren't really afraid of people. There's a lady there selling baggies with crushed potato chips to feed them. We passed. The tree trunk is pretty fascinating too!
The facade of an old church. Not sure when it was built but its old!

There's this very cool cemetary next to El Morro filled with statuary. We walked all the way down to it (see that little road on the left, it goes down to a very narrow tunnel that includes a blind turn. It was kind of scary. We walked back up very quickly and hoped to hear no honks of oncoming cars) but found that it had closed about an hour before. Bummer. Not that I'm really into cemetaries but this one look different.

More of G's funny poses! This was a garita at the smaller fort San Cristobal. Its about 2 miles down the coast.

The front of San Cristobal. In a lot of ways it was similar to El Morro. But, it did have a few things that El Morro did not (at least as far as I could see) like a dungeon. Eeek. I would not have wanted to be a prisoner in that dungeon. It was a tunnel about 30 feet long, 7 feet wide and 8 feet tall cut into the fort. The only air and light came from a small (think 6x12") hole cut into the side. OMG, I really feel sorry for anyone in history who had to spend any time in there. There are drawings of boats on the walls said to have been done by former prisoners. I didn't get a pic though cuz, I know its funny, but being in there creeped me out a bit.

Next post, El Yunque