{"id":1194,"date":"2010-11-29T23:47:33","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T03:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thingsthatgrowinmygarden.com\/?p=1194"},"modified":"2010-12-17T23:50:41","modified_gmt":"2010-12-18T03:50:41","slug":"san-juan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thingsthatgrowinmygarden.com\/?p=1194","title":{"rendered":"San Juan"},"content":{"rendered":"

The kids did not sleep so well, and so we didn\u2019t either. That\u2019s the
\ntrouble will everyone in one room. J was sort of waking up periodically
\nmaking noises, but then settling down. If he had been in his room at home
\neverything would have been fine. Anyways. After breakfast R decided
\nthat she did not want to walk around town with us, she\u2019d rather stay in
\nthe kids club. Sigh. I wanted her to see the super cool fort and the
\nold city, but did I really want to drag a reluctant 6 year old along??
\nNope. So she went to the kids club, J got in the hip carrier and we set
\noff. We waited for a while for a Trolley that was supposed to take us
\naround the old city, (it was free) but it took forever to come. You
\nshould know that from the pier to the fort was a huge change in elevation, so we wanted a ride up, and to walk back. We walked up a short ways, then found a taxi. The traffic into the old city was jammed up. The driver was very crusty about this, and complained that when they put up the
\nChristmas lights, they shut down whole streets. Anyways. He went the
\nL-O-N-G way around and we finally arrived at Castillo de San Felipe del Morro.
\nWe had been to this fortification before, I think on our first cruise. It
\nwas just as beautiful. Gorgeous views of the island and the lower fort.
\n I have tons of pictures of course. We spent some time here exploring.
\nI must say my fear of heights is alive and well. Even with walls that are
\n6 feet deep, I still feel that awful jumpy feeling in my stomach when I get close to the edge. Coupled with that is a little light headedness.
\nDaddy and J went tromping around, while I was more cautious.
\nAfter exploring the casillo, we walked back through old San Juan to the ship. They are spending a lot of money restoring all the buildings. Most I\u2019d say have had a facelift. But we did come across 2 where the inside structure had been torn down, and just the fa\u00e7ade remained. I got some
\ncool pictures of the sky through these window frames. We popped into a
\nfew shops \u201cThe best souvenier shop in San Juan\u201d didn\u2019t really live up to its name. We did however find 2 stores selling art by local artists. We bought a small piece of pottery. By this time it was getting quite hot,
\nand I was anxious to get back to R. We walked back, noting that the
\n\u201cWesterdam\u201d was berthed beside us (the Maasdam). We took the Westerdam on its 2nd sea voyage back in 2004 for our 10th anniversary. Fond memories!
\nOnce back we went right for the Lido and cold water. It turns out R already had lunch in the kids club and was not interested in watching us eat. She told us to come back for her after lunch\u2026.so much for needing to
\nbe worried about her. The afternoon she spent in the pool, and J had a
\nnice long nap. Late afternoon on the pool deck I talked to the mother of
\nM, a little girl she loves being with. It turns out her husband is the doctor on board! (I saw him our first day of the cruise for pink eye,
\nwhich is thankfully gone, and no one else got). They live in Vancouver,
\nbut are originally from South Africa. I must say I like these smaller ships with fewer kids. R finds it easy enough to make friends, and since there are not that many kids, she seems to get to know these kids better and loves playing with them.
\nAt supper we were once again entertained by the string quartet in the balcony above us. Both of the kids enjoyed the music. R recognized many of the songs (from Carmen, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the Sugar plum fairy from the Nutcracker) I am proud to say. We clapped enthusiastically for
\nthem. After as usual R went to the kids club and I went back to the room
\nto put J to bed. I just hear the engines starting now, we are due to leave in a few minutes.
\nUPDATE: here are some pictures<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
\nDaddy (with J) went down this huge staircase to the lower level. I didn\u2019t want to do that with my knee. Here is a view from the bottom.
\n\"A<\/a>
\nSo while they were down below, I found some super cool look out spots from above that gave me some spectacular shots. Here you can see the cannon runs clearly.
\n\"A<\/a>
\n\"A<\/a>
\nAfter exploring the castle, we walked back to the ship through the streets of Old San Juan.
\n\"A<\/a>
\n\"A<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The kids did not sleep so well, and so we didn\u2019t either. That\u2019s the trouble will everyone in one room. J was sort of waking up periodically making noises, but then settling down. If he had been in his room at home everything would have been fine. Anyways. After breakfast R decided that she did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thingsthatgrowinmygarden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thingsthatgrowinmygarden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thingsthatgrowinmygarden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thingsthatgrowinmygarden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thingsthatgrowinmygarden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1194"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.thingsthatgrowinmygarden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1196,"href":"http:\/\/www.thingsthatgrowinmygarden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions\/1196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thingsthatgrowinmygarden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thingsthatgrowinmygarden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thingsthatgrowinmygarden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}