Puerto Rico Part 2 – Castillo San Cristobal

Welcome back friends! Today I’m sharing part 2 of my Puerto Rico trip, in case you missed part one, you can read all about it here 🙂

On day 3 of the trip we all slept in because we were so exhausted! I slept until 10 which is very unusual for me! We finished volunteering, so it was just a day to relax and explore the island. Our first stop was at Café con Ce and we got some iced coffees. It was so nice to sit outside with our iced coffee and not be freezing! I was soaking up the warmth while NYC was getting snow.

Afterwards we went to lunch and got a massive plate of arroz con pollo (chicken & rice). We all didn’t know how massive this was going to be!

Jon and I went into Old San Juan afterwards to explore. We didn’t know that this was the busiest day of the festival so there was so much traffic! When we got dropped off we could walk overlooking the ocean so it was so pretty!

Our goal for the day was to see the Castillo San Cristobal, which is a massive fort built in the 1500s and continually updated. Luckily it wasn’t closed with the government shutdown, so we got to explore the whole fort. It was monstrous!! We could’ve spent all day long looking at it.

We watched a short documentary inside to cool off and we learned a lot about Puerto Rico and San Juan. It was originally conquered by the Spanish, and they built the fort to help fight off the British from conquering the West Indies and South America. Once the Puerto Ricans were tired of Spanish rule, America helped them gain independence form Span with a peace treaty.

This fort was both of our favorite parts of the trip, and we would highly recommend this if you’re visiting PR. It has some incredible views of the ocean and the city below. We got to walk through the tunnels and go in the little moats, it was cool!

This area was where the soldiers would sleep on these wooden platforms.

These ship drawings were in the dungeon and done by prisoners.

We also saw so many huge cruise ships!

We could’ve stayed at this fort all day long, it was awesome! After we finished exploring the fort, we went and explored San Juan so be on the lookout for that post next week 🙂