Today Cynthia and I walked over to Old San Juan. It's about a 40 minute walk but it has nice views along the way. Today there was a massive festival happening in Old San Juan that was called The Festival of the Streets. At least that's what I was told the translation meant, Cynthia speaks Spanish. We walked along the streets and traffic was in grid lock as we neared closer to Old San Juan. There were also masses of people walking the streets, all heading in the same direction. We didn't know where they were going or really what the festival was all about, but we just followed the crowds.
Well apparently it's just a really big street festival. Not like close down the streets and set up carnival rides or booths, nothing like that. It was just thousands of people parading around the streets with signs and horns and whistles making as much noise as possible. I can assure you that Puerto Ricans are excellent at being loud. At one point we got caught in the parade(?) route and didn't have any choice but to walk with the crowds down the streets until we found a side street we could escape down. Then we couldn't find any streets that had less then 3 million people on them so we continued to walk the opposite direction until we hit the end of the island. From here we were able to walk around the outside and avoid the crowds as we made our way back towards the Serenade. It was actually really weird because once we were on the edge of the island it was extremely quiet, calm and relaxing but only a few blocks away was complete chaos.
Old San Juan is a walled city, protected by two different fortifications: Castillo San Felipe del Morro and Castillo San Cristobal. It's the biggest European fortification in the Americas. We decided to walk through the forts and were delighted to find out there was no entrance fee today because of the festival! The forts were really impressive looking and fun to explore. There is a secret (not any more) underground tunnel that connects two portions of San Cristobal. Apparently it was the longest underground tunnel of its time. I'd say it is about 1/2 mile. It was really dark and hot inside but definitely worth the walk. We got to see the dungeons which had really cool carvings on the walls from guests who had stayed there. There were also iguanas all over the place as I assume they like to sun bathe on the hot fortress walls.
On our walk back to the Serenade we saw the sailing ship Bounty. It was used in the first two Pirates of the Caribbean movies and was extremely cool looking. Unfortunately we didn't have time to take a tour, but if I get a chance I might go back and try to go aboard.
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