Our Trip to Puerto Rico - We Explore Old San Juan

We spent a lot of time in Old San Juan (the original colonial city, as opposed to the more modern city that has since grown up around it) because there’s a lot to do and see there and, well, that’s where we were. It’s good to do the thing in the place.

Every time we travel we debate whether or not to rent a car and sometimes we do but mostly we don’t and in this case not trying to drive in Old San Juan was precisely the right call. It’s an old city, founded by the Spanish in the early 1500s, and like all cities built before cars it’s compact and designed to be walked rather than driven. The streets are narrow and uneven, and if you’re in a hurry you’re better off on foot. This is particularly true if you’re behind a maintenance vehicle of some kind – a trash truck, for example, or a street cleaning truck, both of which we walked by during our wandering and both of which were leading vast lines of idling vehicles in their wake. Admittedly it’s not New York so nobody was leaning on their horn having an aneurism because of the delay, but still. Uber is pretty much everywhere all the time and it's fast, reliable, and cheap. There’s no reason to have a car if you’re visiting Old San Juan.

Plus it’s just more interesting to walk in a city like that. You see things that you would miss if you were breezing by in a car or creeping along trying not to hit anything. Lauren noticed this scene at one point, and you have to admire the juxtaposition.

You should be prepared to get your exercise in when you’re walking around in a city like this one, though. I’m not entirely sure why the Spanish chose to build their city on the tropical equivalent of San Francisco – maybe it’s just something they did, now that I think about it – but wherever you want to go you can rest assured that there is a steep hill between where you are and where you’re trying to be. It does level out when you get to the modern city, but the colonial heart of San Juan is pitched pretty steeply.

There are also cats pretty much everywhere. They live in the streets – not a punishing place in a tropical climate, at least not compared to winters in Wisconsin – and people seem to like having them around. The ones we saw were fairly well fed and groomed and didn’t seem bothered by people so you know they don’t see us as any real threat. You couldn’t pet them, but if you had a tasty morsel to give them they’d come by pretty close so you could feed them.

 

One night we were eating dinner on a steep road that had been blocked to vehicular traffic and noticed that there was a group of these cats just up the hill that were gathered around someone who was casually feeding them leftovers from some meal. After the person left Lauren wandered up with some tasties of her own and the cats were just as happy to accept them from her. These were well fed cats.

I generally enjoy wandering around in cities. Cities are fascinating places, full of noise and people and interesting places and more history than most people realize. You see a lot just walking around, and San Juan has a lot to see.

Sometimes I did that on my own. One morning, for example, before Lauren and Sara woke up and while Kim was eating breakfast, I decided to head out and see what was around. It’s a nice city to do that.

This street impressed me, though.

It’s hard to tell from the photograph but you’re looking down a fairly steep hill. The road is exactly wide enough for one small car if you fold in the side mirror, and the 90-degree turn at the bottom is tricky because of both the unevenness of the road and the lack of any real space for maneuver and it is also more exciting than it probably needs to be because on the other side of those loosely placed concrete blocks is a 40-foot (13-meter) drop. Good luck, motorists!

You do run into some interesting people when you’re out and about like that. At one point I was trying to get a picture of one of the feral cats – a calico with one eye who, frankly, was having none of it – when an older guy came up to me and started talking about cats and the horrors of animal cruelty in general. It turned out he was a Canadian bush pilot and we got to talking about his flying experiences. At one point he got onto the subject of hunting, which he had no particular issues with as long as people were responsible about it, but he said, “I’m sorry to say that you Americans sometimes will just shoot the animals for no reason!” and all I could respond with was, “Well, shit, friend – in the US we do that to people too.” He kind of looked at me for a moment, and then just laughed. What can you do?

Later that morning I went back out to a local bakery and got mallorcas, which are apparently a Puerto Rico thing. They’re about the size and shape of cinnamon buns but they’re just yeasted dough dusted with powdered sugar. They’re good, though rather large.

There are a few general things that you notice when you’re walking around San Juan. For one thing, I really, really need to learn how to speak Spanish. My vague memories of forty-year-old high school classes just don’t cut it. I could usually parse things out in print, but trying to talk to people – some of whom didn’t speak English – was a comedy. It would help me in my job too, come to think of it.

Also, Old San Juan looks a lot like a cross between Rome, with its tiled everything and its narrow cobblestone streets, and New Orleans, with balconies everywhere on the buildings. It’s not hard to figure out why. You know that meme that starts with the fact that pyramids exist in multiple civilizations across history and teases you with the idea that this must be some vast alien conspiracy before pointing out that pyramids are just a really good way to pile rocks without having them fall down? San Jan, New Orleans, and Rome are all hot-weather cities and balconies and tile keep things cooler. They’re also old cities, as noted earlier, long predating automobiles, and the streets in the original parts of town are therefore only wide enough for foot traffic and the occasional horse. It’s fun to see the common threads, though.

We did a lot of general wandering in Old San Juan. The first day there I headed off to the grocery store to stock up on stuff and get the lay of the land, which was mostly successful – I found the grocery store eventually and got a few items for breakfast and such, though I did take the long way around.

There’s art here and there.

And as you walk around you find yourself in all sorts of lovely places.

You can get pretty much anything if you look hard enough, sometimes all in one place.

Although I have to admit I was surprised to find out that you can still buy these. Do the Germans know?

Sara and I walked around a bit while we were waiting for Kim and Lauren to come back from Casa Bacardi (more on that later), and one day when she decided to take a nap Kim, Lauren, and I largely retraced those steps. We found some neat places.

 

If there was one place that kind of stood out it was the Pigeon Park. Located just to the right of the gate pictured above, it’s exactly what it says it is: a small public park full of pigeons who absolutely understand that the tourists will feed them. They may not know much but they do know that. There’s a small stand that will sell you a bag of pigeon food for $2, and if you so much as crinkle the paper they are on you like they’re taking direction from Alfred Hitchcock. It is surprisingly fun if somewhat pokey, even though they have big signs warning you not to feed the pigeons outside of the park as pigeons are disease-ridden filth-producing monsters. Inside the park is okay, though.

We had a grand time exploring the old city.

And then we looked further afield.