Taxi’s here are a rip-off. $30 into Old San Juan from the hotel is wildly overpriced, and given that buses are (we’re told) hellish we’re more or less forced to taxi. Oh well, at least the free breakfast is worth it:
< Surprised?
A bunch of random shots from Old San Juan:
The fountain at left was at the beginning of the Paseo del Morro path. The middle shot (taken on the path) shows the city walls from outside, and the rightmost shot shows El Morro fortress, which I visited yesterday.
As far as fortresses go, it was quite impressive, with giant walls and hidden rooms and impressive battlements. The nearby El Cristobel fort was even better (it has a dungeon, but we’re not allowed to go very far in). But both were perhaps less impressive than they may have been because neither were my first exposure to a hilltop stone fortress.
I speak of course of Fort Scratchley in Newcastle. Even though El Morro is several hundred years older, it’s similar in design to Scratchley. This unexpected similarity continues into the city of Old San Juan itself:
That’s a typical street view. The architecture is different, the streets may not be paved, but it was hard to shake a strange sense of deja vu as I strode these streets. The colonial heights of Newcastle (around the obelisk, for instance) and the older parts of San Juan (up near El Morro) were very similar, and various geographical aspects of San Juan’s harbour bore a strong resemblence to (for instance) the breakwaters at the entrance of Newcastle harbour.
Incidentally, the quality of souvenir’s here is abysmal. And our standards are low! I’ll look again today, but I wonder if this is because we’re here in the off season?