A Photo Review of our Day in Old San Juan

San Juan was a port stop on our cruise last month. I just finished writing about our day, including TONS of photos. (I get a bit crazy when it comes to picture taking!) Knowing the kinds of questions I had before our trip, I thought this might help someone plan a cheap and easy day when visiting San Juan.

Basically we just started walking through Old San Juan and visited El Morro and many other interesting places. You can read about our day and see the photos in this blog post:

Old San Juan

I've been following your blog of your Glory cruise from the link in the post on the Carnival boards. We were on Glory in May 2010 on an Eastern Caribbean cruise, same itinerary. I just wanted to let you know that I love your San Juan section - your pictures are just beautiful and many could be post cards. We've been in San Juan three times now. The first time was our first cruise in 1992 on Festival (Southern itinerary out of San Juan), but didn't get to see San Juan since the cruise ships were docked across the bay since they had the replica's of Columbus' ships in Old San Juan. The second time was on Glory in 2010 when we had about an hour and a half to take a quick walk through Old San Juan up to San Cristobal Fort. The last time was on Valor (southern itinerary out of San Juan) and we spent a good amount of time at Fort El Morro. We tried finding the walkway along the bay but due to a heavy downpour, we had to take shelter and ended up walking up through town. I'd love to get there again because we just love San Juan. Thank you for posting your pictures.

Great pics have forwarded to our traveling companions as it will be their first trip to San Juan. What a great pictorial!

Sue

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Thank you so much! We sail out of San Juan on our next cruise and I am really looking forward to seeing the city!

Thats!! Mi Viejo San Juan!

I Live so grateful to God to live in this beautiful Island!! And this is Only The Old San Juan!

We love walking around old San Juan. So much to see.

Thanks for the review. We're headed to Puerto Rico in 3 weeks and are planning on exploring Old San Juan before we board. The walking tour is exactly what I needed to help us!

Your pictures are great and thank you for providing a link in your blog about the Forts. Makes me more excited to visit the forts.

Excellent trip report. I will be in Old San Juan (Disney Cruise) in about 2 weeks. I've done a lot of research, and your tour is very similar to what I have planned....thanks, jonathan

What a lovely report....your pictures are fabulous!

Great pictures. Just got back from there. Free trolley takes you right to entrance of forts and all around outside of old san juan. Talked to driver and we switched to another free trolley that took us on the inside of old san juan. :)

Great pictures. Just got back from there. Free trolley takes you right to entrance of forts and all around outside of old san juan. Talked to driver and we switched to another free trolley that took us on the inside of old san juan. :)

Ha! You did what I "tried" to do...but you did it successfully! :rolleyes:

Actually, I look back and am glad we got on the wrong bus! Meeting the local art student and walking with him through the city is one of the special memories from our trip!

Beautiful pictures!! Thank you for sharing! I can't wait to take my good camera.. I hope I can capture some of what you did!

Gorgeous photos!!

Thanks! I am shamelessly stealing your route and claiming all the credit when we go there in November! 😋😋😋

Beautiful pictures!! Thank you for sharing! I can't wait to take my good camera.. I hope I can capture some of what you did!

Gorgeous photos!!

Thanks to both of you! Old San Juan is such a beautiful city, you can't help but get beautiful photos. I was so intrigued by the sentry boxes along the city wall that I must have a hundred photos just of those!

Thanks! I am shamelessly stealing your route and claiming all the credit when we go there in November! 😋😋😋

Hopefully you have better luck finding the CORRECT trolley! ;)

I was worried about the walking distances, but realized it wasn't near as far in real life as what I "thought" it was on the map. In fact, when we were looking for the old cathedral we walked several blocks too far because we couldn't imagine it was really that close.

The one thing we didn't do this time was wander thru much of the center of Old San Juan and stop in the shops, but since we did that on our last visit, I didn't feel like we missed out (but it might be something you would want to include if you have time.)

In my opinion, it isn't worth trying to do BOTH forts in one day. The two are very, very similar so my suggestion would be pick just one and then spend any extra time seeing the other sites in the city.

I stumbled across your photo review of Old San Juan and since I LOVE Old San Juan, I couldn't resist looking through all your pictures. It always brings back such fond memories for me! I've sailed from San Juan 9 or 10 times and so always try to do at least a short pre-cruise stay to enjoy the old city.

Your pictures are awesome! Do you mind if I ask what kind of camera you used? I'm cruising from Vancouver to Shanghai this fall with an additional 3-4 weeks traveling through Asia, African and Europe and I'm in the market for a new camera. I'm trying to get some ideas of what I want to check out when I start shopping for a new one.

Also, as an FYI, and I try to let as many people as possible know about this. The many cats you see around the old town are part of a colony of resident cats that live in Old San Juan and are taken care of by a non-profit organization called Save A Gato. They feed them, take care of as many medical needs as possible, have a trap/spay/neuter program and also adopt out as many of the cats as they can. I feel they are a very worthwhile organization and I've been financially supporting them for a while now. They have a location in Old San Juan where they shelter sick and recently spayed/neutered cats. Last year my 14-year-old son, 21-year-old daughter and I actually spent a day during our pre-cruise stay volunteering at the shelter. They were incredibly grateful for our time as they are very short of volunteers. It was such a rewarding experience we volunteered again, the day we disembarked from our cruise, and before we headed to the airport for an evening flight home.

The only reason I bring this up is because so many visitors enjoy the cats of Old San Juan and there are ways to help them, by supporting this organization. Here is a link to their website if anyone is interested: http://www.saveagato.com/ Tell them Michelle, Connor and Alexandra from Minnesota say Hello!

Thanks again for your wonderful picture review of Old San Juan. It was wonderful!

Your pictures are awesome! Do you mind if I ask what kind of camera you used? I'm cruising from Vancouver to Shanghai this fall with an additional 3-4 weeks traveling through Asia, African and Europe and I'm in the market for a new camera. I'm trying to get some ideas of what I want to check out when I start shopping for a new one.

Thanks for the info on the "gatos" in Old San Juan...interesting!

Also thanks for the compliment on the photos. For the San Juan photos, I was using a Canon SX50. It is considered a "bridge" camera...sort of a hybrid between a point & shoot and a DSLR.

Almost all of my photos were just taken on the "auto" setting and I certainly don't consider myself a photographer! The selling point on the camera for me was the very, very long zoom (50x). I bought the camera before our Alaskan cruise last summer (which I also covered in the blog) and got lots of great wildlife photos.

It is a larger camera so not one that you can stuff into a pocket. I also took an older Canon SD200 that fits in my purse and an underwater Canon D10 which I used for some excursions and snorkeling. Snorkel Photos from Roatan. (It is nice having a camera that can stand up to rain and rougher use!)

I will note that although the SX50 does a nice job outdoors, it does not perform near as well in low light which is frustrating. :(

Those are great photos you took. Seeing your church pictures makes me want to visit even more..beautiful ! Thanks for sharing !

I'll be in SJ in November and am hoping that I will be staying walking distance to San Juan Cathedral and Capella Cristo.

I was in San Juan this past Wednesday on the Disney Fantasy (my first trip to San Juan). We were docked at the middle pier. When you get to the end of the pier, go left to trolley stop #14. In the photo below, you can see the tram at stop #14. Directly across the street is a CVS pharmacy.....

This is stop #14. Under the sign you can see the CVS across the street.

Here is the "open air" trolley for the forts. This trolley will go up to the entrance of El Morro (I took this picture at El Morro). There were more people at stop #1, than there were at stop #14. So if you want a seat, go to #14. Stop #13 was behind the La Casita. And coming off the middle pier, stop #14 was actually closer, and safer to get to (than #1) because you don't have to cross the street......jonathan

Thanks for the info on the "gatos" in Old San Juan...interesting!

 

Also thanks for the compliment on the photos. For the San Juan photos, I was using a Canon SX50. It is considered a "bridge" camera...sort of a hybrid between a point & shoot and a DSLR.

 

 

Almost all of my photos were just taken on the "auto" setting and I certainly don't consider myself a photographer! The selling point on the camera for me was the very, very long zoom (50x). I bought the camera before our Alaskan cruise last summer (which I also covered in the blog) and got lots of great wildlife photos.

 

It is a larger camera so not one that you can stuff into a pocket. I also took an older Canon SD200 that fits in my purse and an underwater Canon D10 which I used for some excursions and snorkeling. Snorkel Photos from Roatan. (It is nice having a camera that can stand up to rain and rougher use!)

 

I will note that although the SX50 does a nice job outdoors, it does not perform near as well in low light which is frustrating. :(

Thanks for the information regarding your camera. I definitely want a camera that takes good outdoor pictures for my trip, but don't want limitations with low light indoors, etc. so I'll definitely have to research more. Thanks for your comments regarding the upsides and downsides that you have found.

Say, I noticed you are also from Minnesota! Isn't it wonderful getting away to the Caribbean? :p

Oh my, your pictures (didn't have a lot of time to read your review) brought back a lot of good memories from last month.:) Vacation time does fly by FAST.:(