Ideas for San Juan with kids 8 & 11??

[kelbre]

Hi there! We will be visiting San Juan on the Carnival Glory in April. We have never been there before and aren't sure what to expect. My husband wants us to book something with Carnival themselves instead of an independant tour operator. I don't even know what we'd want to do there. I was thinking of just trying to find something for a couple of hours that showed us some sights and got to walk around for a little while and see the old streets and buildings. Have any of you booked with Carnival for San Juan excursions or did you all do independant tours? Any advice would be appreciated, thanks! As mentioned we will have our two kids with us as well

[antarctic penguin]

We will be doing a tour this Sunday morning, Mar. 15 prior to boarding the ship for the cruise. We will be doing our tour with "Albert Aguirre" <surfcabs@yahoo.com> . We read about him on a Cruise Critic posting and he got a rave review. We told him what we hoped to do while we are there. Am sure he would tailor it to what you want to do. Last year our group did our own tour of the old city for a few hours prior to boarding the ship. We have booked tours with independent tour operators on about 5 or 6 times in the past few yrs. and never had a problem and usually about 1/2 the cost of a similar tour through the cruise lines. Albert will be taking us (our group of 11) to the rain forest including a waterfalls, observatory towers and a bit of hiking (optional), picking us up at the hotel at which we are staying. After that we will do a coast drive and stop at the beach. Depending on how long we spend at the beach he will also take 3 of our group to tour a bit of old San Juan with forts and other points of interest as they have never been in San Juan before. He is picking us up at 9 a.m. and will get us back to our hotel by 3:00 pm with plenty of time to get to the cruise ship. His price is $60.00 per person for a party of 8 or $55.00 per person if its a party of 11.These prices include the transfer from the hotel to the cruise ship with luggage and we dont pay until the end of the day, Satisfaction guaranteed.

 

Hope this helps

[seashinesunshine]

We took our kids to the rain forest when they were 9 and 11. Tons of fun. But you can just get off the ship and spend the time wandering around Old San Juan. There are 2 old forts there, you can buy a day pass to them for around 5-8$, for both forts, they are within walking distance of each other. There are free trolleys that go around the old city that you can hop on and off. If you will be there on a Sunday, there will be families flyiing kites in the grassy area between the forts. And you can walk along the sidewalk that goes along the bottom of the old City Walls. That is a very fun walk, but full of feral ( but cute) cats. They stay out of the way and don't bother anyone.

Walking around the forts and old city, or going to the rainforest would both be great options.