It’s been a week since we came back from a marvelous vacation in Puerto Rico, and I promised to myself before I even went that I would definitely write a blog post about my travels there. My family and I did a lot of really exciting, adrenaline inducing things, but we also took time to relax at the beach!
We took a direct flight from Washington D.C. to San Juan and arrived somewhat early in the afternoon. We thought that because we were so early we could probably head to the beach that same day! Unfortunately, that was not the case. We first went to the wrong car rental company, then had to drive to our apartments, and by the time we were there everything was all wet and rainy! Thankfully this rocky start was not an indicator for how the rest of the vacation were to go.
The next day we first did the mandatory grocery shopping, but afterward we went to our first beach! We chose Luquillo Beach because it looked gorgeous on the pictures and there is an entire street with kiosk-like restaurants! The beach was very nice and the water was nice and warm. We had dinner on the rooftop of a restaurant called Jibaro’s and I had fried cheese and shrimp in garlic sauce with veggies. I can tell you now I had a lot of shrimp this vacation!
Of course you can’t go to Puerto Rico and not visit Old San Juan. We actually went twice during our stay; the first time we just walked through the old streets and took a bunch of pictures. The second day we got our history fix and went to El Morro, which is a big fort in the historic part of San Juan. Both days were incredibly hot and humid, so anytime we could catch some air conditioning, we did!
When I was researching things to do in Puerto Rico I found out that Bacardi has a large distillery there, and that you can tour it! Obviously this got added to our to visit list. We toured a replica of the original distillery and learned a lot about how Bacardi is made and how it originated. We also got a complementary drink, yummie!
Every time we go on vacation we end up taking a boat tour. This time we chose an all-day catamaran trip that would take us to a small uninhabited island where we could go snorkeling. The beaches and the water there were very beautiful and there were a ton of fish! We got lunch on board and the crew had yummie rum cocktails for us!
Another fun thing to do in Puerto Rico is ziplining. There are a bunch of zipline parks actually, but we chose Toro Verde for its two gigantically long ziplines! First we did eight regular lines, and I forgot that the first one is always kind of scary. But those were child’s play compared to The Beast. This mile long zipline can make you reach up to 60 miles per hour! You are strapped horizontally in a sort of suit and then tossed off the platform. This really was one of those activities where the anticipation is worse than the actual ride. It wasn’t as scary when I was hanging there and enjoying the view!
One of my favorite tours this vacation was the El Yunque rainforest tour. I made an entire separate post about it, so I will not go into too much detail here. But this was truly a great day filled with learning and fun activities!
And there it is! A short summary of the most exciting parts of our vacation. In total we spent 14 days in Puerto Rico and we had a great time there. The people are very nice and the island itself is beautiful. I hope you enjoyed reading a little about my travels!
Keep scrolling to see some more pictures!
Mooie foto’s Simone!