Fort San Cristobal

Jay and I spent one of our days in San Juan exploring what is called Old San Juan, the original part of the city built predominantly in the 1500's. It was a really neat area with all these great little brick-paved streets and alleys. Since it was settled and built primarily by the Spanish, it was reminiscent of streets in Spain. (Or so it seems from photos I've seen; I haven't made it to Spain yet.)

To protect the city, there were 2 forts built. We took the time to explore one of them, Fort San Cristobal. It was such a great historical area and we enjoyed learning about some of Puerto Rico's history. Basically, Puerto Rico is the first main island you would come to if you sailed west from Europe, so they considered it the "gate" to the rest of the Caribbean and the Americas. Therefore, it needed to be strongly protected. Thankfully it was only attacked four times, although they continued to keep active military there through the 1960's. It was called Fort Brooke from the 1930's through 1960's when America ran it. It is now part of their national park system. I took tons of photos because it was such a neat area, and I loved that it was right on the ocean. Here are just a few to give you an idea of the beauty.