Today our Jewel of the Seas adventure finally begins, after about 18 months of planning, the day is here and we are ready to go. Well, we aren't actually going on Jewel today but we are flying to San Juan, Puerto Rico to begin our vacation a day early.
Our flight will leave New York's JFK airport at 8:55am so we set our alarm for 5:40am to get ready. I think the excitement got the better of me and my wife because we woke up at about 5am and decided to just get up and go. So up and at 'em we went, getting the last things packed, waking up the daughter and waiting for our town car service from Legends Limousine at 6:30am. A quick ride to the aiport and we were on our way.
The whole flight experience was great. We were on time, had minimal turbulence and landed safely, what more could you ask for? I will give big kudos to Delta because on the flight, WiFi was free while it lasted (once you are 100 miles from United States it ends) and all of their movies on the entertainment system were free. Plus there were games and customizable music too. Really good inflight enterainment, especially for free.
We landed in San Juan at 12:30 and made our way to our hotel to drop off our luggage. We are staying at the Sheraton Old San Juan, which is located inside Old San Juan and convenient to everything we did. We dropped our luggage off and started to explore Old San Juan. We were starving so we tried some Puerto Rico authentic street food, the alcapurrias. It's basically a fried beef patty and it was really tasty.
Now that we had some real food in our stomachs, we took a tour of the Puerto Rican Governors Mansion. It's a 20 minute free tour of the mansion grounds and it's quite beautiful. It's a combination of Spnaish architecture and Moorish revival.
After our tour, we took a walk to check out El Morro, which is the major Spanish fort on the island. It's massive and we took the opportunity to explore various areas of the fort. My daughter loved running around the fort and checking out the various tunnels and areas. I've never seen her so excited about something not stereotypically childish. Admission was $3 per adult and kids were free.
We did a little more sight seeing around the city but by this point we were all tired after being up since about 5am. Our friend recommended a place for another Puerto Rican specialty, mofongo.
We headed over to Restaurante Raices for dinner and tried a couple kinds of mofongo (fried, mashed plaintains) along with what is described as a giant pork chop. The restaurant itself is a cross between over-the-top historical decor and real tasty food.
Overall the food was really good, although the prices were a little high (most entrees were between $15 and $20). We had a good time there so it wasn't a bad choice by any means. But next time we are in Old San Juan and want mofongo, I may opt for somewhere else just to see what other choices are out there.
After dinner the whole group was done physically. I would have loved to go walk around a little more, especially since I haven't been able to check out San Juan at night. Alas, no need to push myself too much and tomorrow is day one of our Jewel of the Seas cruise so I definitely want to have enough energy for that.
Definitely a great first day and we are all even more excited to get onboard the ship and let the real adventure begin. Our plan is to have breakfast at 9am and then be ready to go to the cruise terminal by 10ish. I do need to make a pit stop to buy some wine to bring onboard first but I think we will be at the cruise terminal by 10:30am.
We will have a lot of updates in our live blog here but also on Royal Caribbean Blog Twitter and Instagram. Follow along and then get the whole summary here tomorrow.