We got to sleep in and it was soooo nice! I slept on a real mattress instead of an air mattress! It was great!

We woke up this morning and found a place to eat! Across from our hostel is a beautiful free library that is filled with SO many books. It’s so cute!

We found this- Sam found this- beautiful vegetarian/vegan restaurant that we decided to go eat at and it was SO good. I had an eggplant flatbread and a delicious smoothie. We were so determined to eat here again, all of us loved our food. We sat, ate, chatted, and decided what to do the rest of the day.

Our original plan was to get a rental car and drive to the rainforest. But, because we woke up so late, took forever to decide where to eat (but so worth it!) and got to the rental car agency, it was probably going to be too late to go. There was weirdly a line at the agency and not enough people working. It was going to take forever before we got a car. We decided to bail on that plan and just head to Old San Juan and look at the forts and sites there!

We grabbed an Uber and holy cow! It dropped us off at Fort Morro in Viejo San Juan and it was SO beautiful. Just open fields of grass where people were picnicking, flying kites, relaxing. It was lovely. I wanted to just grab a book and read! But it was so windy.

From there we paid to enter the fort and began to explore. And wow. Just wow. The entire fort takes you a journey through Puerto Rico’s Spanish colonization, fighting off Spain’s European rivals, the fort’s purpose and the ultimate take over by the United States.

Fort Morro was build by the Spaniards once the arrived to Puerto Rico as a defense against any other invaders. Many believed Puerto Rico was the key to the Caribbean and wanted it. Fort Morro served as a space for guards and militia to keep guard, sleep, eat, and access to weapons to defend what they claimed as their land. From 1539- to the 1800s the Spanish held rule over Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, and Chile. In the 1800 due to civil wars and tensions with the United States, only Puerto Rico and Cuba were still held by Spain. Eventually, the U.S. and Spain went to war for 109 days which resulted in Cuban Independence and Puerto Rico occupation.

As we know, this occupation still holds today.

As we explored, we took in the beautiful beach views and did lots of walking and climbing. We saw some iguanas, which are an invasive species here. I wanted to take a close up picture butttt…no go.

After exploring Fort Morro, we went walking around Old San Juan again, looking at chachkie shops and going to Umbrella street! We ran into Mohammed and some other AHAH folks while exploring too! Eventually we settled for dinner at Los Green Go’s. Ha. Ha. Ha.

The food was okay. We had nachos…that were missing cheese? Not really sure how you can still call them nachos but they were okay.

After dinner we grabbed an Uber back to the hostel. We walked into our room only to find a new roommate, John! From Colombia. He’s an electrician who’s been on a crazy travel journey around the world and is wrapping up his world tour here in Puerto Rico. Spanish being his first language, Sam and Alan came in clutch and were able to chat with him a lot. I could understand with gaps, I could answer in English.

We were all going to sit on the roof for a little bit when John asked if we wanted to join him for a drink. We said sure, one drink, and he said he just needed to shower and get ready. We sat down on the roof while John got ready and were immediately overcome with exhaustion. All three of us were so tired and didn’t really feel like having a drink but he was so nice, so we waited. After a while, we were giving up on him and headed back down to the room. Who was there? John. With beer ready to go. So we hauled ourselves back up to the roof for a beer where lots of conversation happened and the fight to stay awake was real. Finally, we headed down and straight to bed.