We arrived a day early to have a little time in San Juan – could have used two days easily. First stop was Comfort Inn – arrived right at 300 and our room was not ready. No worries – we dropped off our luggage and headed to Old San Juan. We were waiting at a bus stop when a taxi pulled up and offered to take us into OSJ for $2 each. I asked how much to go all the way to El Morro and he said just add a tip. Anyway, we visited el Morro, rode the free trolley to El Capitan and visited there and jumped back on the trolley after our visit. The trolley went back to its starting point and the driver said “end of service” – so we wandered around the town area for a little while and stopped at Café Puerto Rico for dinner. Tried the mofongo – I had the steak one and DH had the crab one – very interesting. The best part was the tres leche cake for dessert – so yummy! We took a cab back to the hotel to check in and were assigned a first floor room right off the lobby; I was annoyed since our reservation had stated an upper floor room and I was concerned about noise. It was noisy but calmed down pretty quickly. Room was fine – nothing special, but all we needed was a bed and a shower since we were leaving in the morning.
Saturday
We stored our luggage at the hotel and walked to the Marriott to join a half day tour to El Yunque through Castillo tours. The tour in a van (12 passengers) was just right – our guide did a great job telling us about Puerto Rico and took us to several stops in El Yunque. We took some light snacks with us (almonds, energy bars) and bought drinks at one of the stops so we wouldn’t get cranky from not eating. We got back to our hotel about 2 pm and collected our luggage and a cab was there in 5 minutes to take us to the ship. We got out of the cab, dropped our luggage right where the cab dropped us off, went through ID check and walked right up to the counter to check in. We were on the ship in no time! We headed up to the Windjammer and got a light lunch and went to our cabin.
The room was fine - clean, lots of storage, well laid out. The location was convenient to the elevator, making it easy to get around the ship. The TV was an old tube type and there were no movie channels or anything. I was concerned about noise from the theater, but did not hear any; however,there was a creaking sound that we heard many times (I think it may have been the gate on deck 5 that leads to the helipad; I think there a crew “break area” up there). Anyway, that woke me up a few times; I will avoid that area of the ship for future bookings.