The enchanted isle

Today we had to drop off Cora at the airport, so, in lieu of the usual monkey business, we traipsed around Old San Juan.

Puerto Rico’s tourism industry really plays up the old part of the city, and rightly so – it's like a colonial Spanish village, set off from the concrete and traffic of the city, a promontory looking infinitely into the Atlantic.

The most unique element of Old San Juan is that it’s protected by a 3-mile-long stone wall – one of a kind in the Americas. The sentries are gone, but the Spanish missionary flavor is still there:

Fortresses guard the city at various points along the wall. For a handy five bucks, you can tour San Cristobal and San Felipe del Morro, which comprise a complicated arrangement of roofs, passageways, and courtyards – kind of like Ezra Stiles College at Yale, but I never knew off-white walls and off-90 angles could look so good!

Here’s the main deck of San Cristobal, whose internal walls have been renewed to mirror how they looked 250 years ago:

A view from within:

A chamber to spy for enemy ships:

Across the bay to the mainland (Old San Juan is actually an island):

El Morro is equally dominant:

…assertive:

…capacious:

…and picturesque:

Step aside, Harkness Tower and SSS. Yale University never had to shoot cannons at Dutch galleons.

After surveying the rest of Old San Juan, it becomes pretty understandable why so many people like it.

Besides the blue-stained cobblestone streets:

…there’s a grotto fitted with roosts made just for pigeons:

…of which there are many:

It’s kind of like stepping into the Rotor at Lake Compounce amusement park, a small circular chamber inside which you spin around and then the floor drops out and you keep spinning – you just kind of have to trust that the ride isn’t out to kill you.

There’s a cultural institute and a nice handful of art galleries, including a small one with some aggressive graphic art:

…a tree that was just too cool to leave in the rainforest:

…and the second oldest cathedral in the Western Hemisphere:

I’ve realized that if you really want to get a feel for a place, you have to check out the local church. The Cathedral of San Juan, just like its location, is somewhere in between the awe-inspiring Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter & Paul in Philly and the quaint and friendly St. George of rural Mifflinburg, PA. Unfortunately mass was not in session on Thursday at 4 p.m., but usually you can figure out the local religious psychology by checking out the church bulletin, in this case El Visitante, the Periódico Católico de Puerto Rico. Best 50 cents since yesterday’s GOYA beans!

As far as identities go, Old San Juan is a juggling act. Some parts, like the church, speak autonomously for a historic culture that is, in some ways, visibly safe behind its century-standing walls. Other things unabashedly announce the village’s dignified tourist appeal – classy hotels, restaurants with Spanish names but English subheadings, piña coladas for $7.70 (compare to $2.00 in Punta Santiago), and, in one bookstore, a translated copy of Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought (in Spanish, it’s actually Las Palabras del Mundo) for $45.95!

Still other elements are a mixture of the first two, and I think it’s this third set that best represents Old San Juan – that is, the remastered buildings, the well kept cobblestones, and the castle roofs now covered with sod. Old San Juan has managed to maintain its flavor without becoming a blatant consumerist commodity. Once a sought-after strategic naval outpost, it still can’t help but grab attention – but instead of meddling with or masking its personality, it makes the most of it.

Listen up, Times Square!