I have been very fond of visiting new places, since my childhood. My father was in armed forces and that further satisfied my desire to explore new places and different culture and traditions. After getting married, my first journey was very long, as I travelled all the way from Asia to America. Fortunately my husband is very fond of traveling too. We took literally months to decide where to go for honeymoon. And then we thought no place can be better than San Juan, Puerto Rico. I am very fond of historical places and I always wonder how many generations and hard times this place has survived.
We left in summers, ideal time to go to any island. I was very fascinated by the history of Puerto Rico and so was very excited. Our flight took us 5 hours to reach there, and we stayed at Sheraton Hotel, Old San Juan. The wonderful thing was the locality of hotel. It was in the heart of Old San Juan, which basically is the main place we wanted to visit. The entire historical heritage, which is well – preserved, most of the forts, parks are in Old San Juan. The part, I loved most about our residence was the docking yard, right in front of the hotel and when we sit by the glass wall of hotel dining hall for breakfast and lunch ins, the view fascinates me a lot. It was our honeymoon of course and undoubtedly it was very romantic.
The very first day of our trip, we visited Castillo de San Cristobal, which was built by Spain to protect the city, from external invasion. Cristobal is a part of San Juan National Historic Site, and World Heritage site, declared by United Nation in 1983. The construction was started in 1539 and finished in 1783 to cover an area of almost 27 acres of land, wrapping the city from all sides. The construction was well preserved and most of the walls were in excellent condition. From the top of the fort, the city view was literally breath taking, and it is the best place indeed to see the entire fort also. Inside the fort, there we see military quarters, military uniform displays, dorm arrangements and artillery observation posts that were built by American army during World War II. The tunnel system inside the fort connects different parts of the fort. Under the main plaza, we saw five cisterns that can store 716,000 gallons of rainwater which can support the garrison for a year.
Over the fort, Castillo San Cristóbal; the United States flag, the Puerto Rican flag and the old Spanish Military flag were hoisted, known as the Cross of Burgundy. To our surprise, there were a few ghost stories too, which is a common feature of all old constructions. We were told that many soldiers were disappeared from the fort and many parts of fort are believed to be haunted. Thank God, I was wearing really comfortable shoes and even after walking for 4-5 hours, I did just fine.