We're putting the miles on in old San Juan. Which isn't hard to do let me tell you. The weather has been fabulous even with the tropical shower early in the morning.
Today's venture took us across the water to the Bicardi Rum factory. Interesting to note, this is the same tour offered up in some of the tourism guides, but here's the difference. You save big $$$ by doing it yourself. The tour itself is free once you get to the Bicardi compound. 50 cents to take the ferry across from old town, and a $3.00 per head taxi rate to Bicardi. It's about a 10 minute ride. When you're there, a look into the history of the company, the process of making rum, how to make a perfect Cuba Libra and Mojito and of course a chance to buy some goodies. Oh, did I mention the free drinks as well? You pick the flavor of rum.
This was amazing, for a one litre bottle of rum (some flavors we've never seen in Canada) came to about $13.00 US. Come on! That same bottle in Canada runs $40-$50. We thought that was a pretty good deal.
Today, we also made a second trip to the Old Harbor Brew Pub for dinner. This is the same place we went yesterday to sample some of the hand crafted beers. Again, great service and food.
We rounded out the day, sitting in the town square, close to the water, where the locals gather to share song, dance, home baking and traditional island folk standards. I didn't recognize anything, but you could tell they were well loved songs of Puerto Rico. A very intersting culture unlike from our neighborhood where we just don't see this type of impromtu get together. That was actually quite inspirational.
Tomorrow, it's off to the cruise ship, as we'll be leaving our new friends and neighborhood for a week to explore the Caribbean Islands. More fun to come.
San Juan is a beautiful city, and I think I am really starting to like it here. Oh, some quick interesting facts we picked up from the locals.
(Currency in US dollars)
Price of gas: 70cents per litre (premium) Regular gas is 50cents per litre. Yes, they calculate volume by the litre here.
Minimum wage: $7.00 per hour
Police Officers make about $22.00 (Don't ask how we found that out)
Cheers from Old San Juan.
WSG (Fototrips) Reporting and posting news of interest from around the world relating to travel and photography.
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