Two slugs walk in to a castillo...

We were complete slugs today.  Complete. Slugs.  We slept in, had coffee and breakfast at home and then spent the morning like slugs are apt to do - reading and laying about.  After such strenuous activity, Andrew headed off for a nap about noon.  About 2:30 we decided we should accomplish something so we walked to the other side of OSJ to visit El Morro.  

El Morro is the other Spanish castillo (fort) in San Juan and was designed to protect the island from sea attacks.  Construction began in the 1600's.  It's incredible to think about the amount of effort that would have been involved in building something like this in an era devoid of motorized equipment and power tools.  The architecture is beautiful, but I don't think living there would have been very fun.  Aside from the whole war thing, the living quarters were dark and hot, and there are altogether too many stairs to make moving from one part to the other easy.  Also, the risk of the powder for the cannons and muskets exploding at any time would have caused me ulcers. On a positive note, it is much smaller than the San Cristobal Castillo we visited on Monday, so took us much less time to explore.  As an added bonus, the tickets we bought at San Cristobal ($5/adult) were good for 7 days and included entrance to El Morro during that time.

Entrance - only one way in.   Good strategy!

The lighthouse.  Actually, the fourth lighthouse.  This version was built in 1908.

The road in to the fort.  They built the only entrance strategically at the end of a narrow, open expanse of lawn.  If you made it across the football field of open grass with cannonballs and muskets firing at you, they killed you at the gate. 

The view out to sea.  This was the direction ships from Europe would approach from.

Another ig sunning on a wall. 

The main part of the building

The "triangle staircase" which allowed soldiers to move from one artillery level to another.

After our big excursion, we made our way back to the apartment.  We came home and worked on leftover pizza for dinner (with a side order of mojitos).  Then we worked on gathering up our stuff and getting it back in to the suitcases in preparation for boarding the ship tomorrow. As a side note, how is it possible that most everything out of all four suitcases has needed to come out in just three days?   Stay tuned for Act II of the trip tomorrow - the Carnival Dream.