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| The Hotel El Convento is a San Juan gem. |
DATELINE: SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO – I arrived in this U.S. outpost yesterday and prior to boarding my Seadream yacht for a week-long cruise in the Caribbean Sea, I decided to tour the city’s Old Town.
Wow! This is Quebec City on steroids.
Being the second oldest city in the Americas, San Juan has plenty to offer history buffs like myself – lots of old forts and narrow streets crammed with colourful buildings; some dating back to the city’s very beginning in the late 1400s.
One of the most delightful places I discovered on my walking tour was the Hotel El Convento, a Small Luxury Hotels of the World property hidden away on Cristo Street across from the stately San Juan Cathedral. I wish I had known about this property before booking a room at one of the city’s newer, overpriced and undervalued hotels (no names please) near the airport.
The chic hotel started out as a convent back in 1651 and was saved from the wrecker’s ball in the 1960s, when it was turned into the delightful hotel property it is today. Go to www.elconvento.com to learn more about this treasure.
There’s many surprises awaiting you on the old streets of San Juan – San Francisco and Cristo were my favourite streets and very close to the city’s landmark old fort which offers visitors spectacular sea and city views.
San Juan is the Rodney Dangerfield of cities – it gets very little respect – but after spending a morning walking around this delight, I know I want to spend more time here.
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