{"id":482,"date":"2010-06-03T23:01:33","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T06:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/?p=482"},"modified":"2010-06-04T05:53:46","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T12:53:46","slug":"forts-food-and-pigeons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/?p=482","title":{"rendered":"Forts, Food, and Pigeons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We spent May 29 walking around the old part of San Juan, Puerto Rico.  We explored old forts, ate good food, and sweated out all of the water we drank in the heat and humidity.  We started with a hike up the hill to one of the two main forts in the city, Castillo San Crist\u00c3\u00b3bal.  The view of San Juan from the top was amazing, and the fort made all the Patrick O&#8217;Brian stories we&#8217;ve read about early 19th century British navy battles with the French and Spanish come alive.  It was easy to imagine <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aubrey%E2%80%93Maturin_series\" target=\"new\">Ol&#8217; Goldilocks<\/a> leading a secretive marine assault on the fort in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_500\" style=\"width: 430px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/sam_shannon_fort_cristobal-1024x768.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-500\" src=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/sam_shannon_fort_cristobal-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Sam and Shannon at Castillo San Crist\u00c3\u00b3bal\" title=\"sam_shannon_fort_cristobal\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" class=\"size-large wp-image-500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/sam_shannon_fort_cristobal-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/sam_shannon_fort_cristobal-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 420px) 100vw, 420px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-500\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sam and Shannon at Castillo San Crist\u00c3\u00b3bal<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_501\" style=\"width: 430px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/san_juan_from_the_fort-1024x768.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-501\" src=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/san_juan_from_the_fort-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"View of Old San Juan from Castillo San Crist\u00c3\u00b3bal\" title=\"san_juan_from_the_fort\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" class=\"size-large wp-image-501\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/san_juan_from_the_fort-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/san_juan_from_the_fort-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 420px) 100vw, 420px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-501\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">View of Old San Juan from Castillo San Crist\u00c3\u00b3bal<\/p><\/div>\n<p>After the fort, we checked out a couple museums and walked down to have lunch at a great local restaurant.  Deliciously cold local beer was served in enormous frosty tin mugs&#8230;mmmmmm.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_502\" style=\"width: 430px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/tin_mug_beer-1024x768.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-502\" src=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/tin_mug_beer-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"A huge mug of local Puerto Rican beer.  1.5 bottles only filled it halfway.\" title=\"tin_mug_beer\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" class=\"size-large wp-image-502\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/tin_mug_beer-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/tin_mug_beer-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 420px) 100vw, 420px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-502\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A huge mug of local Puerto Rican beer.  1.5 bottles only filled it halfway.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>We closed out the day with a beautiful little coastal park that was chock full of over-exuberant pigeons fighting over food from locals and tourists alike.  It was wild chaos and flapping of wings.  Most of the kids (and many of the adults) in the park were a little freaked out by what felt like a Hitchcock-esque flock of attack pigeons.  The video below gives you a sense of the mania.<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"400\" height=\"300\"><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=12220106&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1\" \/><embed src=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=12220106&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/12220106\">Pigeons<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/user1978497\">Sam and Shannon Bloomquist<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_498\" style=\"width: 430px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/attack_pigeons-1024x768.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-498\" src=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/attack_pigeons-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Puerto Ricans feeding\/being attacked by a mob of pigeons.\" title=\"attack_pigeons\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" class=\"size-large wp-image-498\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/attack_pigeons-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/attack_pigeons-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 420px) 100vw, 420px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-498\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Puerto Ricans feeding\/being attacked by a mob of pigeons.<\/p><\/div>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/sam_birdman-1024x768.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/sam_birdman-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Sam likes animals so much he doesn&#039;t even mind being a perch for &quot;rats with wings.&quot;\" title=\"sam_birdman\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" class=\"size-large wp-image-499\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/sam_birdman-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/sam_birdman-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 420px) 100vw, 420px\" \/><\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We spent May 29 walking around the old part of San Juan, Puerto Rico. We explored old forts, ate good food, and sweated out all of the water we drank in the heat and humidity. We started with a hike up the hill to one of the two main forts in the city, Castillo San [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[91,49,50],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","tag-puerto-rico","tag-sas","tag-semester-at-sea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":566,"href":"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions\/566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blag.samandshannon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}