Semilla Kitchen & Bar
57 Cll DelcasseOne more full day in San Juan. We still had a lot we wanted to do on this vacation but we also wanted to start with brunch
Our hotel had a weekend in brunch with Bottomless Mimosas but it was $50/person. I’m sure it would have been worth it but that really felt like a lot. J wanted Mimosas though so I started looking around the area to see who did the Sunday Brunch thing.
I found a couple of restaurants nearby so that wasn’t going to be an issue. The issue was actually picking which one.
I ended up picking Semilla Kitchen & Bar. It was a couple block walk from the San Juan Marriot Resort & Stellaris Casino where we were staying but it was an easy walk.
The restaurant is really kind of hidden on Cll Delcasse about a block off Ashford Avenue in Condado. The restaurant is around several buildings that are still under construction or being rebuilt from the Hurricane a couple of years ago. Semilla was already under construction when the Hurricane hit so they were in a pretty good place to get back to work and ended up becoming one of the first restaurants to open in the area once the rebuilding got underway. A hip restaurant almost looks out of place on this street but the outdoor patio and accents around the door make it stand out
Ocean Lab Brewing Company
7000 Carr. 187 RR2J nailed it. Leave it to me to find the brewery whenever we travel.
It wasn’t actually me though. J noticed a sign for Ocean Lab Brewing Company when we were walking back from lunch at Punk Burger Bistro Bar on Ashford Avenue in Condado. She thought at first that sign she saw was the actually brewing but it was just a sushi place that served the beer….but that did set me on the path to figure out where Ocean Lab is.
The brewery is actually just outside on San Juan on the outskirts of Carolina. Ocean Lab Brewing Company is part of Vivo Beach Club on PR 187 in the Isla Verde area of Carolina near the airport. We grabbed an Uber from our hotel. It took about 15 minutes to get out to the club. The parking lot is gated and there is a charge to park there. Our driver told them he was an Uber driver and they let him pass so he could take us right up the entrance to the club.
LaVerguenza Puertorrican Chinchorro
280 Bulevar del ValleWe didn’t rent a car in San Juan because we figured it’d be cheaper not to. We were pretty right on that. Uber’s were cheap. I don’t think we ever paid over $10 before tip anywhere we went in the city.
Most of our drivers were quiet, which is fine with me. I don’t always like small talk. On Saturday morning, we got a pretty chatty and knowledgeable driver who gave us a quick history lesson and pointed out some places to visit along our route.
We were driving up Calle Norzagaray on our way to the Farmer’s Market. He pointed out the La Perla barrio where the music video for Despacito was filmed then across the street, a bar he liked that had great ocean views.
La Verguenza Puertorrican Chinchorro is a multi-level bar on the corner of Calle Norzagaray and Calle Tanca in Old San Juan. The address for the bar is Bulevar del Valle and I don’t know if that’s just another name for one of the streets or what but that name doesn’t show up on maps….but if you put the address in Google, it gets you to the right place. Read more…
Chocobar Cortes
210 Calle San FranciscoSaturday in San Juan was another pretty lazy day. Our plan was to get up, go to the Farmer’s Market and walk around Old San Juan again.
The Farmer’s Market was pretty disappointing. We spent about five minutes there and moved on. There really weren’t many vendors and we didn’t find the street food we were looking for. Turns out, we should have went to the piers. There were several food trucks lined up there but we had no idea.
We started walking Old San Juan again just appreciating the old buildings and brick roads. It was about brunch time and I had accidentally found a place that looked delicious just a few blocks from where we were at.
Chocobar Cortes is a 4th Generation farm-to-bar chocolate manufacturer in Old San Juan. Their shop is Calle San Francisco and the corner with Calle San Justo. The building is a couple of different store fronts with a bar and cafe along street level and an art gallery up a flight of stairs. Read more…
Gelato & Co (San Juan)
1309 Ashford AvenueOur lazy day in San Juan didn’t take us too far from the hotel. We went to the beach in the morning. I walked down the street for lunch. Swam in the pool in the afternoon Went to the hotel restaurant for dinner. This vacation was about relaxing and we tried to strike a good balance between exploration and being lazy.
We skipped dessert at the restaurant because we had coupons for gelato. The hotel gave us a coupon book to enjoy some of the hotels features. Drinks, gambling, and gelato all on the house.
Gelato & Co is a chain of gelato store mostly in the Caribbean. They do have two stores in the mainland US in Houston and Naples.
The San Juan location of Gelato & Co is on Ashford Avenue in a retail space attached to one of the towers of the San Juan Marriott Resort and Stellaris Casino. It’s only accessible from a street level entrance through the parking circle to the hotel. There’s no connection to inside the hotel because the Gelato shop sits right next to the entrance of the parking garage.
Gingambo – Aromas Del Caribe
1309 Ashford AvenueDay three of our 10th Anniversary trip was really lazy. We spent time at the beach, walked the neighborhood for lunch, then spent even more time at the pool before almost falling asleep at 4:00 in the air conditioned hotel room on the 7th floor of the Marriott Resort overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
We didn’t fall asleep though….and when it came time for dinner, we decided that night was going to be our lazy night and we’d just eat at the hotel restaurant.
Gingambo is the main sit down restaurant inside the San Juan Marriott Resort and Stellaris Casino on Ashford Avenue in the San Juan’s Condado sub-barrio. The restaurant’s presence is felt all throughout the outdoor activity areas of the resort at the beach level entrance. If you come in from the street, you will have to take the elevator down to get to the entrance.
Punk Burger Bistro Bar
1129 Ashford AvenueDay three of our Puerto Rican vacation was beach day. Our hotel was right on Condado Beach. The beach itself is public but the hotel had drink service, beach chairs and umbrellas near the water.
I had never been in an Ocean before so I was really looking forward to having a hotel on the beach. J was just really looking forward to kicking back with her toes in the sand and a cocktail in her hand.
We split our morning between the beach and the pool before getting out and venturing out of the hotel for lunch. We had picked up a couple of menus the previous night when we were walking down Ashford Avenue and really wanted to try something a little more authentic Puerto Rican. We headed towards a restaurant a couple of blocks down and found they had already switched to off season hours so they were no longer open for lunch.
We decided to just keep walking. J spotted a sign across the street from where we were that had the word “burger” on it. She asked if I wanted to check out their menu. I’ll never pass up a burger.
Punk Burger Bistro Bar is right on the corner of Ashford Avenue and CII Vendig. The restaurant is part of a mixed use development with several businesses on the street level and condos above it. There’s a short flight of stairs you have to go up to get to the split level restaurant.
Tavola Trattoria Local
1131 Ashford Avenue, Cond Davinci Suite 3The purpose of this trip was the celebrate our 10th Wedding Anniversary. That date was our first full day in town on Thursday.
We spent the day at Castillo San Felipe del Morro and Castillo San Cristobal so when we got in the Uber to head back to the hotel, we were ready to relax.
Dinner that night needed to be something a little special. We got ourselves up and moving a little after 6:00. We decided just to walk down Ashford Avenue to see what we could find.
I thought about maybe doing actual Puerto Rican food but that place seemed more laid back than we were looking for. J spotted an Italian restaurant across the street. I had written off Italian because we had pizza for lunch but she looked at the menu hanging outside and thought it looked good so we headed.
Tavola Trattoria Local is a fairly small but cute Italian restaurant on a very busy stretch of Ashford Avenue near CII Vendig. It shares a building with a couple of other restaurants. They are in the east end of the space right next to the public parking lot.
Castillo San Cristobal
501 Calle Norzagary- San Juan, PR 00901
- (787) 449-4049
- Website
This post might look similar but it really is different than post about Castillo San Felipe del Morro.
Castillo San Cristobal is part of the San Juan National Historic Site along with El Morrow and the wall that surrounds the city. If you pay to get in to one of the forts, you get in to the other as well. We paid at El Morro then walked over to San Cristobal after lunch.
Castillo San Cristobal is about 200 years newer than El Morro. The fort as we see it today started construction in 1766. When it was finished not quite 20 years later, San Juan had a second fortification and the city was walled off. You couldn’t get in to the city from land or by sea.
San Cristobal sits on the east side of the city on PR-25 at the intersection with Calle Norzagary. The entrance to this fort is a little bit more modern with a parking lot for staff vehicles in front of a farily modern visitors center. The visitors center is air conditioned and we really needed that. They show a short movie on the history of the fortifications in San Juan alternating between Spanish and English every fifteen minutes.
Pirilo (Old San Juan)
201 Calle TancaI didn’t do a ton of research when I started looking at restaurants in San Juan because I was hoping we’d just stumble on somethings. We didn’t have a car so I wasn’t going to plot out our meals knowing we’d have to take Ubers everywhere.
J and I spent our first full day in Puerto Rico exploring the forts of Old San Juan. We spent a couple of hours at Castillo San Felipe del Morrow then made our way down the hill looking for someplace to eat.
One of the few restaurants I kept seeing over and over again as a place we needed to eat at was just a few blocks away so I put it in my GPS and we headed that direction.
Pirilo in Old San Juan is on Calle Tanca in the heart of Old San Juan. I was super confused by that address because the entrance to the restaurant is actually on C. Fortaleza right around the corner. The building is shared with Douglas Pub so I assume that’s where the Calle Tanca address comes from. You can find the entrance to the pizza place by looking for the awning on the front door. Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 