Puerto Plata - The First Shore Stop on Our 5 Day Virgin Caribbean Cruise

Day 3 We slept really well last night and were up feeling great!. The Virgin cruise ship arrived at Puerto Plata a little after 9a.m. We were able to enjoy a full breakfast on Deck 15 before debarking the ship. Orginally, we would like to do some snorkling in Puerto Plata but it was all booked up therefore we decided to do a self guided walking tour of the historical part of the city.

The cruise terminal in Puerto Plata looked mondern, clean and neat with numerous shops and restaurants. It looked like the terminal was built specifically for cruise passengers. It was funny that as soon as we walked off the prank of the cruise ship, we were recognized as being from Toronto, Canada, and greeted by a few local men warmly. We scratched our heads asking ourselves how did they know that. Then we figured out the reason. Being an avid baseball fan of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, our son was wearing the Blue Jays baseball hat today while walking around Puerto Plata which is a baseball city which loves their baseball players.

They know all the baseball teams well and their famous players playing on the Jays Team. Therefore, they know a lot about our Toronto baseball team as the citizens of Puerto Plata follow their famous players playing for the TORONTO team! We even had a gentleman coming up to us offering to buy the Blue Jays hat from our son who had quite a few good conversations with the locals. Puerto Plata has a population of around 350,000 people but the business area and downtown streets were not too busy at all except for the cruise passengers running around during the day. The police was doing a great job trying to keep the tourists safe. They stopped the traffic and waved us to cross the street safely and quickly. Whenever we stopped and hesitated about where we were going, there was always an officer or someone friendly coming up and offering to help us. We saw uniformed police officers with guns strapped around their waists. There were a few roadside stalls but the vendors did not harass us to buy any of their items. We liked that the merchants left us in peace, browsing on our own leisurely.

We visited a few places as they were all within walking distance from each other. We first arrived at the church located near the main square but just missed the 11 a.m. mass. we strolled around the square with some nice Christmas displays. Not far from the square were two interesting streets:

Pink Street - the entire street painted in pink, including windows, shutters and so on. The another street was the Umbrella Street where numerous umbrellas of different colours were hanging upside down. One place which we enjoyed visiting was the Amber Museum. We learned:

1. How amber was formed deep down in the ground 2. When there are fossils such as little bugs, insects embedded in the amber stones, they are worth much more 3. The Amber Museum's logo has a lizard embedded in a round amber stone. The movie Jurassic Park asked for permission to use their logo and replaced the lizard with a dinosaure! How about that! There was also a small cigar museum with a few displays explaining the growth and process of cigar making. We leanrt a lot about cigar planting and the making of them. The last place we visited was the amphitheatre and the fortress ruin fronting the ocean. As we walked toward the fortress, we saw a few strayed skinny dogs wandering around. One was so weak that it was lying in front of the church totally motionless. A kind hearted wheelchaired person kept pouring water on his head and body. After a few minutes, it started to move a little. Thank goodness, it was not dead!

After about 20 minutes of walking, we reached the fortress. From the outside, it looked quite nice and I knew that it has much history. But the only regret was that no admission was allowed and we couldn't get any infomration about this fortress ruin. Not sure if it would open another time or just closed on the day we visited. We walked back to the terminal and I was able to buy a nice white shirt for E. as a Christmas present. Very happy about that! It was a day filled with many new things to see and new experiences. We thank God for a super fun day! RT, On board the Vurgin Cruise 24122023