After Our Cruise - San Juan for About 4 Hours
 

DH and I will be taking a cruise out of San Juan, Puerto Rico in late December 2014. Our cruise docks in San Juan on Jan 3rd. We plan on spending 2 days in San Juan prior to our cruise.

Our flight home departs at 2pm on January 3rd, we'll have a few hours in San Juan with our luggage before heading to the airport.

We have looked into doing a tour through the cruise company, but the shortest tour states that flights need to leave at 2:30 or after. So that's out.

What should DH & I do with ourselves for about 4 hours in San Juan. I've heard that some hotels offer "day passes" to use their facilities. This would be my preference since we will have been sightseeing for over a week and we should just chill before boarding our flights home.

Has anyone gotten a day-pass for a hotel/resort in San Juan? If so, which resort?

All ideas & advice are welcome.

Are you sure you will really have four hours? Sometimes it takes a LOOOOOOONG time to debark. Then you have to get to the airport and go through security, etc. San Juan airport can be crazy.

I'll ask the same question as schmerl - how much time do you actually have?

What time will you actually be disembarking? If at 10AM and your flight is at 2PM you don't have much time for anything but a brief (maybe an hour or so) stop "anywhere.

January 3 is a Saturday and that's a very busy day at the San Juan airport. You have to 1) stop at the Agricultural check point to have them screen your checked luggage, 2) then wait again while you check-in to get your boarding pass and check any luggage you won't be carrying on the aircraft and 3) finally make clearing the TSA checkpoint (lines at SJU move V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y) before you make your way to the departure gate. Figure at least 90 minutes for all of this. Add to that travel time (say about 15 to 30 minutes) to the airport and the fact that your flight will begin boarding about 30 to 40 minutes prior to scheduled departure and you'll see you only have a maximum of about 90 minutes of free time to "do something".

Also, since you'll have already seen most of the San Juan sights during your 2 day pre-cruise visit I'm not sure anyone can make meaningful suggestions for "things to do/see without knowing what your itinerary was for those 2 days.

Other than perhaps walking around the shops in Old San Juan, visiting the Fort or maybe stopping for brunch at one of the hotels on Isla Verde there's really not too much you can do to "waste" 90 minutes.

Thank you for the information & time estimates. I think a late brunch and head to airport would be perfect.

Do you have any brunch recs? I am thinking the Ritz-Carlton because the grounds look lovely. We could brunch, stretch our legs a bit and then head to the airport.

Ritz Carlton is only minutes to airport, so great choice

IF you have time--disembarking a boat can be very drawn out--based on peoples flights. On cruise embarked at 7AM, we couldn't get off until 2PM, so make sure you have more than 2 hours at airport, it's the busiest travel time of the year

(you might even need longer than 2 hours, everybody is flying home from New Years that week