San Juan, Puerto Rico

These photos come from two long weekends in San Juan, in 2024 and 2025. Puerto Rico is a short flight from Miami, and San Juan is an easy city to walk. Old San Juan sits on a small island of blue cobblestone streets, with pastel colonial buildings and iron balconies hung with the Puerto Rican flag. During the holidays, the streets fill with lights, wreaths, giant ornaments and nutcrackers.

Just below the old city walls, between the fortress of El Morro and the Atlantic, is La Perla. It’s a neighborhood of brightly painted houses stacked down to the ocean, with murals, a pink basketball court, and small bars looking out over the surf. Away from the old city, I walked Santurce, whose walls are covered in some of the island’s best street art, and spent time on the beaches along the Atlantic coast.

What’s in the gallery

Old San Juan at Christmas: a giant ornament archway guarded by nutcrackers, doors decked with wreaths, and a “Felicidades” arch glowing over the street at dusk. Colonial balconies with the Puerto Rican flag, and the bay and mountains framed through a window.

In La Perla, the Comunidad La Perla sign at sunset, the rooftops and murals running down to the sea, the pink basketball court, the Pinchos Bahamas stand, and a Coca-Cola mural painted in the colors of the flag. In Santurce, the jungle-painted Graziani building, the Pa’ Gufiar mural, and a yellow house with a pink pineapple beside a flag-painted gate. And down at the beach, beach umbrellas, walkers along the water, and the Atlantic waves rolling in.

More islands in the Caribbean galleries, and more murals in Street Art.