THE CONDADO PLAZA HILTON
Situated on prime property between La Placita’s nightlife and Old San Juan (and just 7 miles from the international airport), this oceanfront high-rise comes with a casino, 572 guest rooms and enough event space to host the Duggar family reunion.
Hold your rehearsal dinner in the private dining room at award-winning restaurant Pikayo, helmed by Top Chef alumnus Wilo Benet, then say I do on the hotel’s palm-lined lawn.
Move indoors for a reception in the Miami-mod Brisas room. Rooms from $129; weddings from $2,430.
THE CONDADO PLAZA HILTON Photo Gallery
Within hours of that catastrophe, the brig Peggy of Leith was dashed to pieces in the same place and a further 50 passengers and crew perished in the raging waters on the south side of the Little Harcar. The Peggy was a large wooden sailing brig, owned by Charles Spalding of London. On 3 December 1774, she was on passage from London for Leith, under the command of Captain Thomas Boswell, when she encountered the Great Storm. On that fateful day, the Peggy was carrying fifty passengers and crew as well as a valuable cargo which included silver bullion belonging to the vessel’s owner. Mr Spalding decided to salvage his treasures by using three enterprising local men who developed a kind of upturned, open, weighted barrel to use as a diving bell. The air was replenished from small barrels sent down, with the air from these released into the larger diving barrel. They were fairly successful in salvaging much of the silver for a company and became very rich from the proceeds. After their success, the men were in great demand and moved down to the south coast to work on other wrecks, but they were all dead from diving-related problems within a year of salvaging the Peggy. It is not known how much silver was recovered at the time, or even where the wreck of the Peggy actually lies, but the area is not very big and very few divers actually move very far out away from the reef into the relatively deep water. It is more than likely that the ship, which would have been smashed to little pieces in that one storm, just slipped down the slope into the deeper water.
