San Juan, Puerto Rico

As you may have guessed from the title, today was our last day in Puerto Rico. We had hoped to win our fortune on the penny slots in the hotel casino and never have to work again. My mom hit a $70 jackpot on the penny slots, my sister won $40 and I came out a meager $18 ahead. Well at least we can pay for dinner, but we’ve got to go to work tomorrow.

Now, I don’t want you to think we spent our entire Puerto Rican sojourn in the hotel casino. We just made a quick pit stop each night before retiring to our room. We were far too busy to spend time in the casino.

Perhaps I shall just take up where we last left off…. Thanks to Facebook we discovered on the morning of our departure that we were in Puerto Rico at the exact same time as our friend Javier. What a coincidence! It couldn’t have worked out better if we tried. Our own local guide for the evening. Normally I would try to go into detail about what we ate so that my mom will not worry about us not eating enough, but she is here with us so she knows exactly what we ate. Out of habit I will tell you that I ate some delicious Puerto Rican pork chop and I will extol the virtues of the plantain. What a versatile fruit! It can be a side dish or transformed into a main dish. And this relative of the banana is always delicious! One of my favorite ways to partake of this glorious fruit is “amarillos” or sweet plantains. They look like cooked baby bananas, and very similar to the fried bananas I had for breakfast a few mornings in Myanmar. Obviously, dinner was great but the company was even better.

Sunday was our day to walk around the Old Town. And that is pretty much what we did. Walk and walk and walk. We started out at cafe Mallorca where I ate a Mallorca with ham and cheese. Apparently this is a Spanish sweet bread that I should have eaten in Spain. I’ve never heard of it or tasted it before. Anyone?? Anyone?? Anyways it was delicious. Sorry enough about food, my mom is here with us.

There is a free trolley that drives tourists around the old town. There were a lot of locals on the trolley when we got on at stop number 7. After taking the full loop of the trolley to get a lay of the land we decided to get off at stop number 9. And you know what? Those locals were still on the bus. I don’t know if it was because of the A/C, if they like the view or if they just enjoy riding around in circles all day.

I did learn one very important thing about the Internet. While on the trolley ride, I spied a restaurant that I had read about on tripadvisor as one of the top rated and most popular restaurants in San Juan. With such glorious recommendations it seemed like a good dinner plan. The service was fast and courteous, but the food was only so so. As we were sitting there sipping on our watered down piña coladas it dawned on me why it had such high ratings on tripadvisor: it is directly across the street from the Carnival cruise line dock. Millions of tripadvisor reading people come into San Juan and plop down at the first restaurant they see and write a review about it. So what I am trying to say here is don’t base your dinner selection off Internet recommendations if you are in a popular cruise destination. Important life lessons brought to you by thetwinsontour. You are welcome.

Now for the devastingly disappointing part of our story. You might want to get your kleenex ready. We were in Puerto Rico for 5 days and did not bump into Ricky Martin. Not even a glimpse. Truly sad and disappointing. I know he is in NY working on Broadway and we’ve got tickets to see him next month, but it still would have been nice for him to come to Puerto Rico to see us. Javier came all the way to Puerto Rico to have dinner with us. Ricky Martin could have easily done the same. I am sure there are direct flights from NY to Puerto Rico.

See I told you we were too busy doing stuff to spend too much time in the hotel casino. Yesterday was our busy adventure day. A private tour of the rain forest and a trip to the bio-bays with glowing microscopic plankton. Our tour guide however was a good trip advisor find. No one else booked the tour for that day, so it was a private tour for the three of us. After making a few quick photographic stops in the rainforest, we put on our swimsuits, left mom at the top of the hill, and worked our way to the waterfall. Rainforest is an ancient aboriginal word meaning slick paved trails. Our guide warned us that there was a new section that could be quite slick and to walk beside the path in that section. You can probably guess what happened next. I believe we have previously established I am quite graceful and steady on my feet, so of course I landed on my buttocks long before we made it to the aforementioned slick area. Luckily, no injuries just a kind of sore knee. Needless to say, I waddled a lot more slowly to our destination after that. Slick spots aside, the rain forest and waterfall were amazing. We got to go swimming in the pool at the base of the waterfall. Definitely a unique experience (made even better by our new waterproof camera).

Sorry, I’ve got to start bringing this to a close. It is really long and our plane is about to land in Kansas City so I guess that is enough.

Love,
Thetwinsontourwithmom