Five days in Puerto Rico

The flight to Puerto Rico was roughly three and a half hours. We grabbed a cab to our hotel, which was literally about five minutes away. Most of the major beach resorts are all bunched up together along Avenida de Isla Verde, and while the proximity to the airport is nice, it also kinda sucks, as you can hear every take-off and landing that occurs throughout the entire day. They say you get used to it, but I don't think I could ever deal with listening to that shit all day.















Upon arriving at the Courtyard Marriot, we immediately decamped to the beach while waiting for our room. Now any regular reader of this blog knows nothing gets me off quite like the beach, so you can only imagine how fucking excited I was upon calling this my backyard for five days:


















After enjoying a Corona on the beach, we grabbed some mediocre food at the poolside restaurant and somee drinks at the swim-up bar (possibly the greatest invention of all time), before finally checking in and planning the rest of our evening. My lovely traveling companion astutely printed out a variety of articles (mostly from the New York Times) detailing the various things we could do during the day and places we could eat at night. Being the beach bum that I am, had I been left to my own devices on a trip like this I almost surely would've spent all five days lying on the beach, so it was spectacular that we had a variety of activities to fill our days with.

The first night we decided to venture over to Boceto, which one of the Times articles claimed was San Juan's latest restaurant hotspot. We ate outside, which was lovely considering the weather in New York has been putrid during the last month or so. The walls were painted as though they were housefronts, which fooled us as we thought perhaps the restaurant was actually an extension of someone's residence.

While not terrible, we both felt the meal was a bit pricey for the quality of food. I had the surf and turf, while my girlfriend had the duck. We also tried Medalla, the local Puerto Rican beer, which tasted exactly like Bud Light. When it came time to depart, the restaurant called us a cab - apparently it's a bit difficult to flag them down.

One important thing that none of the guides we read pointed out was that traveling anywhere via public transportation can be tricky. A cab ride to just about anywhere within San Juan was at least $10, so for our second day we decided to rent a car. This turned out to be a spectacular move, enabling us to do whatever the fuck we wanted without having to follow a tour group around. We embarked down 187 Este, which took us along the northern coast, through several smaller villages (including Pinones) and eventually to route 3. We then took 3 down to 191, although the exit off route 3 marking 191 was practially nonexisitent, so we drove past it the first time. However, this enabled us to get a look at Luquillo, which was awesome as it was decidely non-touristy.

We finally found our way to 191 and began the drive up the mountain to El Yunque, Puerto Rico's beautiful rainforest. After an informational video narrated by Jimmy Smits, we took a 35-minute hike through the rainforest, culminating in a gorgeous waterfall where scads of people were just relaxing about on the rocks. You could even go in the water, but we didn't have our bathing suits with us.
































After walking back up the path, we decided to venture into Luquillo to get a tase of real Puerto Rican food. There was a row of food kiosks nearly a mile long near the beach, and we ended up grabbing fried chicken and cheese sticks, crab rice and a plantain stuffed with meat and cheese. The chicken sticks were great, the crab rice was fun and the meat inside the plantain was great, but I discovered I'm not particularly fond of plantains themselves.

Afterwards we popped right over to the beach, which was absolutely fucking gorgeous. We contemplated staying, but we had already had a long day at that point and decided it'd be more comfortable to drive back (the ride from San Juan was a little over an hour) and then get comfortable on our hotel beach. However, we grabbed a little Parcha (passion fruit) shaved ice on our way out.

We also stopped by a beer store on the side of the 187 Oeste on the way back. Despite offering literally nothing aside from Coors Light and Heinken, the cashier was behind a huge set of metal bars, as if he's constantly under threat of being robbed. For all I know he very well could be, although there really wasn't much to steal.









Sunday night we drove over to Old San Juan, which, without traffic, is only 15 minutes away from regular San Juan. Old San Juan was also my favorite part of Puerto Rico by far - the streets were very narrow and the architecture reminded me a lot of a quaint European city (at least, the Europe that I've seen in movies and such, as I still have yet to actually make it overseas). It's also extremely easy to navigate, which was helpful as I was a little nervous driving around a completely foreign country.










One shitty thing about the narrow streets, though - it's a bitch to park. Fortunately, years of parallel parking in Stuy Town's service roads more than prepared me for the tight squeeze. We ate at La Fonda del Jibarito on Calle Sol, which was fantastic. Though we entered a few minutes before closing, they were gracious enough to still serve us. I once again elected to go with beef, while my girlfriend had chicken. El Jibarito ended up being her favorite place of the four restaurants we ate dinner at. Strangely enough, its walls were also painted to look like housefronts, which must hold some sort of symbolism.



On Monday morning, we took a drive back to Old San Juan to grab breakfast at the renowned La Bombonera on Calle San Francisco. La Bombonera is an awesome Puerto Rican diner, which serves even awesomer Mallorcas - ham, cheese and egg served in a bun coated in powdered sugar.









Observe:














Good Christ, that's delicious.

Afterwards we decided to take it easy given our long day of traveling, and lounged by the beach and pool.














Heaven.

Monday night, after drinks on the terrace, we decided to check out La Casa Bonita in Santurce, only to find that it was closed, at which point our cab driver recommended we go to a place called Metropol. As neither of us had anything better to suggest, we eagerly nodded and told him that sounded fine. As it turned out, Metropol was all of two feet away from our hotel, so we ended up paying $26 to go nowhere. To add insult to injury, Metropol was fucking AWFUL. Clearly a tourist trap designed to trick folks into thinking they're having authentic Puerto Rican cuisine, our dinner at Metropol was probably one of the worst I've had in my entire life. Not even the fact that my steak came with a fried egg on it could save things, and there's not much in this world I love more than eggs and red meat, especially when combined.

After our absymal dinner we took a walk over to the El San Juan, which I had heard a fair amount about - the lobby was very fancy, but the casino was rather underwhelming. The casino in our hotel was pretty lame as well, containing nothing but slots, roulette and a couple of blackjack tables. What's the point of gambling if you can't play Texas Hold 'Em? Despite swearing off blackjack for the rest of my life, I ended up plunking down $60 on a table as there was nothing else to play, and I wanted to at least gamble something. I ended winning a fair amount but quickly whittled it away, so I decided to call it quits having made $10.

Tuesday found us wisely renting a car again, as we ate ham and cheese for breakfast at deli/bakery Panaderia Espania Reposteria and picked up some pastries. Afterwards, we drove back to Old San Juan to check out El Morro, the Puerto Rican fort.








It was a nice little slice of history, and also provided some great aerial views of Old San Juan.

Upon leaving El Morro we decided to enjoy Old San Juan in the daylight. After searching for parking for what felt like forever, we finally sucked it up and tossed the car in a garage. We then walked over to Calle Fortaleza, which is the primary shopping district, and also home to approximately 8 million jewelry shops.

Finally we retired back to the hotel for our last afternoon of fun in the sun and drinks in the pool. For dinner, we once again drove back to Old San Juan, this time to enjoy Panorama restaurant at the top of Hotel Milano, the only rooftop restaurant in all of Old San Juan. I figured it would've been packed, but it was actually fairly empty. Despite having been hyped up in one of the Times articles, the view was actually nothing to write home about - aside from eating on a roof, which is inherently fun because you don't do it all the time, it simply wasn't as exciting as we'd hoped. Still, I thought the filet and shrimp were excellent, and Panorama ended up being my favorite meal of our entire trip.














Wednesday morning we were able to enjoy some last minute beach and pool time before having to depart. At noon, we checked out and said goodbye to Puerto Rico. However, before boarding our plane, we were treated to one last amazing site:














That's right, a BACON TRIPLE CHEESEBURGER.










DROOL.

I cannot even tell you the last time McDonald's offered the triple cheeseburger in the states, let alone a fucking BACON triple cheeseburger. Despite having pretty much eaten nothing but beef for the last five straight days (I even had beef with broccoli for dinner the night before we left), I managed to find room for this one last heavenly burger. It was everything I hoped it would be, and makes me seethe in anger that I am unable to obtain this amazing burger at home.

Overall (not like any of you could possibly still be reading this impossibly long recap, but I'll summarize this post anyway) it was an amazing trip, and one that I certainly won't forget for a very long time.