San Juan (Day 3)

Another day and another late blog. It gets harder to blog when your nights end with alcohol. And though I think its fun to blog while drunk, I dont think I want to do it while i'm in San Juan. I try to remember all that happend yesterday, because right now Im drawing a little blank on how it started.

I'm pretty sure it started out like every other morning. I woke up and looked out the window and noticed how it wasn't raining like the weather forcast said. It is so great to wake up on vacation and see the ocean out your window with a sunny sky (its like how its great when I'm in NYC and I wake up and see Yankee Stadium out my window). After a quick little clean up of last nights mess and posting a new blog, JC and I headed down to the beach to check things out. The temp yesterday was hotter than the previous days and it felt great. The water was a little colder (maybe it was because the weather was warmer so it was easier to notice) but it still was awesome. After laying around the beach for a little bit we decided that we wanted to take a trip out to El Yunque Tropical Rain Forest about 30 minutes from our hotel.

JC and I got changed and called down to have our car brought around front. When we got downstairs we noticed that our car wasn't out front. That was a little weird because everytime we call down they bring our car up fast. We asked the valet where our car was and he got this worried look on his face and informed us that we had a flat tire. JC went back up to the room and called Hertz and they said we had to bring the car back and exchange it out. The valet changed our tire and we were off to pickup some lunch and head over to the forest.

For lunch we went over to Pollo Tropical (Travis and Tasha don't be jealous), which is an amazing spanish fast food restaurant. It is one of my favorites so I was excited when we stumbled across it. We finished up and made our way to Hertz to exchange our rental car. After we got there and waited like 30 min we received some good news. They were all out of compact cars so they had to give us another car. And like Martin (Luther King) did for the people we were upgraded:
Anyways we got in our car and made the drive over to the rain forest. The drive over was cool and I got a chance to put some of my photography skills to work and I took these cool shots with the camera:

We made it to the rain forest around 4:45 which was cool because the forest closed at 6 (well a forest can never close but they lock the gates). The rain forest was AMAZING. The leaves, the greens, the birds (well bird sounds which I think may have been from a CD) and the view were just perfect. We drove up the forest and stopped at a waterfall, an old tower, and Juan Diego creek. And then made our way back down. From the rain forest you can look out over the mountains and see the ocean in the distance. It was almost like a poem. Very peaceful up there. Usually I'm not a big fan of nature but I have to say it was a highlight of our trip.

(beause Im running short on time I have to shorten the last half up)

We decided to have dinner in Old San Juan. We choose another Puerto Rican (ish) place and again I was totally in awe of the food. GREAT FOOD. I have ordered the same type of Churrasco steak every night and it hasn't let me down. It was soooo great. And the plantains were the best I have had in Puerto Rico. Dinner was followed by a trip to the Intercontinental Hotel and Casino to hit up a few slots. JC and I were quickly kings of the 5 cent machines. I went home 10 dollars down and JC went home a winner with 10 dollars in his pocket. We got back to our room and setup our mini bar and drank (danced and spinned) our night away.

My spanish word of the day was: calle