San Juan (Day 4)

Day 4 of our trip in San Juan started at around 9:30. Again we woke up to sunny skies and a little bit of a headache from the drinking we did the night before. I laid in bed for a while and blogged about Day 3 while JC headed down to the beach to get some sun (I figured I would pass up on that opportunity because I’m already tan). After we finished up the morning routine we decided to take a trip to Old San Juan to finish up sight seeing and get some more Spanish food for lunch.

Even though I put a semi disclaimer up in the last blog about using yahoo travel to find restaurants, we cheated and went back on and picked the highest ranked restaurant in town called the Parrot Club. The food there again was great! I got some carne frita with plantains and rice and beans. I was never a fan of plantains before I came to Puerto Rico (and still cannot stand the sweet fried version) but I have to say it eventually grew on me and I was eating Mofongo like the best (hey when in Rome).

After lunch we decided to suck in our bellies and head down to Condado beach. Condado beach is the popular beach in Puerto Rico. The waves there were more intense than the ones in Isla Verde (which is where our hotel was) and that was good to finally be able to catch waves and swim. We stayed on the beach for about two hours and decided to head back over to Old San Juan to do some more sight seeing.

When we were leaving the beach, we noticed that there was a huge cloud and we could tell that is was about to rain. This wasn’t a BIG surprise to us because we were used to it by now. I haven’t mentioned in any of my post about the afternoon rains that we experienced each day. It was very odd because it would be super sunny in the morning and then it would rain for the afternoon for about an hour. Yesterday was the worst of the rains. When we got to the car we decided to make a trip to Coldstone and get some ice cream. When we got there, it started to pour. It poured REALLY bad. From the time we were in Coldstones until the time we were getting back to the car, the roads were flooded. We had to run back to the car in knee-high puddles. I lost both of my sandals (but mangaged to save our ice cream). It was crazy. We sat in the car for about 30min (and after I went back for my shoes) and waited for the rain to go away.

The rain eventually went away, and we headed over to a fort in Old San Juan. The views from the fort were amazing. The sun had come back out and a rainbow formed right around the fort (see picture to the left). We toured the fort for a while and decided to go back to the Hotel and take some showers and change clothes (because we were gross from the rain).

We picked a Spanish/ Cuban restaurant for dinner. The place was pretty good. It wasn’t my favorite restaurant of our trip but still the food was good. Again I ordered the Churrasco (which is by far my favorite dish; someone please let me know where I can get that in NYC). Dinner was followed by another trip to the Intercontinental Casino for some more 5cent slots. JC and I set a 10 dollar spending limit for ourselves. Our luck wasn’t that great last night and I left 15 bucks in the hole.

We were both pretty tired from the day and after the casino we headed back to the room and called it a night.

The Spanish word of the day was: Desayuno!

I will have a recap and final thoughts on Puerto Rico in my next post!