Rican Recap

The bulk of this post will consist of pictures from La and I's trip to Puerto Rico that ended yesterday afternoon. If there's anything that comes to mind right now, as I sit at my desk and reflect on our relaxing trip, it's that everyone should take a day or two post-vaca to come back down to earth. Being thrown back into the normalcies of a morning commute, granola bars and the company bathroom are the equivalent of being fun-drunk (not blacked out drunk...fun-drunk) and all of a sudden being thrust into a massive hangover without the lag time in between to either sleep or walk it off. It really blows.

Let's get into the details of the trip now, shall we?

1. The hotel.

We stayed at La's Intercontinental San Juan, right on the beach, huge pool, casino, Japanese restaurant, a Ruth's Chris and some Italian place that we never did find. The service, above all else, was insanely good. Granted, they knew we were coming and they knew my birthday was last Thursday, but they treated us like royalty. Good service is most appreciated when you don't expect it, much less deserve it. I can't afford this kind of hotel, so La being an employee there made it all possible. In order to afford simply the free food they provided us, I would have had to sleep on the beach to save hotel money and catch all of my other meals with a self-crafted spear. My point is, the people from the hotel made the trip better.

2. The other guests.

I don't hate kids. If you read this blog, you know that one of my favorite human beings is my nephew Aaron. However, I walked off the plane yesterday cursing all children and they're unattentive parents. I guess that's the difference though. Aaron has great parents who discipline him and make sure he is accountable for his actions. Every child at our resort (had no idea it was such a family-oriented resort) was the red-headed kid in Problem Child. Unadulterated splashing, yelling, running around the pool and just being an overall annoyance to me and La. I kid you not, there were 600 (give or take 550) children at the pool on any given day, and they were all uncontrolled and taking full advantage.

3. The food

I was hoping to be a bit frugal on this trip, and nothing says thrift like Subway for lunch everyday. A few complaints about the Subway down there: the bread sucked. It looked fine on the outside, but the inside looked as if a mouse lived in the roll and ate the inside prior to it being sliced. Next, the workers there did not like Americans very much. Every time I went in, I had to wait 5 or 10 minutes for them to finish their conversations with each other (the sandwich artists, that is) before I could order. And I was almost always the only one in line. Finally, they ran out of pretty much all the toppings I like by the third day. Spinach, olives, pepperoncini...at least, they said they did. Aside from Subway, we went to three different sushi places that all offered really fresh fish and creative rolls.

And onto the pictures...

La on our balcony, which looked out onto the ocean and produced some really nice sunsets every night.

The aforementioned sunsets...here's one of them, taken from the top of the Water and Beach Club Hotel. It's the only boutique hotel in San Juan on the beach, and they allow pets...FYI.

The pool...there was this outcropping of rocks in the pool that gave way to several waterfalls and smaller pools.

Another view of the beach from the balcony...if you look really closely, you can see the individual grains of sand on the beach. I'm talking really closely.

The above is an assortment of towel creatures created by Hector, our room attendant for the week. The monkey is most impressive...is there any way that these things didn't take him like an hour apiece? I appreciated the effort, though. Really nice work incorporating La's glasses with the rabbit. He was a studious fellow.

And finally, a little sample of our tans...this blog has been brought to you by the InterContinental San Juan, the Isla Verde Subway and the good people at Momoyama restaurant inside the InterCon. (Momoyama's got to be a play on Yo-Yo Ma, right? I thought so)