The Puerto Rico Detour

How behind am I on this stuff??? I'm a little annoyed at myself, but I'll try to play catch up. I hope you don't mind being a little behind, but I'd rather tell you about my trip late than not at all. We cool? Cool :-)

A few weeks (now months *ahem*) ago, Nathan and I finally got to go on a nice welcome home vacation. I'll skip the annoying details, but thanks to the Atlanta airport's poor planning, they made us miss our connection from Syracuse to St. Lucia. Delta re-booked us to St. Lucia by way of Puerto Rico. The only thing was instead of getting to St. Lucia at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, we'd have a six hour layover in San Juan. Nathan and I decided that since we had such a long wait and it should be relatively simple to leave the airport and come back in time for our flight, we should go try to see SOMETHING in Puerto Rico. I mean, since we were there already, why not? So with a little advice from some in-airport ticket agents, off we trudged with our carry on bags (Nathan was sweet enough to deal with the one rolling one). We didn't really have time to do more than eat and go stand on the beach if we wanted to get back to the airport with a big time buffer (we REALLY didn't want to have to miss another flight)... so we took a cab to a highly recommended restaurant that just so happened to be a couple of blocks from the beach. Kill two birds with one cab fare.

We went to a restaurant called Metropol. From what we heard, it is THE place in San Juan to go for authentic Puerto Rican food. Our server was very nice. He gave us directions on the easiest way to get to the beach from where we were, told us about moving back to Puerto Rico from Brooklyn when he was a teenager, and about all the famous people that come to the restaurant when they're in town. We tried the flan...

And the tres leches cake...

I actually like my own tres leches cake recipe better. Okay okay, to be fair, it's P-Dub's recipe. But I still like it better.

I couldn't help but notice this place right next door...

I forget that cockfighting is legal anywhere in the U.S., but Puerto Rico gets to play both sides. They're American, but pay no federal taxes and they get to do pretty much whatever they want.

And again, for a place with such rich culture, this street is a little disappointing. Can you count the fast food restaurants in this one picture?

The beach was beautiful...

And we were being very touristy :-) Standing on the beach with suitcases, taking pictures - I'm sure we looked pretty ridiculous.

After the beach, we headed back to the airport. The Caribbean being a tropical place like it is, it started raining just before we boarded the plane. Now, I've done a good bit of flying. I've even been on quite a few regional "puddle jumper" jets. I have never before this trip, however, been on such a rickety PROP plane. A.k.a. death trap. A.k.a. vomit comet. It was so small, it never even made it above the clouds (and therefore, the storm). We had to fill out our customs form during the flight, too, so imagine trying to fill out a legal document while your hands are bouncing all over the place. It was MISERABLE. Pray you never have to fly on one of these guys...

Coming soon - St. Lucia!