My trip to Puerto Rico
Ok, I know I just gave everyone the big highlight of my trip to Puerto Rico but it’s about time I filled everyone in on the rest of the trip.
As I said before, the trip was mainly for our annual conference from May 1st-4th. But we went a little early to take in the sites of PR. We arrived in PR on Friday the 28th. The first hotel we stayed in was the Coqui/Green Isle Inn in town of Carolina, right off Isla Verde Ave. It was really close to where we stayed last time, which was cool b/c we already knew where most of the stuff in the area was.
Sadly, the weather in PR was kinda crappy for most of the trip. It rained on and off almost everyday (it didn't get fully nice until Thursday). So the first night there, we didn’t get to do much. The highlight of the night was finding this awesome deli/bakery called the Panaderia Espana a few blocks from our hotel. The sandwiches there were amazing and the desserts kicked ass as well.
The place was so good, that we went back there again the next morning for brunch. Getting those sandwiches helped us last through our pretty busy day. First we took a bus over to the port in Old San Juan, where we took the ferry over to the side of the island where they had the Bacardi Factory.
We went on the Bacardi Factory tour, which was cool (as well as free). It’s no longer in the actual distillery b/c they finally realized that allowing potentially already inebriated people into a place where they make alcohol could lead to craziness. But the new site was cool. There was tons of info to be had in there, so we spent a good amount of time looking around. And the best part, once the tour is over, they give everyone two free drink tickets! And we actually each got 3 free drinks b/c at one point the bartenders forgot to take one of our tix. So we each had a nice midday buzz going, heh.
After the Bacardi tour, we headed back to Old San Juan to walk around. They had some free live music in the town square as well as a bunch of people selling items in the streets. So we had a good time listening to the music and just looking around at the stuff.
We then had dinner in Old San Juan at a restaurant called Mojitos. I had been there the very first time I came to PR (I was taken there by my co-workers) and I remembered enjoying it, so I took Ariana there so she could try it herself. The food there was excellent. Me & Ariana enjoyed each of our meals so much that we actually wound up swapping our meals half and half b/c we couldn’t decide which dish we liked more, lol.
Sadly, the day was ALMOST ruined by the Puerto Rican bus system. When we had gotten on the bus earlier in the day, we made sure to ask what time the last bus left Old San Juan back to our area. The driver told us it was at 9pm, so knowing that, we got to the bus station at around 8:25pm (hoping to possibly even catch the bus before the last one).
But no bus came… at least it almost didn’t. There were a ton of people waiting there but the bus didn’t show for the longest. As 9:30 rolled around, people were getting antsy (b/c there were people who had been waiting for the bus before we even got there, meaning they were already waiting for over an hour). Finally one of the people waiting called the bus terminal from her cell phone and asked what the hell was going on.
Turns out, the driver of the bus, stopped at another bus terminal early and figured he didn’t think it was worth making the last route and ENDED HIS SHIFT.
There was of course no warning, and about 30 people waiting at the terminal we were at and we were all furious. I really didn’t wanna take a cab back in the first place b/c it would have cost us $20 (as opposed to just 75 cents for the bus), so we had decided to wait it out. Now if I knew it wasn’t gonna come, I would have bit the bullet and taken the cab, but now that we were already in it for over an hour, I was committed to this by sheer principle (and I don’t wanna seem cheap, but $20 to go to our area was a rip off). Many of the other people were thinking the same way I was, so we demanded that they send a bus over to finish the last shift.
So finally, at 10pm a bus came and thankfully took us all on an express route back. It was a pretty annoying experience, but we had had such a good time the rest of the day, we didn’t let it ruin our moods.
-The next day we woke up early as we had made reservations for a tour of the El Yunque Rainforest. We got picked up at our hotel and we had a really good tour guide and a nice group of people as well. So that all attributed to us having a good time. The trail itself, was beautiful, and quite a work out. At the end of it there was a waterfall you could swim in, so both me and Ariana went into it. I have pics of it, but haven’t taken it off the camera yet, so maybe I’ll post them later on.
And thankfully, the weather was nice for the most part. It did rain a bit towards the end of the tour, but I was actually happy about that, b/c hell it was a rainforest, so you got to expect rain. It worked out b/c it was cool to see the rainforest in both atmospheres.
After we got back from the rainforest it was really pouring, so we just chilled in the hotel awhile. Ariana had a big final the Monday of when we were coming back, so any free opportunity she had, she studied. So I watched TV and read some magazine’s I brought with me.
Later on that night, we wanted to go out for a nice dinner. But when we walked around to the nicer restaurants in the area, we noticed almost all of them were completely deserted (they were open, but NO ONE was in them). We swung by 3 different places and it was the same thing for each one, which we found kind of odd. Granted it was a Sunday night and the weather sucked, but we expected it to be at least a little busy.
We almost packed it in for the night and were gonna order out, but I didn’t wanna be holed up in the room, so we decided to go to the Ponderosa nearby. Now, before you say anything, Ponderosa’s in PR are actually GOOD, unlike how they are in NY (like the cruddy one in Bay Plaza). We were just planning to go later in the week, since it was closer to the other hotel we were going to stay in. So we just had to change plans.
It was while we were at the Ponderosa that we learned a possible reason why the other restaurants in the area were empty. Apparently, the island was in financial turmoil and a strike was expected for the next morning. This was the first we were actually hearing about the PR strike, b/c while we did hear whispers of a worker’s strike, we just assumed it was a sympathy strike to go along with what was happening in the US mainland with the immigrants, not something on it’s own. We had bought the paper that morning, but hadn’t looked through it yet, b/c we were busy. Needless to say, we read through whatever we could once we got back to our hotel, heh.
After that, we hung out back at the hotel for awhile, but then the weather cleared up. We had talked earlier in the day about going for a walk on the beach at night, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do it.
However, Ariana was in study mode, and it seemed like she almost wanted to postpone our plans (which had me freaking out, especially b/c of what I had planned). Thankfully, the cable in the hotel actually went out, and Ariana felt bad that I would be in the room with nothing to watch, so she put down her books and decided we should take that walk on the beach.
So “yay!” for divine intervention! lol
The rest of the story I basically already explained in my previous post. We had a nice romantic walk on the moonlit beach and towards the end, as we were talking, I got on my knee and proposed. Needless to say Ariana was ecstatic (she nearly knocked me over in the sand, lol).
And we basically spent the rest of the night on our phones calling our families to tell them the great news.
-And since this post is getting pretty long and I’m only about 3 days into the trip, I’ll zoom through the rest.
The next day we headed over to the El San Juan Hotel, which was the site of the annual conference (and actually not too far from the hotel we were already staying at). We stayed there until Thursday.
Since most of those days were filled with meetings and stuff from like 8:30am-5pm, those days were fairly laid back and uneventful. Ariana studied as I worked and after I got out of the conference each day we hit the gym and then the pool and hot tubs (which were awesome by the way). We also called a bunch of people throughout the week to tell them about the engagement. And on our last night at that hotel, we hit the casino for a bit. I didn’t win anything, but we had a good time (cuz I actually was doing decent for awhile but wound up only breaking even in the end).
-The third leg of our stay took us our of the Carolina area over to Condado, where we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express. The area was decent, but it was almost entirely under construction. So I’m sure the area will be pretty sweet once all that is finished.
That first day was pretty laid back. We finally got a chance to hit the beach (b/c I wasn’t gonna return to NY as pasty white as I left, lol) and then the hotel’s pool and hot tub (yeah, this smaller place even had a hot tub, how awesome is that)?
-The next day, which was basically our final full day in PR we decided to wander the area a bit in the morning and then in the afternoon we took the bus out to the Plaza las Americas, which is basically the biggest mall in the entire Caribbean. We had some great Japanese food for lunch (b/c we had been having Spanish food all week, which was cool, but we needed a change). Then we went to the movie theater in the mall to go see The Sentinel. The movie was alright, it was sort of like a really long episode of 24, but without all the characterization and build up (which I don’t know is necessarily a good thing, but Keifer Sutherland was his usual bad ass self in the movie, so that made it fun). I also just need to point out, how utterly useless Eva Longoria’s character was. Not because of HER specifically, just b/c the CHARACTER was not necessary, except to give them an excuse to put a pretty face in the movie. Just had to vent on that, but aside from that minor issue, the movie was decent. And considering movies in PR are only $6, I can’t really complain.
We then swung by the Hot Topic in the mall, where I found a bunch of cool WWE t-shirts. They had a pretty cool Eddie Guerrero shirt (and I’ve been wanting one for awhile, but I haven’t been thrilled with the ones on the WWE website, at least not for the price they were selling them for). So it was cool, that I found decent one. They also actually still had Christian- “Captain Charisma’ shirts, so I got one of those as well. And I even had a 15% off ticket for frequent purchases(which must have been in my wallet for AGES), so I got an even better deal on the shirts, which was cool.
And yeah, that was pretty much my trip for the most part. Sure, more stuff happened but I won’t bore you all with the more minute details. I think I’ve rambled on long enough, lol. But yeah I had a real blast on this trip. And unlike most vacations I go on, I wasn’t exhausted by the end of it (cuz we’re usually like “I need a vacation from my vacation”). So that was a nice change of pace. Plus hey, I got engaged! So I really couldn’t have asked for more than that.
Great times…
As I said before, the trip was mainly for our annual conference from May 1st-4th. But we went a little early to take in the sites of PR. We arrived in PR on Friday the 28th. The first hotel we stayed in was the Coqui/Green Isle Inn in town of Carolina, right off Isla Verde Ave. It was really close to where we stayed last time, which was cool b/c we already knew where most of the stuff in the area was.
Sadly, the weather in PR was kinda crappy for most of the trip. It rained on and off almost everyday (it didn't get fully nice until Thursday). So the first night there, we didn’t get to do much. The highlight of the night was finding this awesome deli/bakery called the Panaderia Espana a few blocks from our hotel. The sandwiches there were amazing and the desserts kicked ass as well.
The place was so good, that we went back there again the next morning for brunch. Getting those sandwiches helped us last through our pretty busy day. First we took a bus over to the port in Old San Juan, where we took the ferry over to the side of the island where they had the Bacardi Factory.
We went on the Bacardi Factory tour, which was cool (as well as free). It’s no longer in the actual distillery b/c they finally realized that allowing potentially already inebriated people into a place where they make alcohol could lead to craziness. But the new site was cool. There was tons of info to be had in there, so we spent a good amount of time looking around. And the best part, once the tour is over, they give everyone two free drink tickets! And we actually each got 3 free drinks b/c at one point the bartenders forgot to take one of our tix. So we each had a nice midday buzz going, heh.
After the Bacardi tour, we headed back to Old San Juan to walk around. They had some free live music in the town square as well as a bunch of people selling items in the streets. So we had a good time listening to the music and just looking around at the stuff.
We then had dinner in Old San Juan at a restaurant called Mojitos. I had been there the very first time I came to PR (I was taken there by my co-workers) and I remembered enjoying it, so I took Ariana there so she could try it herself. The food there was excellent. Me & Ariana enjoyed each of our meals so much that we actually wound up swapping our meals half and half b/c we couldn’t decide which dish we liked more, lol.
Sadly, the day was ALMOST ruined by the Puerto Rican bus system. When we had gotten on the bus earlier in the day, we made sure to ask what time the last bus left Old San Juan back to our area. The driver told us it was at 9pm, so knowing that, we got to the bus station at around 8:25pm (hoping to possibly even catch the bus before the last one).
But no bus came… at least it almost didn’t. There were a ton of people waiting there but the bus didn’t show for the longest. As 9:30 rolled around, people were getting antsy (b/c there were people who had been waiting for the bus before we even got there, meaning they were already waiting for over an hour). Finally one of the people waiting called the bus terminal from her cell phone and asked what the hell was going on.
Turns out, the driver of the bus, stopped at another bus terminal early and figured he didn’t think it was worth making the last route and ENDED HIS SHIFT.
There was of course no warning, and about 30 people waiting at the terminal we were at and we were all furious. I really didn’t wanna take a cab back in the first place b/c it would have cost us $20 (as opposed to just 75 cents for the bus), so we had decided to wait it out. Now if I knew it wasn’t gonna come, I would have bit the bullet and taken the cab, but now that we were already in it for over an hour, I was committed to this by sheer principle (and I don’t wanna seem cheap, but $20 to go to our area was a rip off). Many of the other people were thinking the same way I was, so we demanded that they send a bus over to finish the last shift.
So finally, at 10pm a bus came and thankfully took us all on an express route back. It was a pretty annoying experience, but we had had such a good time the rest of the day, we didn’t let it ruin our moods.
-The next day we woke up early as we had made reservations for a tour of the El Yunque Rainforest. We got picked up at our hotel and we had a really good tour guide and a nice group of people as well. So that all attributed to us having a good time. The trail itself, was beautiful, and quite a work out. At the end of it there was a waterfall you could swim in, so both me and Ariana went into it. I have pics of it, but haven’t taken it off the camera yet, so maybe I’ll post them later on.
And thankfully, the weather was nice for the most part. It did rain a bit towards the end of the tour, but I was actually happy about that, b/c hell it was a rainforest, so you got to expect rain. It worked out b/c it was cool to see the rainforest in both atmospheres.
After we got back from the rainforest it was really pouring, so we just chilled in the hotel awhile. Ariana had a big final the Monday of when we were coming back, so any free opportunity she had, she studied. So I watched TV and read some magazine’s I brought with me.
Later on that night, we wanted to go out for a nice dinner. But when we walked around to the nicer restaurants in the area, we noticed almost all of them were completely deserted (they were open, but NO ONE was in them). We swung by 3 different places and it was the same thing for each one, which we found kind of odd. Granted it was a Sunday night and the weather sucked, but we expected it to be at least a little busy.
We almost packed it in for the night and were gonna order out, but I didn’t wanna be holed up in the room, so we decided to go to the Ponderosa nearby. Now, before you say anything, Ponderosa’s in PR are actually GOOD, unlike how they are in NY (like the cruddy one in Bay Plaza). We were just planning to go later in the week, since it was closer to the other hotel we were going to stay in. So we just had to change plans.
It was while we were at the Ponderosa that we learned a possible reason why the other restaurants in the area were empty. Apparently, the island was in financial turmoil and a strike was expected for the next morning. This was the first we were actually hearing about the PR strike, b/c while we did hear whispers of a worker’s strike, we just assumed it was a sympathy strike to go along with what was happening in the US mainland with the immigrants, not something on it’s own. We had bought the paper that morning, but hadn’t looked through it yet, b/c we were busy. Needless to say, we read through whatever we could once we got back to our hotel, heh.
After that, we hung out back at the hotel for awhile, but then the weather cleared up. We had talked earlier in the day about going for a walk on the beach at night, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do it.
However, Ariana was in study mode, and it seemed like she almost wanted to postpone our plans (which had me freaking out, especially b/c of what I had planned). Thankfully, the cable in the hotel actually went out, and Ariana felt bad that I would be in the room with nothing to watch, so she put down her books and decided we should take that walk on the beach.
So “yay!” for divine intervention! lol
The rest of the story I basically already explained in my previous post. We had a nice romantic walk on the moonlit beach and towards the end, as we were talking, I got on my knee and proposed. Needless to say Ariana was ecstatic (she nearly knocked me over in the sand, lol).
And we basically spent the rest of the night on our phones calling our families to tell them the great news.
-And since this post is getting pretty long and I’m only about 3 days into the trip, I’ll zoom through the rest.
The next day we headed over to the El San Juan Hotel, which was the site of the annual conference (and actually not too far from the hotel we were already staying at). We stayed there until Thursday.
Since most of those days were filled with meetings and stuff from like 8:30am-5pm, those days were fairly laid back and uneventful. Ariana studied as I worked and after I got out of the conference each day we hit the gym and then the pool and hot tubs (which were awesome by the way). We also called a bunch of people throughout the week to tell them about the engagement. And on our last night at that hotel, we hit the casino for a bit. I didn’t win anything, but we had a good time (cuz I actually was doing decent for awhile but wound up only breaking even in the end).
-The third leg of our stay took us our of the Carolina area over to Condado, where we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express. The area was decent, but it was almost entirely under construction. So I’m sure the area will be pretty sweet once all that is finished.
That first day was pretty laid back. We finally got a chance to hit the beach (b/c I wasn’t gonna return to NY as pasty white as I left, lol) and then the hotel’s pool and hot tub (yeah, this smaller place even had a hot tub, how awesome is that)?
-The next day, which was basically our final full day in PR we decided to wander the area a bit in the morning and then in the afternoon we took the bus out to the Plaza las Americas, which is basically the biggest mall in the entire Caribbean. We had some great Japanese food for lunch (b/c we had been having Spanish food all week, which was cool, but we needed a change). Then we went to the movie theater in the mall to go see The Sentinel. The movie was alright, it was sort of like a really long episode of 24, but without all the characterization and build up (which I don’t know is necessarily a good thing, but Keifer Sutherland was his usual bad ass self in the movie, so that made it fun). I also just need to point out, how utterly useless Eva Longoria’s character was. Not because of HER specifically, just b/c the CHARACTER was not necessary, except to give them an excuse to put a pretty face in the movie. Just had to vent on that, but aside from that minor issue, the movie was decent. And considering movies in PR are only $6, I can’t really complain.
We then swung by the Hot Topic in the mall, where I found a bunch of cool WWE t-shirts. They had a pretty cool Eddie Guerrero shirt (and I’ve been wanting one for awhile, but I haven’t been thrilled with the ones on the WWE website, at least not for the price they were selling them for). So it was cool, that I found decent one. They also actually still had Christian- “Captain Charisma’ shirts, so I got one of those as well. And I even had a 15% off ticket for frequent purchases(which must have been in my wallet for AGES), so I got an even better deal on the shirts, which was cool.
And yeah, that was pretty much my trip for the most part. Sure, more stuff happened but I won’t bore you all with the more minute details. I think I’ve rambled on long enough, lol. But yeah I had a real blast on this trip. And unlike most vacations I go on, I wasn’t exhausted by the end of it (cuz we’re usually like “I need a vacation from my vacation”). So that was a nice change of pace. Plus hey, I got engaged! So I really couldn’t have asked for more than that.
Great times…
