Puerto Rico 2010

February 15, 2010 - February 21, 2010

Monday, February 15, 2010

http://picasaweb.google.com/winosue/PuertoRico2010# - click here for a link to the photos.

Travel day! As usual Sue was a little stressed about the whole situation. No matter how many times she travels she still gets stressed, and we still managed to get off without a hitch. We left around 6:40am for the airport. Even though it was a Monday, it was President's Day, so the traffic was nice and light. We were through security in an hour from when we left the house.

Since we flew first class, we didn't want to buy anything to eat, so we just walked around the airport until it was time to board. The flight itself was pretty uneventful. They served a spinach and cheese frittata, which once you added salt and pepper was actually pretty good.

Once we landed, we found the baggage claim and when our luggage came out went to the taxi stand. One nice thing is that everything is set up by zones. $19 plus $1 for each piece of luggage – no haggling, no worries about being taken advantage of by the driver taken an extra long route. The cab ride from the airport to the hotel is about 15 minutes.

When we arrived, the room wasn't ready yet, so we made our way to the bar for some beverages and snacks. We first tried a Puerto Rican lite beer on tap. It wasn't bad, but it cost $7.50, so we switched to rum based drinks – which are only $10. Mark had a Pina Colada, since it was invented here, I had some concoction the bartender Manuel whipped up. It had a couple of different rums and some fruit drinks. It was smooth and pretty tasty. Then we had 2 more run drinks, before the room was ready. Well, sort of. Around 5pm, Mark went to check on the status of our room and it still wasn't ready yet, so the guy “upgraded” us to a villa. It's a nice room, but still basically a hotel room. We do have a view of the Condado Lagoon.

For dinner we went to one of the hotel restaurants, called Pina Colada. Mark had the fish tacos, I had the Cubano wrap. Both we're pretty good. Even though it was still early after dinner, we were beat, so we went back to the room and watched some “tv” on our computer.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Woke up and went for our free continental breakfast. Good thing Mark is a diamond member with Hilton, free breakfast for us everyday. Nothing special, but pastries, toast, fruit and juice/coffee. Enough for us and it saves us money (more rum drinks!)

After breakfast we went for a walk around the Hilton then into Condado to see if we could find Budatai. We did, as well as a few other restaurants. As long as we don't have to wear long pants, it's definitely an easy walk – maybe a mile each way.

By the time we got back to the room and showered it was time to eat some lunch. We just went back to Pina Colada's, wanting something quick and filling. We both had burgers and a bottle of Alamos Malbec. The Malbec was a little too acidic on its own, but paired well with the burgers.

Afterwards we went to the pool, starting out at the swim up bar. We discovered that they actually sell pitchers of either mojitos, margaritas or sangria. So we had a pitcher of sangria before we got out and went to our lounge chairs, where we dozed on and off in the partly cloudiness. There was a lovely breeze, it was very relaxing.

After a while, when we were no longer getting any sun, which was being blocked by a palm tree, we headed back upstairs. We made reservations at 6:30 for Budatai, the restaurant owned by Roberto Trevino in Condado. We walked down there, it was a nice walk, with the sun not so high in the sky it wasn't as warm and even though Condado is an up and coming area, it felt very safe.

Dinner was quite good. We decided to share a bunch of appetizers/dim sum offerings and one rice dish. So we ordered: the veal potstickers (nightly special), the pork dumplings guisados with shaved truffles, Godzilla rolls (crunchy hamachi, ahi tuna and futumaki), duck fried rice with amarillos (yellow plantains) and finished it off with a 5 spice crème brulee. The only dish that wasn't fabulous, but just okay were the Godzilla rolls. Although you had the mixed texture of the crunchy hamachi and the soft tuna, there wasn't a lot of flavor, although it was definitely fresh. The duck fried rice was very, very good, again mixing up the differing textures between the crunchy rice and smooth chewy plantains. We also both liked the potstickers and dumplings. The sauce with the dumplings was really good. The potstickers were also good, but much lighter.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Woke up fairly early, then headed down for our free breakfast. Since Mark was having a little trouble with blisters on his feet, we decided to make it a pool day. It was a beautiful sunny day with a wonderful breeze. Around 11, we decided we should head into Old San Juan for lunch. So we went back to the room and changed and grabbed a taxi. We were going to go to a restaurant called Amadeus, which is all the way on the other end. Instead the taxi driver suggested “Cafe Puerto Rico” - good Puerto Rican food he said, plus his wife works there. Since for us it didn't really matter, we had no clue if one was better than the other, we said sure take us there. It turns out that it's closer to to Caribe Hilton, than Amadeus, but it is near the San Cristobal fort and the statue of Rincon in the square center. I had the special of the day, which was Chuelta de Cerdo Rellena con queso – (cheese stuffed pork chop). Mark had wanted the Monfongo maristas de cerdo, but the watiress must have misunderstood, and brought maristas de cerdo cebollitas. Both meals were good although Mark liked mine better than his. They were also served with a side dish and we both ordered beans and rice. It was really crowded but they forgot to bring us our beans, until we asked for them, but we did get a free drink for our “troubles”, even though neither of us thought it was a big deal.

We were originally thinking about going to see the fort, but then decided, nah, what's the big deal, so we thought we'd head back home and hang out by the pool.

We decided to cab it back and there was a cab right there when we got out, so we hailed him down. Turns out, we should have gone to the cab stand, (which we didn't see or know about), because a big argument ensued between a few cab drivers. This happened all in Spanish, but we got the jist of it. They were accusing him of stealing the fare. Meanwhile we're sitting there like, can we just go already. Eventually it was decided that he would drop us off at the cab stand. Well, fueled by what we are now calling “Alcohol Righteousness” Mark decided that no one would get the cabfare for something we felt like was our fault, so we walked back to the hotel. It wasn't a bad walk, about 45 mins, and we stayed by the ocean to get the breeze as much as possible. There was a protest going on at the capitol building, but it was very calm. We're not exactly sure what the protest was for, but it was involving the ambulance drivers, since there were literally 39 (yes, I counted) of them lining the street. There were sidewalks all the way from Old San Juan to Caribe Hilton, so it's not a bad walk, but it can get pretty warm during midday.

Back at the hotel, we changed back into our suits and headed to the pool for some “adult” beverages. We got a couple of chairs, then headed to the pool swim up bar, where we started with a pitcher of mango mojitos – frozen. We moved from the bar to the edge, which was in the sun and enjoyed our drinks and the beautiful weather. That pitcher didn't last long, so we ordered another one. I ordered watermelon mojitos, but he brought us regular mojitos. No big deal, we drank them anyway. We've decided that frozen mojitos aren't as sweet as mojitos on the rocks. While we were drinking we met another couple in the pool – Amy & Steve. She's from New Hampshire and he's originally from Minnesota, but lives in Massachusetts now. They were fun. But they did make us order, okay, make is a bad verb, there was no duress or anything going on, but we did order a 3^rd pitcher (this time watermelon) of mojitos since we were having a nice time hanging out with them. By the time that pitcher was finished, the sun was starting to set and it was getting close to dinner time. So we decided to head back upstairs, then celebrated my last night of being 39 . Mark had a taste for subway, so we figured we'd have that instead of going out to a sit down place. The Subway is basically just across the street from the Hilton, so it was easy enough to run out and back. We watched a little tv, and went to sleep.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Happy Birthday Sue! Decided to upgrade today to the full breakfast buffet. We each had omelets, bacon or sausages and french fries! (gotta love a place that serves french fries with breakfast.) Then we headed down to the pool. It's a beautiful day, although no breeze today which makes it quite warm. So we alternated laying in the sun and cooling off in the pool. As we were lounging in the sun, the local neighborhood lizard/iguana came out to say hi and promptly pooped in the middle of the grassy knoll where we were enjoying the sun. It was pretty funny, and impressive, I must say.

Around noon, we decided to go get Subway for lunch. Then we headed back to the pool for more sun and relaxation. The pool bar was open so we decided we'd have a couple pitchers of frozen beverages and enjoy the afternoon sun.

For dinner we went to Ajili Mojili, which is about a 20 minute walk away in Condado. Apparently Puerto Ricans like to eat late, so Ajili Mojili has a “linner” aka lunch + dinner aka early bird special from 5:30 to 7:00pm where the prices are 20% off. Being typical midwesterners we prefer to eat early, so this worked out great for us.

The wine list wasn't that great and they were actually out of our first choice, so we settled on a Freedom Bell 2007 Chardonnay from South Africa. It wasn't the best but it was okay. Mark ordered the Mofongo pollo y camerones. Sue ordered the arroz con pollo borracho. Sue really liked her dish. The rice was very nicely flavored and the chicken thighs were extremely tender. Mark also liked his meal as well. Mofongo is like the national dish of Puerto Rico and is mashed plantains stuffed with meat, in his case chicken and shrimp. We also ordered chocolate cake to go (a girl has to have chocolate cake on her birthday) and headed back to the room to drink some wine (we bought at a liquor store across the street) and eat the birthday cake and watched a couple of shows. A nice relaxing day.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Decided to just have another relaxing day today. On our way to breakfast, we passed the Atlantic gardens and there was a Peahen and a Peacock out there. The Peacock's feathers were fully extended and he was trying his darnedest to impress the peahen. She on the other hand couldn't have cared less. Maybe she had a headache. But it was still pretty amazing to see. He was extremely colorful, unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me.

After breakfast, we went out by the pool for a sun day. We hung out there until it was time for lunch, then headed to Subway again. After eating, we headed back down to the pool bar. It was a little cloudy and “cool” given the way the weather has been. It actually even started raining, but we stayed out. Since we were in the pool, we figured we were already wet and it's not like there was any lightening to worry about. We met a few folks while hanging out at the bar. The problem was that the bartenders like us (and our generous tips), so they made our drinks extra strong. Then one of the couples we met ordered 2 shots of 151 rum and they added that to the drinks we had. I kept adding ice to my drink because well it was just too strong for me. Mark the trooper just kept drinking (probably not a good idea). He was pretty trashed (we both were, although he much more so than me). We went straight to bed when we got home (it was probably not even 7pm yet!) No dinner, just straight to bed. It didn't take long for Mark to have an adverse reaction to “something he ate”. Not a fun night for him. Live and learn I guess. But at least we saved money on food.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Well, apparently Mark's night was a little worse than we thought. He's got a black eye and a fat lip. He actually asked me if he was in a fight (which he wasn't). As far as we can figure, he must have fallen face first onto the tile floor in the middle of the night on his way to the bathroom. The shiner is pretty cool, it actually looks like he has eyeshadow on. It's actually a pretty cloudy and overcast day today, so he's still sleeping. I'm guessing we won't be doing too much today.