Puerto Rico

Here are some pictures from our trip to San Juan. The warm weather and relaxation were a great escape from the snow and stress back home ...

Our trip got off to a rocky start with a few flight cancellations due to the East coast storms but we made it to the hotel late Sunday night and had a late dinner on the outskirts of the hotel casino. We thought about putting a few pennies in the slots but decided it wasn't worth the investment.

Here is our balcony where we sat with Starbucks and the paper every morning and our view around our side window down to the hotel pools and ocean.

We saw many small chartered planes take off every morning to the many Virgin islands around Puerto Rico and I took this picture from our balcony.

The rocks formed a protected lagoon directly behind the hotel where it was safe to swim with the crashing waves providing background noise for afternoon naps on the hammocks. We only spent one afternoon at the hotel pool area but one pool was salt water and another had a swim up bar.

We spent a full day on a catamaran trip that left from the town Fajardo, an hour from San Juan and explored smaller islands off the NorthEast side of Puerto Rico. We saw some cool fishes and coral (like the ones from Dad's fish tank) while snorkeling and slid down the water slide off the back of the boat. The water was really salty so it was easy to float. We used an entire bottle of sun screen and the only burn either of us got was about a half dollar size on my belly from a missed application spot that's now disappeared.

A couple evenings we headed into Old San Juan about a 2 mile walk along the coast from our hotel. We passed a local surfer beach with tons of surfers catching waves. The capital building here marked the beginning of the town along with two forts that we didn't get a chance to explore.

Night life in Old San Juan was always busy and there were a lot of tourists since it's a popular cruise ship stop too. We ate a lot of Puerto Rican cuisine which seemed to me to consist of mostly plantains, rice, beans, and meats cooked together.

We spent an afternoon at the Isla Verde beach area which is probably the biggest tourist beach spot and a good place for beginner surfing. Will was having too much fun body surfing to actually rent a board and I took an artistic picture of my feet again.

We had a great trip and are now back home writing papers, cleaning, and doing laundry:(

We're hoping spring is right around the corner as the temperature was in the 30s today -much warmer than the single digits of last week!