As many of you know, it was my birthday yesterday. Luckily I found some cool people to travel with and go out with that night, so it didn’t suck as much as I thought it would… it was actually better then some of my last few bdays in the states… So what exactly did I do yesterday?
The port docked kinda late. Customs officials insisted on meeting with us face to face and no one could get off until everyone did. After waiting and waiting we were allowed to disembark around 11 am. During all this, the Secretary of State (of Puerto Rico) came and made a speech. I met him afterwards and he was a very nice man.
I am beginning to think that SAS is a super cheap-wad. Because first of all, it should have only taken us about a day and a half to get to PR (but I am guessing that in order to save fuel and docking fees it took us 4). Then when we got here, they announced that instead of staying at the beautiful, nice ports, we’re going to be docking at the Navy Frontier Pier. This Pier is about a mile and a half from Old San Juan and in the seedy part of town. It is all but impossible to walk at night, so a taxi ride is a must.
Anyway, after we disembarked, I met up with my new friends; Danielle, Janelle, Jessy, and Richard. We walked into Old San Juan which was about 25 minutes away and stopped a bank. The bank didn’t charge me anything for withdrawing cash which I found amazing! We found this little shop selling fried Puerto Rican “delicacies.” I bought a fried chicken burrito. It was good but greasy. We adventured on, with no plan, and came a crossed “Castillo de San Cristobal,” which is this huge fortification. It was super cool. From there we could see the famed “El Morro,” the even bigger, older fortification. We headed over there to find an even more incredible fort.
Since we’re on the tip on the peninsula, we headed back to Old San Juan. We passed Casa Blanca, but it was closed (b/c it was Monday) along with some other museums and art galleries, I had wanted to check out. We asked a police officer where he eats and he directed us to this small restaurant. I order some phenomenal cube steak with yellow rice and black beans (arroz congri) and some homemade sangria. It was so good.
After fueling our bellies we did some shopping. I didn’t buy anything because all of this ”stuff” didn’t really seem very Puerto Rican (it just said “PR” on it). I have seen all of these nic-nacks in Mexico, Costa Rica and even in the Bahamas.
Fast-Forwarding to the “la noche,” Jessy, Rich, Sarah and I head out for dinner to this very posh looking restaurant. I had an amazing meal of red chicken curry on a bed of spaghetti. We then walked around looking for a bar to frequent, but apparently there was a huge festival in the streets for the last four days (it ended Sunday), so most everything was closed. Some Puerto Rican students (that knew we were coming) had organized live salsa, bomba, and plena music for us at a bar. But when we went by, the band was not there yet and there was a cover. We headed to Senor Frogs (yuck!) to fill in the time. It was fun but really crowded, so we left after an hour and headed back to the salsa music. By then, the bar was over capacity full, so we just hung out outside in this ally. It sounds really creepy but it was cool. We met some nice PR students and salsa danced in the alley. We’ll probably head there tonite…
PS I will post lots of pictures when I get to the boat!
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3 comments:
Do you know where the blue notebook is? Char
CAN'T WAIT TO SEE THE PICTURES...
DAUN P.S. WE GOT ABOUT 6 INCHES OF SNOW HERE YESTERDAY...AND THE HEAT HAS BEEN TURNED OFF AT WORK TO SAVE ENERGY, CAN YOU SEE WHERE i'M GOING WITH THIS????? HAVE FUN
Hey, I went on SAS over the summer, and found your blog from the message board... I don't know about the full semester voyages because I'm just now applying to do one, but on our summer voyages, the ship was always docked a GOOD distance away (think at least 20-45 minute walk) from the main part of the city, except for 1 maybe 2... in Spain we actually had to hire a bus to run a shuttle as we were about a 10-15 minute BUS RIDE out of Bilbao... but if you think about it, SAS is a non-profit org. and they don't want to have to keep raising the costs of tuition to balance the rising costs of fuel, so the taxis sort of became all part of the experience for us. We actually learned a TON from our drivers (when they could speak english) about where to go and what they would reccomend seeing. :) Have a great voyage!! It will go by sooo fast! :)
Heather - Summer 05
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