Day 1 in Paradise

So after a 10hr-ish long red-eye flight, we made it to Puerto Rico! It's hot and humid, but really great. So much has happened today already. For starters, I cannon even describe how beautiful landing in San Juan is. The airport is maybe a mile from the coast, so on the way in, you see tall beautiful resorts breaking up the breathtaking beach. Amazing. I wish I had my camera out on the plane to show you what I saw; it was incredible.

After using some sloppy Spanish to find our way to the Enterprise terminal, we got a nice little surprise. We paid for a crappy little compact car like a Nissan Versa, but got this instead:

No cheap tiny car for me. I'll take the red Mazda 3, thank you!

Not too shabby. And it's a good thing we got this little nimble sporty car too! Because drivers in San Juan just do what they want. More on this later...

Getting from Enterprise to our hotel was easy, because it was only a couple miles away. After checking in, I found that this is the view out of my room for the next 3 days:

The view out of our hotel room for the next 3 days.

After Fed took a short nap, and I hit this pool for a bit, we decided to get some comida. Our hotel is only 2 blocks from the beach, which is amazing, so we decided to try a local spot near the sand. It looked good, and even though we missed the lunch special by 7 minutes ( seriously hombres?) we didn't complain once we got the "El Taquito Especial". Most menus we found are en espanol, so eating is going to be a little tricky sometimes. lol Nevertheless, "today is especially delicious" (insert Nacho Libre accent here).

Such good food!

After eating, we went back to the hotel to change, and then went to the beach. Oh. My. Gosh. In 5 minutes, we can walk to paradise. I have never seen a more beautiful beach. And the water is unbelievable. First world problems #1 (so far): I'm on vacation on a tropical island, but the clear ocean water is almost too warm. I think the water might have been literally 75 degrees. And just this brilliant crystal turquoise. With soft white sand. And almost no people! Tell me you don't want to be me:

If there is a beach in heaven, this is it.

Yet despite the warm sunny beach weather, we had a rainstorm in the afternoon. During our first real drive through San Juan. We realized quickly that rain or no rain, Puerto Rican drivers are go-getters that don't let anyone get in their way. What doesn't help is that there are essentially no lane lines. And I don't just mean the ones that tell you if you're in the left or right lane; I also mean lines telling you if you are in the oncoming or not. Sometimes the freeways don't even have lanes, so you just kinda guess a third of the road is. Merging is essentially at your own risk, traffic lights are typically (but not always) followed strictly, turn signals are a rare spectacle, and la policia are everywhere with their sirens on almost always. Also, the names of streets are always - and I mean always - NOT what Fed's iPhone's google maps app thinks the streets are called.

Near death driving experience: So we got off the freeway at this certain offramp, except it was the wrong one, because this offramp is just a tiny parking lot, with no exit. Yeah... So the only way to leave is to go back the way you came - into the oncoming freeway traffic(!), make a U-turn in the freeway(!), and hope you get back in the right direction before getting T-boned by some crazy Puerto Rican zipping along in one of the ambiguous freeway lanes! Whoever planned that exit did not do his homework. Needless to say driving in San Juan is an interesting adventure all on its own. But we're safe! (Don't worry, Mom.)


Those are the main highlights of today. We found out there is a culinary festival in Old San Juan from tomorrow until Sunday, so tomorrow we will be spending a lot of time checking out that beautiful old city, and it's delicious food. Stories and pictures of that tomorrow. =)