Puerto Rico

These past two weeks we have been lucky enough to have taken a trip to Puerto Rico.  Dan was sent here for work, and I thought it best if the girls and I headed out to spend some time with him.   : D

Just traveling over is quite the feat, we had a 4 hour flight to Atlanta followed by another nearly 4 hour flight down to San Juan.  The girls did really well with all the traveling, the only thing they didn't like was that their ears hurt when we made our landings.  

We headed out on the 24th of July at 8:30 am and finally arrived in San Juan at 8:30 pm, so it made for a long day of travel, but we were excited to finally see daddy at the airport!  When we got to the hotel (hungry and tired, I might add) I was excited to see the cool pool from our room.  The girls were also very excited because they love to swim.

The courtyard pool

The beach side pool

First things first, we needed to get some dinner.  By the time we got out of the airport and to the hotel it was 10:00 so we just decided to order up some room service.  See this food, it cost us $75.  Wow!  I'll admit though, it was totally worth it.  I was starving!

The next morning I woke up and looked out our balcony window and saw this!!!

I could get used to this!

Checking out the sights from the balcony

The courtyard pool in the daylight

We wasted no time and headed to the beach!

That night we went swimming again.  The girls were in heaven!  (with their glowing bug eyes, hehe)

This is how I usually found them in the morning on their tiny bed

We decided to give the beach side pool a try, and it became our new favorite spot.  This is were we spent most mornings when Dan was at work.  We even made friends with the security guard Cesar.

On Friday Dan got off a bit early so that we could head out to see Old San Juan.

The girls looking ready to go out!

The wall around the city of Old San Juan

Entrance to the city

Time for a snack break

I love walking down the small streets

Castillo San Felipe del Morro

It was quite a popular kite flying place because it was soooooo windy

Did I mention it was windy?

Don't get to close, there are no safety rails.

The kids loved exploring!

That night we had dinner by the pool

Yum!

One morning they were setting up for a wedding on the beach

On our first Saturday we went out to see El Yunque rainforest.  It was very cool, but because it was Saturday it was also very busy.

View of the rainforest from the top of the observatory

Lunch break

Watch out for El Chupacabra!

We also drove down to Ponce (which is at the very south of the island and San Juan is at the top) to take in the sights.  The first visit was to El Museo Castillo Serralles.  It was a large home owned by a family of rum makers.  I really liked the city of Ponce it felt much more relaxed than San Juan.

The castle (or as I called it, a pretty big house)

The view of Ponce

They had a butterfly garden at the castle which was pretty cool, but they only let us got in for a couple of minutes which was a bummer.

The only picture they would let you take of the inside of the house

It was really hot outside plus the humidity.  I decided they should put a sign up at the airport that read "Welcome to Puerto Rico!  Don't bother doing your hair or makeup because the humidity and sporadic rainstorms will just laugh at you".

They said this was the second most photographed building in Puerto Rico.  I wonder what the first is??

Loved the streets in Ponce too!

Long day

When Dan was at work we wondered around San Juan.

At the Performing Arts Center

When I was taking this picture Hannah asked me why they loved naked people so much in Puerto Rico.  Haha!

Daddy's home so it must be dinner time!

Hannah making us all laugh with her cute laugh!

And eating a GIANT hotdog

Waiting for the elevators

Another night of swimming!

Another day trip while Dan was working to the San Juan Museum of Art

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside so we just took some out in the garden

Lizards were everywhere.  This one was pretty good sized.

I loved seeing all the houses we walked by

The girls spent a lot of time drawing pictures out on the balcony

Our hotel was called La Concha (the shell) and this was the restaurant out by the beach

At the Museum of Contemporary Art

 The next Friday we headed out to Old San Juan to see a few things we missed the first time around.  I still could have stayed longer but I had a few little ones complaining about all the walking.

Christopher Columbus himself

Castillo de San Cristobal

My awesome family!!

In the dungeon

Dan was wondering around the castle looking at the view and walked right up behind this guy before he finally noticed him.  You could tell he was not to happy to have us bugging him.  

Nobody wanted to get too close because we could see he got annoyed when we got too close.

Looking from the San Cristobal castle to del Morrow castle

Oh, and it was really windy here too!

When we were driving on a freeway somewhere one day I saw a P F Chang's off the side of the freeway at a mall and I told Dan that he had to take me there one night because it's one of my favorites.  We decided to go on a Friday night and boy was that a mistake.  From the time we drove into the parking lot until we parked and headed in to eat it took us AN HOUR.  One hour driving around a packed parking lot trying to navigate the place and find a parking spot.  We should have just given up and headed back to the hotel but we had already spent so much time and I was starving so we stayed.  The good thing was there was not wait to sit down.  :)  Oh, and I should probably mention that we spent $100.00 for dinner, because Dan almost died.  After tip and tax the bill came to $100.00 even.  Dan almost had a heart attack writing that big of number for dinner, and I just laughed and laughed because that's all you could do after a night like that.

Our last Saturday we packed the day full knowing that time was running short and there was still so much to see.  We started the day at the Rio Camuy Caves.

The girls on a giant coqui frog.  You could hear these little guys every night at the hotel chirping.

This cave tour was an audio tour

There were bats flying around in the cave.  Creepy!

The witch (can you see it?)

Next we headed over to the Arecibo Lighthouse.  This was kind of a bummer of a place, but the kids seemed to enjoy it enough.

There it is, the lighthouse.

We made it!

Great view

Afterwards we headed out to the Arecibo Observatory.  This was so cool!

This dish was 1000 feet wide!!

The girls enjoyed the exhibits here too.

Done with another long and fun day!

My girls found a new sweet treat to love in Puerto Rico.  It's called a mallorca and they had one for breakfast any time they could.  It was basically sweet bread with powdered sugar on top. :)

Awesome bed head Hannah

Of course we had to have another beach day and this time daddy got to come with.  Even though the sky is filled with clouds it was really hot outside.  The water was quite warm too!

I love seeing them playing together.  They really are best friends most of the time. 

All their hard work ruined with one wave

One of the last mornings while swimming it started to rain hard.  The girls didn't care and just kept on swimming.

Tomorrow morning we will fly home and back to normal life.  We will miss Puerto Rico, and we will miss Daniel, but I am definitely ready for some normalcy.

I'm no Puerto Rico expert, but here are my thoughts about my experience here:

Puerto Ricans like to back into parking spaces, this made Dan happy because he loves backing in while I think it's a waste of time.  hehe

They also love Burger Kings and Churches Chicken - seriously there is a pair on every corner.

You are ALWAYS sweaty sticky - I wasn't surprised by this, just annoyed at what it did to me and my oily skin and wavy hair.

Everything in our hotel room was also constantly wet from the humidity.  My clothes were always damp along with any paper in the room, all of the time.

I thought more people would be speaking English, I though wrong.  Oh, which reminds me, don't ask for chicken fingers when they are actually called chicken tenders on the menu, it will cause mass confusion and embarrassment.

You need an umbrella on you at all times, even if the day starts out looking beautiful.  Oh, and if it rains don't change your plans, it will usually stop within a few minutes.