One full day back and Christina and I are already ready to return to Puerto Rico — We had an excellent, much-needed vacation in San Juan.

We stayed in the Isla Verde area of San Juan, an area known for its excellent beaches, and they didn’t disappoint.  Not surprisingly, it is also home to many of the resorts in San Juan and we slummed it in one of the cheaper rooms of one of the nicest hotels, the El San Juan.  Situated on prime beach real-estate, the views in and around the hotel were beautiful.

After flying in, we quickly made our way to the hotel and found it very similar to the Casino-Hotels in Las Vegas.  Regretfully, that included a lack of affordable dining.  Each meal we consumed in the hotel cost between $40-100 — ouch!  The Palms steakhouse, La Piccola Fontana, and even the so-called casual dining Galleria Pizza & Trattoria were all bank-busters.  Other than the cost, the biggest challenge we had was finding decent, at least somewhat authentic, Puerto-Rican food.  Christina tried several dishes but almost all were a huge disappointment.  Luckily, on our trip to Old San Juan, we found the El Patio de Sam which exceeded her expectations.

Though my life doesn’t revolve around my next meal as it does my somehow-ridiculously-petite wife, Old San Juan was also one of my favorite parts of the trip.  We visited there on our first full day by taking a $0.75 bus which also let us see much of downtown San Juan.  Afterwards, we wandered the streets of Old San Juan, walked along the beachfront walls, and visited El Morro, each of which were great and worth a visit by themselves.  The views from the fort of El Morro were even more stunning than the views from the hotel.

The rest of the vacation, we simply lounged around our hotel, relaxed on the beach, hung out around the awesome pools at the hotel and pretty much had an awesome time.  The people of Puerto Rico must be trying to challenge Bhutan for happiest place on earth as the people there were universally, without exception, some of the nicest people Christina or I had ever come across.

No trip could be without a few mishaps and this was no exception.  Almost immediately upon arrival, I received numerous emails & texts notifying me that “hey, one of those things we rushed out the door before I left didn’t quite deploy correctly” — nothing like tech support to kick off a vacation!  At least I found out quickly if my cell got service there.   Also, we had booked this flight on US Airways just like our previous flight to St Louis.  If we hadn’t booked it earlier, we would definitely have chosen a different airline — it wasn’t quite as bad as our previous trip but it certainly wasn’t good either.  I almost feel sorry for the people who work for US Airways.  Lastly, though the hotel impressed in most ways, the room decor was a bit disappointing.  The photos of the rooms on the website were certainly taken from the updated rooms… and ours wasn’t one of them.  This was more of an issue for Christina but it would have been nice to have a modern look & feel instead of the out-of-place furniture we had in our room.

All in all, Puerto Rico was awesome.  We barely scratched the surface of San Juan, much less the rest of the island.  e.g. Who knew there was a rainforest in Puerto Rico?  That’s one of the places we have planned for our next visit…  which can’t come soon enough.

All of the photos of our trip can be found here.