Bye Bye BVI
Trip Start
Jun 01, 2010
1
51
158
Trip End
Mar 11, 2011
Where I stayed
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Monday, July 19, 2010
And so we did, the rain went as quick as it came, and it did not really make a difference as we were in the water anyways. The snorkeling was nice, we saw some barracudas and lots of other fishies. The areas around the rocks were covered with sea urchins. We drifted on the current back to the boat where we took a shower on the deck.
After our little swim, we raised the sails, and headed towards the airport. You can literally park your boat right at the airport here, and so we did. We had our last lunch on board, a nice tuna salad. Charly got us a CD with all the photos and bits of video of our trip. We loaded all bags in the dinghy and took off to the pier. Everybody came along, Charly, Carolina and even little Valentin as we checked in at the airport. We said our goodbyes and each went our own way. We headed back to the bay to get a last taste of the island, with a nice 'Presidente' at the beach bar and Internet cafe. Again the skies turned gray, but we made it into the airport building just in time.
The flight to Puerto Rico was a short 30 minutes, and we landed at the airport a little after six o'clock. Here we grabbed a cab to the 'Old San Juan” where we had a room at 'El Convento', a 500 year old monastery that was converted into a Hotel. I must admit that I was a bit worried about going back to Puerto Rico after our dreadful experience at the 'Intercontinental'. But when we arrived at 'El Convento' it was nothing but good. The service was perfect, the bell boy was welcoming and helped us from our taxi to our room explaining every feature of the Hotel. The receptionist was welcoming and helpful. A perfect welcome and a true testament to Puerto Rican hospitality.
After dashing off to the wine reception and grab ourselves some free wine and dropping our bags in our room we took a very much needed shower, We were sticky from the boat, beach and airport and Linda even had to part from a pair of flip flops that had adopted an unpleasant odour. All refreshed we headed out to explore the streets of Old San Juan. We walked down to 'SoFo', the Puerto Rican version of SoHo. The city has a romantic and historic feel to it. It reminded Linda of old Macau. The cobble stone streets, the Spanish tiled street names, the little balconies and the squares. It all has a typical Iberian feel to it.
We ended up finding a restaurant called 'Dragonfly' where they served LantinAsian food. The setting of the restaurant was 'hip', slightly dark with lots of Asian elements. We were seated in a section of the restaurant where we were looking at a Buddha statue. The music played at the restaurant was horrible, some kind of lounge/dance tunes. In my opinion they try a bit too hard to be modern with that. The menu on the other hand was quite interesting. They served their dishes in tapas style, at least that was what we were told. It turned out to be quite large portions for a tapas style menu, but then again, they might expect American cruise ship customers. We ordered a cerviche with mango salsa, Chinese fried rice with Chinese sausage (yes, Linda was dying for some Chinese food!), beef skirt steak with plantane fries and a sampler of bapau. This was accompanied by a glass of sake sangria. All this ended up to be more than enough food for the both of us. It was quite funny to find a Chinese fried rice with Chinese sausage on an island like Puerto Rico. The quality of the food was surprisingly good and the LatinAsian combinations very interesting.
After our dinner, we headed back to the convent, for a night of sleep on a bed that does not rock on the waves. Tomorrow we'll explore old San Juan by daylight.
Comments
I am enjoying every bit of your travel stories! And we happened to stay at El Convento once also.....the bell boy's name was Jesus....very appropriate! So now I can tell my friends I met Jesus, at the Convent!
Hi Bo,
Jesus in the Convent, thats a good story. We enjoyed El Convento and Puerto Rico, we should have planned some more time there to see the inlands. But unfortunately We only used it in transit to BVI. But we will probably spend more time there next time around.