As with our previous travel blogs, you can click most pictures on these pages to go to a larger version:

This year Ana and I decided to spend our anniversary in Puerto Rico. Since I am not fluent in Spanish and she is this little island offers your standard issue "no se habla una palabra e espanol" gringo the chance to explore a great Latin culture without worrying about the language barrier. 

Ana's parents, Roberto and Susana, had never taken a real vacation, so they came along to enjoy "el sol" with us. 

As many of you know we live in the lightning capitol of the world. Naturally lightning kept us sitting on the tarmac for an hour as we waited for the storm to clear so they could load our bags. Yay! The flight finally got underway and we landed in total darkness at around 7:30 in Puerto Rico. One of the craziest things (must be a Latin thing) was that everyone on board clapped and applauded when we landed. I can honestly say I have never seen that, especially given how well the pilot did on our flight. 

At any rate, Ana and I got into several fights over getting to the Hotel. The main problem being that we had a little tourist map since my Blackberry "World Edition" decided not to work with Verizon P.R. and kept crashing. It wasn't a total loss because the directions I had written down would have taken us to the wrong place anyway.  I also mentioned we landed in the dark. Because of the time of year, it is completely dark in Puerto Rico by 8pm in September. Yay! Oh, did I mention the street signs were in Spanish and in metric units?

Finally we arrived at our hotel...

This place was amazing! First off the staff was terrific! They all remembered our names, always knew our room number, and were always there with a smile and happy greeting. 

After getting settled in, we began looking for food. Maria from our Bloomingdale office and Doug, our Info-Sec guy both told me to try the local specialty, "mofongo" which is made from fried green plantains seasoned with garlic, olive oil and pork cracklings, then mashed, and then usually stuffed with beef or seafood. 

Levi's is known as "The King Of Churrasco" in Puerto Rico, as well as for its excellent Island-Caribbean cuisine. They should be awarded for their Sangria as well. I had a Cuban sandwich (which was made with real pork!), Ana had a chicken mofongo, and Ana's parents both had the grilled chicken. We also sampled some chicken croquets and dipped them in a local favorite, a mix of ketchup and mayonnaise, which was pretty good! For dessert we tried the peanut butter and chocolate cake and the "tres leches". Both were phenomenal. 

Tired, we headed back to the hotel to call it a night. Unfortunately "el hombres" in the room next door were busy yelling and carrying on about how to negotiate the rates for their "dates" of the particular evening. They finally went out to find their ladies about 2am, and I was finally able to get to sleep. 

We awoke to beautiful skies around 8am...Since the sun sets so late, the sun makes itself known around 6am. As you can see in the pictures above.

We ate breakfast at the Tangerine, which was the hotel's in house restaurant. Ana's parents had egg, turkey, and cheese croissants, while Ana and I had egg, cheese and bacon croissants. Delicious! From here we went to scope out the rest of the Hotel. I had to do some work, and needed to get some school work done, so I figured I should nose around and find the wireless internet access areas and check out the hotel while we were at it. 

Around 4pm, Ana and her parents finished up at the beach and I was pretty much finished with work and school. We decided to head down to Old San Juan to see the old Fort and Castle. 

If you have never heard, traffic in San Juan is terrible. The city during the day holds almost as many people as the city of Manhattan does at night. Not too shabby. At any rate onto the pictures and the story. 

The pictures below were taken at Fort San Cristóbal in Old San Juan. This fort began construction in 1634 and took nearly 150 years to complete. It was the largest fortification built in the Americas by the Spanish. 

Of course with an human made construction of this age, there are always legends. In the 1st picture in the 2nd row, you will see The Devil's Guerite. A Guerite is another term for a lookout. Legend has it this particular lookout was rather infamous for soldiers going into it and not coming back out.

(Click here for a wikipedia article)

Now, the first two pictures below show a small village outside of the city walls. This area is known as La Perla. This is an area tourists do not go to, as crime and drugs run rampant (i.e. the police won't even go in there). It is such a shame because directly across the wall are some of the most beautiful sections of Old San Juan.

Soon after finishing up looking around in Old San Juan, we headed back towards the hotel, and looked for food along the way.

I don't know what to write other than this place sucked! Seriously I don't know why I wasted my time finding their logo, except to show people where NOT to go. Our waiter was terrible, food was awful. If you ever go to PR, don't stop here!

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel, of course getting lost due to not having good maps and in part because signage in PR is seriously lacking in most areas...

At any rate our hotel had an awesome rooftop bar. The bartenders here extended their secret for how they made the best mojitos I have probably ever had...