We land in San Juan. Uneventful, except for the clear-air turbulent jump the plane does on the way down. I can almost make out Morro Castle looming over the entrance to the harbor as we touch down.
I won’t lie – we’re all tired. The sun went down about halfway through the 2 hour flight from Fort Lauderdale and, from that moment on, we were all looking at our watches. “Are we there yet?”
The baggage claim at the airport is big and empty and there’s lots of room for rental car desks … there just aren’t any. We have to take a shuttle a couple of miles to the rental car agency, which is on the frontage road (“Marginal” in the local parlance) of the freeway out of town. As the shuttle pulled away from the terminal, “Inmortal,” the latest single from La Oreja de Van Gogh, my latest Europop/rock guilty pleasure, started blaring on the radio. Yay.
It’s Natalie’s birthday today. I knew she wasn’t happy that she had to spend her birthday in airports, so I stopped off to get a nice slice of cake before we went to the airport, and on the flight from Austin to Fort Lauderdale, we had the flight attendants serve it to her, and the purser had the entire plane sing. (Never mind the incident where Ray went up front to ask them to do it and they reacted … well, he was moving kind of quickly and was holding my briefcase. Thank god there were no air marshals on board).
Her birthday also got us a 10% discount on the rental car.
The guy at the rental car place was plenty chatty, which made up for the “You’re in Latin America now” speed of service. We asked about dinner — we’re all in our traveling clothes, and it’s late. We were all somewhat of the opinion that we needed to stop on the way to the hotel because once we got to the hotel … we weren’t likely to leave again. (It wasn’t the wrong assumption).
“You should go into Old San Juan,” he says. We all look at each other. Old San Juan is fancier than we’re wanting to be tonight. “There’s this barbecue place down the street. The food is good.”
The barbecue place–Bebo’s–is across the street from McDonald’s. All the McDonald’s employees are eating there. It’s the sort of place where there’s no menu, no air conditioning, and … well, it’s a good thing that Puerto Rico isn’t a state because the health inspection ….
After a bunch of locals rattle off their orders with no fuss or muss, the lady behind the counter turns to us. “Is there a menu?” we ask in our worst Spanish. She half rolls her eyes and gestures at the trays of roasting meat.
We wind up with a plate of roast pork (scrumptious), a plate of roast chicken that could melt in your mouth (I believe my reaction was, “Oh … my … god … “), two grilled plantains, and a plate of french fries. We are the only white people in the joint. No one gives us a second glance. It’s likely the cheapest meal we’ll have here. And maybe it was the tired, and maybe it was definitely the fact that it was our first meal on the island, but it was goood.
And now we’re at the hotel. And it turns out that you can get free internet at a 5-star hotel. Who knew?
I can’t wait to see what this place looks like in the daylight.
