I believe that birthdays are special. Period.
Whether you decide to sit at home watching TV all day or partying with family and friends, that day should be celebrated because it means you're still living. I decided to spend my special day in San Juan Puerto Rico this year. I selected PR because I wanted to be somewhere warm and near the water. Plus, there are no travel restrictions for US citizens. My husband and I boarded the flight from Houston with no drama. We sat in our seats and heard the babbling of a baby behind us. Will peeked through the crack in the seats to see a beautiful little copper-skinned girl with curly hair that could not be quieted. We hoped that "Dora" wouldn't talk the whole 4 hours. Two-year old "Dora" was fascinated by everything she saw, and she did talk practically the whole flight. My limited Spanish proficiency allowed me to understand all of her loquacious babbling. I slept as much as I could being sandwiched between my husband and our neighbor. The landing was one of the worst I've ever experienced. It felt like God was playing dodgeball, and we were the ball bouncing along the runway. Thankfully, we were able to walk away alive and board a taxi to our hotel, Conrad San Juan, Condado Plaza. More about the hotel later...
After settling into our room and checking out the hotel amenities, we decided to take to the streets of Condado in search of dinner. We walked along the busy street with cracked sidewalks and a few dilapidated buildings. I marveled at the way they camouflaged those buildings by draping the facade with full-length tourism banners. From a distance, you wouldn't know that the building showing the beautiful El Yunque was actually abandoned with half of the backside missing. We continued our walk scoping out the various shops and restaurants along the way. We finally stopped at Latin Star, a 24 hour restaurant known for its Puertorican cuisine. It has a patio on the street with about 20 tables tightly packed together, and when I went inside for the restroom, I saw that there were probably 6 or 7 more tables plus a bar. We only saw 2 people serving the patrons when we first sat down. All along the wall were pictures of Kobe Bryant, Macho Kamacho (Will had to tell me who he was), a bunch of baseball stars, etc. along with a middle aged man in each of the pics. I looked at our waiter again and noticed that he was the man in all the pictures with the athletes, so we assumed he was the owner of the restaurant. I ordered mofongo with crab, and my husband ordered the fried pork chop with plantains. Mofongo is a traditional dish of mashed green plantains that are stuffed with meat and a spicy sauce. The food was muy delicioso. My husband said it was the best pork chop he'd ever tasted. They cooked it with the skin on so it had a crispy texture, which was another island specialty. He couldn't tempt me to eat that pork though. The service was great and the place started to fill up as we finished our dinner. Two other servers walked in as we started to leave. I think it was a family restaurant. I would definitely go there again.
Prior to arriving in PR, I had 3 things on my agenda that were must sees for me: 1) Bio Bay 2) Loiza and 3) Old San Juan. PR is the home of 1 of the 3 bio-luminescent bays in the world. The other 2 are in Jamaica and Bahamas. We went to Fujardo, which was the closest bio bay to San Juan. I chose Pure Adventure out of the many companies offering tours because it was founded by marine biologists, and I knew it would be fun and educational.
