#some very nice after rain clouds out today i had to snap a few pics of
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#clouds#sky#sun#aesthetic#enviornment#some very nice after rain clouds out today i had to snap a few pics of
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Must Be The Rain
I was busy cleaning up the mess left over from the party when he finally arrived, looking like Santa, with a bag full of gifts slung over his shoulder. I could see the fancy wrapping paper sticking out the top of the toy store bag, and one name came to mind, Connie. No way did he wrap those gifts himself, she did it for him, and even though she was in attendance, she mentioned nothing other than the fact that Shan would be running late. “Knock knock,” he said in that low, gravelly voice of his through the screen door. Jesus, he looked hot and I bit the inside of my cheek so hard that I could taste blood.
“You’re too late Shannon, the party ended an hour ago.” I said bitterly, not bothering to walk over and open the door for him. The party was supposed to take place outside in the backyard, but sadly. the forecast called for rain. We normally don’t get a lot here in sunny California, so it was just my shitty luck it had to happen today of all days.
“I know, I’m sorry, my flight was delayed. I really tried to get here this time Bekka.” He studied my face, trying to see if I believed him or not. “Where is she?”
I glared at him, shifting all of my weight to one foot. “In her bedroom, playing with her new toys.” I was pissed as hell with him for never showing up on time like he promised, but at least he showed up. My father made endless promises to me when I was Ellie’s age and never kept a single one. I was so hurt by his lies, but I blamed my mother for not shielding me better. Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about that with Shannon. He’d never hurt her like that.
“Can I at least come in and give her these gifts, please?” That sad face and pouty lip still tugged at my heart strings six months later. I wasn’t over him and didn’t think I’d ever be.
I tried like hell, but couldn’t stop my lips from curling upward. “Fine,” I said with as much attitude as I could muster. He opened the door and stepped inside, his boots clicking on the hardwood floor as he laid the bag down next to the couch and proceeded toward me. He leaned in, gripping my arms tightly and planting a kiss on my head as he forced me into one of those strong hugs of his. Just as I started to gather my argumentative words, he let go and sauntered down the hallway to our daughter’s bedroom.
“Daddy! Daddy!” I could hear her excited squeals echoing through the house the second she saw him. She missed him terribly and asked when we were going home pretty much daily.
It crushed my heart and I could sense my eyes beginning to water slightly as I sighed, listening to them playing together. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss him. I simply couldn’t deal with him rarely being around and the temptation that only increased while he was out there on the road. Even though he never actually had sex with anyone else, he had the intention of doing it and backed out at the last minute. I found out after the fact, but the point is, he thought about it. This led to many, many horrible fights. Of course, there was the option to travel with him, stop any chance of it happening again, but that would be too difficult with Ellie. Tour life really wasn’t the place for a rambunctious three year old, and I had to put her first. So, after one too many fights, I packed up and moved into a nice little three bedroom house about fifteen minutes from Shannon.
He made it known that he wasn’t happy with my decision and seemed to be determined to get me to come back to him. He came by often, when he was in town, trying to talk me into coming home. “What did you bring me?” The door burst open and Ellie flew past me, racing over to the overflowing bag. Clearing my throat, I wiped my eyes and continued to pick up the mess in the dining room while watching my daughter go nuts, pulling the first package out of the bag.
“Open them up and find out princess.” He grinned as he came to a halt next to me. Folding his arms, he nudged me with his elbow and nodded over in the direction of our baby girl.
Ellie was already shredding the wrapping paper and I rolled my eyes, noticing that he got her the most expensive toys. “I just cleaned that room up Shannon!”
“Always so negative Bek.” At least he shaved that horrid beard. Last time I saw him it was so out of control and he was much more handsome without it. “I’ll take care of it, okay.” I watched him go sit next to her on the floor, folding his legs in front of him and pulling all of the presents out of the bag. He stacked them up for her to unwrap, handing her a new one each time she finished oohing and aahing over the one in her hand. He then shoved handfuls of the discarded bright pink paper into the empty bag.
Once she was finally done opening his gifts, she asked if they could go outside and play. It hadn’t rained yet, but I could see the gloomy gray clouds building in the sky and knew it wouldn’t be long before it was pouring. Shannon conveniently brought over her new rain coat and matching boots for the little vacation he had planned for next month and oddly enough, that was all she cared about. He asked me two months ago about taking her to Florida for two weeks next month. The coat and boots were merely a precaution, I guess. Apparently September is a rainy month in the south.
My daughter sat on the floor, seemingly mesmerized by the red boots with dark polka dots on them. Ellie slipped off her new shoes and shoved her little feet into the boots. She always was a daddy’s girl and he knew it. As soon as she stood and took a few steps, gazing down at the ladybugs on top of the rubber material, she bolted over to him. “Let’s go outside! Da…ddy.”
I shook my head as she tugged on his jeans. He only laughed, “Okay, okay.” He then squat down and helped her into the jacket, buttoning it up. “Show mommy how cute you look.”
She spun around and smiled at me, but before I could dig my phone out of my pocket and snap a pic, she ran over to the door. “Are you really going outside like that?” I asked, shocked that he was really doing this.
He drew the hood of his jacket over his head. “I suppose so. I’ve got a change of clothes in the car, so I should be good, but I appreciate the concern. If I get sick, are you gonna take care of me? You know, make me stay in bed and feed me some soup?” Raising his eyebrows, he blew me a kiss.
He earned himself another eye roll before exiting the back door with Ellie. I cleared the table, throwing the few remaining party plates with half eaten cake and melted ice cream into the trash. It took me just a few minutes to finish cleaning and move the large plastic bag full of wrapping paper that Shannon left in the middle of the floor, to right outside the front door.
When I was done, I stood in front of the French doors, watching him twirl Ellie around with her screeching in delight. She looked up to the sky, enjoying something she knew I’d never do with her. She had Shannon so wrapped around her little finger that he’d do pretty much anything she asked. When he set her down, she started stomping through the puddles that had already gathered on the pavement. Something as simple as playing in the rain made her light up with happiness, and I was already thinking about going out to join them.
Sadly, just as I was about to put a jacket on, they were coming in. Another missed opportunity. Ellie was pulling Shannon impatiently toward the door. I could hear her saying something about playing with her new doll. I stopped her, asking that she take off the boots and jacket at the door. Shannon already knew the drill and stripped himself of the black hoodie, wringing out the water and hanging it over the back of a chair. His shirt was soaked too, but he darted through the house and out the front door, returning minutes later with a suitcase.
I was busy wiping up the trail of water he left on the floor so that nobody fell and I hadn’t realized that he disappeared. I tossed the damp towel in the laundry basket in the bathroom and pushed my partially closed bedroom door open. There he was, standing there shirtless and holding a clean t-shirt. I looked away really fast, but it was too late, our eyes had already met. It was that look of confidence that made every shade of light and golden amber in his eyes begin to spread darker brown around the edges. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you were in here.” I turned to walk out, but he was quick and spun me around.
He dropped the blue fabric and caressed my cheek. The sound of my name rolling off of his lips ignited every fantasy I’d ever had about him all at once. The second his lips touched mine, all of the pain, doubt and angst blurred together with the ache of missing him. The connection between us was still very much alive and then he pressed his lips against mine even harder. His tongue slipped between my lips and the most intoxicating wave shot through me. I missed him so fucking much it made my head spin.
I wondered if he knew how crazy he made me when he pulled back, tucking a few strands of hair behind my ear and staring deep into my eyes. “You miss me as much as I miss you Bek, I can sense it in your kiss. Aren’t you sick of being apart?”
“I do miss you-“ Just as I started to respond, Ellie began calling for him.
“Shit,” he picked up the blue Journey shirt from the floor and slipped it over his head. “Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be back in a few.”
I knew that once he left the room, he wasn’t coming back anytime soon. This conversation would have to wait until another time. I picked up his wet clothes and stared down at his boots and suitcase, inhaling the familiar scent of cologne I’d come to know and love so much. I threw the wet clothes and a few pieces from my laundry basket, into the washing machine.
While he kept Ellie occupied, I was able to do some things I had been putting off and got dinner ready. Shannon kept her busy even when she grew bored of the toys. They sat at the table coloring for a while. I knew Shannon loved my veggie nuggets and I saw his face when I brought the food to the table. “I assume you’re joining us.”
“Can I?” He asked, picking up the crayons and shoving them neatly back into the box.
“That would be nice,” I responded before heading back into the kitchen for some glasses. He complimented me as we enjoyed a meal with Ellie, something we hadn’t done in a while. After having a slice of her cake, he even offered to clean the mess from dinner while I bathed Ellie and got her into some pajamas.
Shannon went back to play with her for a while and I relaxed on the couch. I was stunned that he was staying as long as he had. This was impressive. Most of the time he stopped by, made an appearance and then darted off to go hang with Jared or some friends.
At bedtime, Ellie was insistent that her daddy read her a story and lay with her until she fell asleep tonight instead of me. I finished up the laundry and got cozy on the couch, playing a game on my phone. It was over an hour later when he plopped down next to me, taking the phone from my hands and placing it on the coffee table. Both of his hands gently cupped my face and I was sure he was going to kiss me and then beg to stay, but he didn’t. Instead, he just kissed my nose and slid his arm around my side. Shannon pulled me against his chest. “Listen, I’m sorry I missed the party, it was beyond my control.” When I didn’t respond, he squeezed me tighter. “You don’t believe me?”
“Yes, I believe you. Your mother said that you’d be late and I know she doesn’t lie.” I just couldn’t get my mind off of that kiss and how it made me feel. I mean, it’s not like I left him because I didn’t love him anymore. When you’re in love with someone, feelings don’t just fade away.
“I enjoyed spending time with her. Thanks for letting me hang out for a while.” He got silent and then a few moments later, he made his classic plea. “Bek please come home.”
I sighed, dropping my head against his chest, “Shannon..”
“Okay…. let’s not ruin the night, it’s been so nice. I should probably go.” He released me and stood up. I remained quiet, watching him head into my bedroom for his things. “Walk me out,” he said, reappearing wearing his boots and carrying his suitcase. He didn’t even bother to ask for his missing clothes. In a way, I wasn’t ready for him to go. Part of me wanted, no, needed him to stay, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
“Sure.” I was a coward. Silently, I followed him out to his car and allowed him to pull me into a tight hug. Despite the heaviness in my belly, it still fluttered wildly against his body. Being so close to him again soothed me much more than I had expected. I felt the first few drops hitting my face as he released me. “Shit! You’ve got to be kidding me.” It was starting to rain. “Twice in one day!”
“It’s only water Bek. You don’t know what you missed out on earlier. Ellie had a blast.”
Jesus, what was happening to me. He’s the only man that can piss me off and make me want to kiss him at the same time. Lunging forward, I cupped his cheeks and kissed his full lips. The rain made tracks down our faces to where our lips met and I could taste the droplets in the kiss. He slid his hand along my jaw, his fingers stopping behind my ear and tilted my head back, deepening the kiss. I was dying to feel every inch of his skin. The rain had come out of nowhere and made me blink rapidly as I broke the kiss. “Fuck! Look, I don’t want you to go.”
“What?”
Why was it so hard to admit my feelings? “I can’t do this anymore. I miss you and I hate being apart much more than the stupid reasons I left you for. I trust you and I don’t want you to leave.”
The rain hammered down on us as we stood there, kissing passionately under the bright street light. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” He whispered, but I only shrugged in response. “Must be the rain,” he said with a grin.
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BB’s Lawnside BBQ
Leo:
What an Experience (and some great nachos)!
Some people say that there is a reason for everything and it would seem that there was a reason that our previous attempts to dine at B.B.’s were frustrated. Ben was leaving for Philadelphia for the weekend, so we had to get barbeque on a Thursday night. The Kansas City sky was threatening rain, but with the overcast sky, we did get some sweet relief from the past few weeks of summer heat. Because it was so nice, Ben suggested that we try B.B.’s Lawnside again and check out its patio.
So, without Gracie this time, we headed south to B.B.’s. We arrived and told that there was going to be live music starting soon. It looked like several in the crowd had finished eating and were waiting for the music to start. I usually enjoy live music and I’ve heard that B.B.’s offers great live shows. That it offers live music regularly (I mean this was just a run-of-the-mill Thursday night!) is a big plus and I was excited for the music as we were shown to our seats.
We asked to sit outside and we were the only people sitting on the patio. The waitress came and informed us that Miller Lite tallboys were only $2, which made my drink decision easy! I scanned the menu and the first thing I was struck by was that, besides the barbeque, the food options all had a southern/Cajun feel. This gives B.B.’s a large variety of food options to choose from, not just the standard barbeque meat platters and dishes.
Ben and I had quite the hunger and we decided to get an appetizer. We went with BBQ Nachos. Ohmigosh, these nachos are amazing! The chips themselves were like old school ballpark nachos (before you only got a bag of Tostitos). They were loaded with cheese, pulled pork, and beans. And they were delicious. The sauce from the beans and the pulled pork mixed well with the cheese and became a semi-sweet and spicy sauce. For some reason, the aftertaste reminded me of cornbread. These nachos were hearty and I told Ben that I almost regretted getting food and should have just ordered another serving of nachos!
The whole time we were eating the nachos, the temperature dropped another couple of degrees and the sky darkened. It was definitely going to rain and soon. But luckily the patio had an awning. Within minutes of finishing the nachos, it was pouring! The rain would be finished by the time that we left, but it was pretty awesome to be eating great barbeque out in the rain, with thunder roaring and lightning crackling.
As the rain poured down, our waitress brought out our dinners. I got the Burnt End dinner. One of KC’s specialties is burnt ends and B.B.’s burnt ends were no exception. The pit beans that came with the meal were great, too. My favorite part of the meal, though, was the fries. I know, I know, I can hear it now, that this is supposed to be about barbeque, not sides! Well, the barbeque was great and the experience was outstanding, but the part of the meal that really sticks out in my mind was the fries. I have never had battered fries before, but I hope that I have them again. These fries were potato spears that had been battered and deep fried. They were crunchy and delicious and complimented the meal well.
As we finished up our barbeque, there were a few moments where we were just sitting in the stillness in the rain. Then, the live music started. It was rockin’! I can’t imagine a better dessert to our meal than to sit and listen to a few songs from a live band. The music the band played was a mix-up of rock ‘n roll and jazz, with a bluesy feel. I dug it quite a bit. We probably would have stayed longer listening to music, but (1) we hadn’t paid the cover because we were just eating and (2) Ben still had to pack for his trip to Philly the next day. So, as the rain had turned into a light sprinkle, we headed out.
As we drove home, I reflected on how great of an experience eating at B.B.’s had been. It got me thinking about all of the other great experiences that we have had eating barbeque. B.B.’s was our eleventh barbeque restaurant on our way to trying all of the barbeque in Kansas City. Despite that, it was as unique of an experience as the ten restaurants before it. Maybe it is because I am writing about each trip, but I remember each experience vividly.
And I think really that is what Kansas City barbeque is all about. We are a great barbeque town with so many terrific options to choose from (an embarrassment of riches as one of my friends would say). I’m very glad that we write about the experience of going to these great barbeque restaurants because I would be woefully inadequate at trying to distinguish the barbeque itself or rank it, it is all just too good.
So, I hope that you enjoy reading about our experiences as we go to every barbeque restaurant in Kansas City. I hope that it gets you salivating and hungry for some barbeque. And I hope that our articles prompt you to go out and try some new barbeque! More likely than not, if you go to a new barbeque restaurant in Kansas City, you’re going to get a fantastic meal, you don’t have to worry about that (how great is it that you can randomly pick a barbeque restaurant in Kansas City and more than likely get barbeque that is some of the best in the nation!). You’ll also have a great and unique experience.
Our trip to B.B.’s was a wonderful experience that we won’t be able to duplicate. But I am excited for future experiences at B.B.’s and hearing about your B.B.’s barbeque experiences. I hope that you are hungry and why not go try B.B.’s today?
Ben:
I’ll say this up front: our trip to BB’s Lawnside BBQ was one of the most enjoyable overall experiences I’ve had so far on this endeavor. The food, the setting, the beer… BB’s Lawnside delivered. Not that you shouldn’t read to the end of this review, but those are the facts.
With me planning to head out of town for a weekend of debauchery in Philadelphia (a woefully barbecue-inadequate city), Leo and I scheduled our weekly barbecue for Thursday night. Still undecided where we’d go by Thursday afternoon, I noted that it was absolutely perfect outside. It was one of those Kansas City summer days that give you the respite from the relentless heat and humidity that you’ve endured for the past two months. We’re talking partly cloudy, high 70s, slight breeze.
With weather in mind, I proposed to Leo that we eat dinner at BB’s Lawnside, known for its patio (and, if you’ll remember, somewhere we had previously tried to go with Gracie in tow). Leo agreed and the plan was set.
Knowing that we’d be feasting that night, I had foregone a normal diet for the day, eating only one over-priced and nutrient-rich smoothie. I figured that would suffice for my serving of fruits and vegetables for the week, right? Whatever, the important part is that my stomach was empty enough and my hunger pangs were strong enough to be all kinds of ready for BB’s Lawnside barbecue.
As we arrived, pulling into BB’s huge gravel parking lot, I noted for the first time that evening that the sky had turned from partly cloudy to… very cloudy. Dark clouds, even. I commented to Leo that it looked like it may rain, eliminating the whole impetus for our trip to BB’s Lawnside. But by then, Mother Nature couldn’t possibly hold us back, as we were near minutes away from yet another barbecue feast. And besides, BB’s patio was partially covered, so we’d be fine.
We went into BB’s relatively busy interior and told the guy at the door we wanted to sit outside. Apparently, there was live music that night (something that happens nearly every night -- BB’s Lawnside is a blues bar, after all), but because we didn’t plan to stick around all night, we could forego the $10 cover charge.
Since we were both starving, Leo and I quickly decided to order an appetizer. BB’s menu has the barbecue basics -- brisket, pork, ribs, etc. -- but also plenty of other options, many of which are cajun and creole inspired. We decided on the bbq nachos: chips (duh), pulled pork, pit beans, and chili cheese sauce. I also decided on my order: the rib dinner with “skillet fries” and pit beans. And to top it all off, we ordered tall cans of Miller High Life (note: Leo remembers this as Miller Lite, but I think that’s just the beer talking), which just so happened to be my beer of choice in college. Nostalgia and what not.
Our nachos arrived quickly -- a paper boat of all your favorite ingredients thrown together. I snapped a couple pics and dug right in. It’s safe to say now that ordering those nachos was one of the best decisions I made that week. These nachos weren’t anything fancy, but I think that’s part of what made them so good. I told Leo that they reminded me of something that someone would bring to a backyard barbecue, and it would be the one item that everyone at the party raves about. These are your Aunt Kathy’s nachos that everyone talks about. “Is Aunt Kathy coming? She’s bringing those barbecue nachos, right?”
Seriously, though, the nachos were delicious. There were hints of sweetness, I imagine from the beans and barbecue sauce (I think), but they were hearty, as well, with plenty of pulled pork and chili cheese sauce. I’m tempted to go back to BB’s just to order the nachos as my meal, that way I wouldn’t have to share.
As we waited for our entrees, it began to drizzle a little, then rain, then really rain. No worries, we were protected by the patio roof. And as it started to rain, the band inside began to play. Between the Miller High Life, the nachos, the rain all around us, and live blues music in the background, it couldn’t get much better.
Actually, it could, because our food arrived.
Like the nachos, the entrees weren’t short on portion size. The ribs came slightly sauced over a pillow of white bread, a mountain of potatoes nestled next to a cup of beans.
Also like the nachos, the ribs reminded me of something I’d eat a backyard barbecue -- from that one guy that’s incredibly good at barbecue. The ribs were extra smokey, with a pretty distinct flavor. Of course, the meat itself was tender, but the big takeaway for me was BB’s smokey flavor that permeated the ribs. Again, maybe it was just because we were sitting outside, drinking my favorite light beer, but everything on my plate reminded me of the best backyard barbecue you’ve ever been to.
The “skillet fries” were chunks of fried potatoes that served as an ideal conduit for BB’s original and hot sauces. The beans were extra thick with plenty of meat, certainly more on the hearty rather than sweet side of baked beans.
As we finished up, I could barely finish my ribs, which prompted some expected teasing from Leo; finishing your meal is both American and manly. The rain had mostly died down, making it safe for us to walk back through the interior and out to the car. As we stopped inside, the band was going full steam ahead with some quality blues music, and the restaurant was bustling -- a stark contrast to our solo patio experience.
BB’s Lawnside has an excellent patio, live music, and all the tastes and feelings to remind you of the best backyard barbecue you’ve ever been to.
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jiggling in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they fried the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality (and there were manatees in there – WE PADDLE BOARDED WITH MANATEES).
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico published first on http://ift.tt/2r6hzQy
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jiggling in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they fried the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality (and there were manatees in there – WE PADDLE BOARDED WITH MANATEES).
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jiggling in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they fried the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality (and there were manatees in there – WE PADDLE BOARDED WITH MANATEES).
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico http://ift.tt/2t0grne
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jigging in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they friend the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality.
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jigging in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they friend the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality.
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jigging in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they friend the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality.
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jigging in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they friend the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality.
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jigging in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they friend the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality.
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico published first on http://ift.tt/2qCHnUt
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jiggling in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they fried the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality (and there were manatees in there – WE PADDLE BOARDED WITH MANATEES).
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico published first on http://ift.tt/2r6hzQy
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jiggling in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they fried the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality (and there were manatees in there – WE PADDLE BOARDED WITH MANATEES).
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico published first on http://ift.tt/2r6hzQy
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jiggling in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they fried the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality (and there were manatees in there – WE PADDLE BOARDED WITH MANATEES).
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico published first on http://ift.tt/2qxZz2j
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jigging in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they friend the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality.
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
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Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico
You might as well just pronounce us Mr. and Mrs. Puerto-Retersik, because we recently snuck off for a few days to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary (!!!) in Puerto Rico. Also because Puerto-Retersik rolls right off the tongue if you try hard enough. Promise.
As we mentioned in last week’s podcast we wanted to share a few more pictures and details about our anniversary trip to San Juan because we LOVED it and we couldn’t recommend it more highly. So here’s the gist on where we stayed, what we did, and what we ate in case any of you are considering a trip to that area.
Why Puerto Rico?
After taking our actual honeymoon to Anchorage, Alaska in 2007, we wanted a destination that was decidedly beachier. Alaska was wonderful, but not necessarily relaxing (we always describe it as an “adventure honeymoon”), so for this trip we wanted to give ourselves plenty of excuses to just sit back, chill out, and enjoy not having to fetch snacks or clean-up toys for a few days. Puerto Rico was also a nice option because the flights weren’t too long from the east coast (less time traveling = maximizing our time away) and, since it’s a U.S. Territory, we didn’t have to bother with passports, currency exchanges, or going through customs at the airport. And while Spanish is the primary language on the island, nearly everyone spoke English and was extremely kind. So apart from having trouble reading a few street signs, we had zero language trouble on the trip.
Where We Stayed:
We took some advice to “get a modest room in a nice hotel” (which means you can enjoy the same elevated hotel amenities without paying the extra high room rates for those special suites) and stayed at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel. It’s in San Juan – just about 5 minutes from the historic area known as Old San Juan – and we found a deal on Expedia that included flights & hotel that was especially budget friendly because we went during their low season. It wasn’t an all-inclusive resort deal (we find we like to venture off and find local food, activities, etc), but we did like that the hotel had several pools and restaurants in the facility, so we could theoretically stay put for the whole trip if we wanted to really take it easy.
We were there for about 3.5 half days, and we did manage to spend one of those days totally relaxing. We literally spent nearly an entire day on those lounge chairs, reading books, and getting food from the restaurant directly behind it (yup, the waiters walked right into the little pool of water where our lounge chairs were with our tacos and it was as magnificent as it sounds).
Mango tacos = my wife’s happy place.
In addition to tons of deck space and a number of different pools, there was also a small beach area with hammocks and a little lagoon (plus a larger beach without rocks around 50 yards next door to this). Sidenote: the two women who were randomly in our shot below spent about 45 minutes trying to get the perfect Boomerang of their buns jigging in the sunset, which seemed weird at the time, but later when we were looking for a good place to eat dinner and clicked into Instagram to look up local hashtags we saw that they were famous “Instagram models” with a ton of followers who apparently enjoy their videos very much. Oh 2017, you are so weird sometimes.
The hotel had its own spa, so I surprised Sherry with a couples massage one morning (we had enjoyed one on our honeymoon, so I liked the idea of a little throwback massage ten years later). We didn’t take our cameras into the room with us (because that would’ve been weird) but Sherry found a picture of the room in a book in the hotel lobby, so she took a picture of that page instead. Because that’s not weird, right?
The spa had its own private lounge area to chill in after your rub down. And like the true nerds that we are, we spent most of it admiring the outdoor furniture and giant white planters.
What We Did – Adventure Day:
As relaxing as our trip was, we spent two full days out-and-about. We ended up dubbing our first day out as our “adventure day” because it involved renting a car, driving an hour away, and doing some hiking and kayaking along the way. The plan was born from a recommendation that we got from our son’s preschool teacher to kayak one of Puerto Rico’s “bio bays.” These are areas with lots of microscopic biolumenscent organisms, so at night they glow in the water when you reach your hand in and stir up the water. Our reservation was in a town about an hour east of San Juan called Fajardo, so we rented a car for 24 hours so we could explore on our way there and back.
Our first stop was in an area called Luquillo that had a great beach along with a long strip of food “kiosks” as they were called. Picture a bunch of charming hole-in-the-wall open-air restaurants where you can grab a bunch of authentic Puerto Rican food. It was there that we experienced mofongo, which is a popular local dish primarily made up of mashed plantains. This particular one (topped with chicken and peppers) was DELICIOUS.
After lunch, our next stop was El Yunque National Forest, which is the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Park System. We didn’t have a lot of time there, so the NICEST man at the visitor center recommended the La Mina Waterfall hike as the best way to experience the park. He wasn’t wrong.
The waterfall itself was pretty crowded when we got there, and we opted not to swim since the sun was setting and we had to head off to the bio bay shortly, so I’d say in some ways we enjoyed the journey of the hike more than the destination. And there I go sounding like a motivational poster.
We had a few minutes on our drive down from the waterfall to hit up one other spot in the rainforest recommended by the guide. This observation tower was closed for the day by the time we got there, but the views from the ground were still really beautiful.
We actually used the opportunity to recreate a “wedding ring hands” picture that we took on our honeymoon which still hangs in our bedroom today.
Here’s the original Alaskan one below. We joked that we can take one of these every 10 years and watch our hands age.
As the sun set, we made our way to Fajardo to meet up with our kayaking guides. There are several tour groups that do this, but we used Kayaking Puerto Rico and were really impressed with how professional, fun, and reassuring they were (we heard from a few folks on this tour with us that they had done others but they liked this tour group the best). This is the bay we’d head out into later on when it got dark, which would lead to a tree-canopied canal and into the bio bay. These are some groups going out in the earlier shift – but we picked our time slot because it started later for maximum darkness.
So as the sun set and we got excited for our pitch-dark kayak tour, we walked to a restaurant called El Pescador to grab a quick dinner. It was really cool inside: exposed beams, live edge tables, driftwood light fixtures. And we should use the term “inside” loosely here, since it was actually just a glorified covered porch (open on three sides). The is actually the most “indoor” meal we ate the entire trip! All the others were completely outside. That shows you how nice the weather and the al-fresca dining situations are there (also: pool tacos are life).
We didn’t have any way to waterproof our phones for the actual kayaking part, so the only photographic evidence we have of our bio bay trip are a few pictures taken by the kayak guides (they’re all out of focus but they adequately capture our excitement). As we described in the podcast, we had a full moon for our trip, which made the whole 2-hour excursion really, really pretty. But it did make seeing the bioluminescence a little harder, so at one point they broke out a large tarp for all of us to go under to see things better. Basically, if you swirled your hand around in the water it looks like someone dumped glitter in there.
It was definitely cool, and a few times a cloud went in front of the moon and we could see the water glitter without the tarp, but I think it was another one of those journey-not-the-destination things. The actual act of kayaking in the dark through these small tree-canopied channels with tiny lights on the end of each kayak on a moonlit night – that was the actual magic. And yes, sparkly water is cool too.
Despite not getting back to our hotel until nearly 1 am (after driving back, returning the car, etc) we still found the energy to take advantage of the 24-hour hot tub. Which, at this hour, we had allllll to ourselves. So naturally, Sherry turned up the sexy.
What We Did – Culture Day:
Our other day out of the hotel is what we ended up calling our “culture day,” which was basically full of history and sightseeing. We took a $4 Uber ride to Old San Juan to walk around the historic forts or “castillos” that flank two corners of the island. The pic below is taken from one and you can see the other one off in the distance.
We started at the Castillo San Cristóbal where, coincidentally, they were actively filming a movie called “Imprisoned,” hence the actor dressed in a prison uniform talking with those people dressed up as guards… or were they real police guarding the set? Not sure. It meant some of the fort was blocked off, but there was still no shortage of cool sights (and I got mistaken for a member of the crew at one point – which mostly thrilled me because someone looked at me and didn’t immediately think “tourist”).
The most iconic part of these forts are the sentry boxes or “garitas” that mark many of the corners (they’re what’s on Puerto Rico’s license plates, for instance). And for some reason I felt like this was my best posing option.
Speaking of “interesting” posing choices. We spotted a few iguanas just walking around the forts, so naturally we had to snap photos for the kids. This is the shot where Sherry suddenly said “wait, let me put something in for scale.”
There’s a trolley that shuttles people between the two castillos, but we chose to walk – and we ended up being SO GLAD we did. The streets of Old San Juan are AMAZING.
We took a verrrrry meandering path and stopped hundreds of times to take pictures of all of the colorful buildings, ornate balconies, and cool old doorways.
We even did our best Instagram model impressions too. Sherry calls this one “I’m reading that sign.”
This is me imitating a well known fashion blogger move that I like to call “pretending to be laughing at something.” #nailedit
I mean, c’mon. This house is like charm overload.
And how about this one that seemed to be taking some new paint colors for a spin. Bonus points for such tidy test swatches too (is it bad that I kinda like the existing color best?).
And of course, the pink ones were Sherry’s favorite.
We eventually made it to the second fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which was almost more impressive than the first. And had just as many good photo ops in those cool sentry boxes. This is Sherry doing what I like to call “staring off into the distance and contemplating life’s purpose.”
The interior rooms of the fort were impressive too. As people who don’t live around a lot of Spanish-style architecture, we loved soaking up all of the white stucco walls and arched doorways (even if some were a little on the small side).
I was so tempted to photoshop more Sherrys in every doorway down the line.
This pose is for all the ladies out there.
And for context, in the photo above I’m standing in the same spot that woman is standing in the photo below. It was amazing how big this place was – even just the sheer size of the fort walls was enough to make us all feel like ants.
Despite being nice and breezy at the fort, it gets pretty hot when you’re climbing lots of stairs and walking up and down all the long winding ramps, so it’s definitely one of those “wear comfortable shoes” activities. And make sure there’s room on your phone to take tons and tons of photos.
We did ask some of our fellow tourists at various points to snap photos of us, just because one awkward thing about a couples vacation is the plethora of single-person-doing-this-or-that shots you come home with. This is the lighthouse at the top of the fort (look at those cool smaller sentry boxes on the corners up top).
Man I love this lady.
We left the forts around lunch time and continued our jaunt through Old San Juan just to see what sort of dining options we’d stumble upon. We ended up at this tapas place located next to a hotel courtyard. It was actually cooler sitting outside under the porch thanks to the fans/breeze than it was inside the restaurant itself, so we got to keep our streak of eating outside alive.
After a light lunch, we added ten dozen more photos of colorful buildings to our collection, found our way to this cute popsicle place with the best logo I’ve ever seen, and then stumbled upon this little plaza that was overrun with pigeons (in kind of a charming way, not your typical gross pigeon-y way).
While I was standing there, a guy thrust some birdseed into my hand, and within a split second I had a new bird friend.
He finished off my pile before any of his friends could join him/swarm me, which I was grateful for. But he didn’t seem to have any interest in finding a new perch, even after my food was gone. #sideeye
Squeezing In One More Adventure:
We spent our last night just taking it easy and soaking up the awesome weather and scenery. We ate a nice low-key dinner at our hotel’s outdoor restaurant and spent more time just lounging on one of the pool decks.
Well, and we did go on a hunt for this giant horse lamp Sherry had spotted in the hotel magazine. Thinking we need to add this to our lighting line… whaddya say?
And, because we’re constantly thwarting our own efforts to relax (as Sherry likes to say, “we have zero chill”), we spent our last morning grabbing a bite at the same place where we had our first meal: a food truck near our hotel (it was literally the best taco I’ve ever had – they friend the tortilla shell just a bit to make it crispy and it was heaven). And then we headed off to stand-up paddleboard for an hour before our flight left that afternoon. There was a huge lagoon behind our hotel (the picture below is the view of it from our room) and we had seen kayakers and paddleboarders in it every day. So Sherry indulged me for one last adventure before we returned to reality.
So long story long, we loved celebrating our tenth anniversary in Puerto Rico. It was the most relaxing trip I think we’ve ever taken and it made us even more excited to travel to new places with our children too. I think we get so hung up on the complications of planning and scheduling trips, but this one was remarkably easy since we booked the hotel and flights as a package deal. We literally didn’t plan or research a thing in advance besides booking our kayak tour a few weeks before we got there, so it makes the idea of slipping away with the whole family much less intimidating. Happy travels, amigos!
The post Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico appeared first on Young House Love.
Celebrating Ten Years (!) Of Marriage In Puerto Rico posted first on findqueenslandelectricians.blogspot.com
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