Hello, friends!

Greetings from another day in the Island of Enchantment. 

Today, Bobby and I checked out of our country inn, and headed back into San Juan — but not before making the most of our final hours on the east coast.

After breakfast, we packed and read a bit more, then leisurely packed the car and set off. Along the way, we wandered to a beachside restaurant called Rincon Del Faro (Corner of the Lighthouse?), where we had our SECOND fruit-carved beverage — this time, piña colada, my favorite.

After lunch of fish sandwiches (and fried calamari!), we took a jaunt over to the beach.

Not to be sated by just any old beach, and with an extra 45 minutes to spare before we had to head back and return our rental car, I convinced Bobby from here to drive to Playa Luquillo. Guidebooks and other travelers uniformely said Luquillo had one of the best beaches in the whole island, so we figured we’d spend a few minutes strolling the beach and putting our feet in the water.

It was BETTER THAN I COULD HAVE IMAGINED

The palm trees. The cool water. The lack of crowds. The rainforest mountains looming in the background. PERFECTION.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to leave here. If I had had a hammock, I may NOT have left. But leave we eventually did, and we headed back in, exchanged our car, and hailed a taxi to our nearby hotel.

So for this stay, we were a bit tied: because we were using credit card rewards points, we had a number of ritzy high-rise hotels to choose from. We ended up selecting the San Juan Water & Beach Club Hotel, which — no joke — has a special theme. 

The theme is just the color blue.

Blue lights in the hallway. Blue lights in your room. Blue lobby. Blue pool. Blue ocean. (Well, okay, I’ll give them those last two.)

So we checked into our blue room, and set about getting situated.

Good beach: ✔️

Blue lights: ✔️

ROOFTOP LOUNGE AND POOL?????? ✔️

We did some loafing and lounging (it IS a vacation, after all), and soon enough, it was time for dinner. Just a few steps from our hotel was an oceanview bar and grill, where we ate MORE fried calamari and tried the mango mojitos and octopus salad.

Except for the guests SMOKING IN FLAGRANT DISREGARD FOR THE NO SMOKING SIGNS, the restaurant was tasty and the waiters were super friendly.

After that, it was time for a bit of nighttime beach sittin’ (the moon is super bright these days!), and then a bit more lazing around before bed.

Tragically, this evening saw the demise of Bobby’s laptop, which means I’m stuck to phone photos for the rest of the trip’s blog posts. In the interim, check out these pictures of pictures of today:

And with that, I’m off to sleep! Tomorrow, we see OLD SAN JUAN and tour the Bacardí factory. Will try to see if I can send samples via the computer to each of you. 😜