Only three full days in San Juan -- two for sightseeing and people-watching and today, the third, for beach and sun. For me the difficulty is slowing down and enjoying doing nothing.
The El San Juan is a hotel where you learn that Scott Fitzgerald was right: the rich are truly different. Those to whom money is no object sit down for a pricey breakfast inside the hotel, but we stride forth carrying our Starbucks coffee and novels out to the pool, or more accurately one of the pools.
The little coqui sing their hearts out for us, and when we get tired of doing nothing (which happens pretty quickly) we walk for an hour on the beach, passing a row of hotels, swerving around beach-walkers in all shapes and sizes and stopping to photograph a sea-side cemetery that is in eerie contrast to the excess and revelry along the shore.
At lunch we exit the hotel grounds and I finally sample mofongo--a Puerto Rican staple--in small local restaurant nearby. It's plantain, that bland and starchy cousin of the banana, cooked in a little oil and garlic and molded into a flat and circular shape. It's bland. I take sidelong glances at other diners and see that most have ordered their mofongo surrounded by chicken soup and shrimp. Next time.
By afternoon all chairs, poolside and beach, are full. No one at all is in the pool. Lavender towels are issued to all the guests, so even though the posted "resort dress code" for humans is totally ignored, the chairs are all tastefully draped in matching lavender towels. Poolside bars have lengthy menus of mojitos and coolers, and of course, no prices are listed. If you have to ask, you really don't belong here.
Before dinner we check out the televised news, see photos of the snow in Boston and footage of political riots in Cairo. We haven't had a cloth-napkin dinner since we arrived in San Juan, so on this last night we take the elevator down to the hotel restaurant for the prix-fixe. The waiters are overly attentive, swooping down on us to refill our water glasses each time we have taken a sip, but the salmon has a lively fresh tomato sauce with capers, and Caesar salad is cold and crisp, and the dessert is chocolate. Need I say more?
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