San Juan PR Culinary Tour

We have been to San Juan 3 or 4 times before so we didn’t want to do the Rum Factory or the Rain Forest, so what do you schedule after 22 days on a ship, a Food Tour! We arrived in San Juan on time and the US Government requires all passengers to present themselves to Immigration’s. So the people with early tours were called down to pass through the Border Patrol with their passports, so as we got off the ship our passports were returned to us as they were collected on the first day of the cruise. They called all of the early tours and then started calling by deck, so when we got out there there were 40-50 people waiting to either get back on the ship or to go on a tour. We were waiting to get back on because we had an hour before our tour was scheduled. We couldn’t get on until all the passengers had been cleared from the ship, there is always one but he finally made it down. So we waited for 30-45 minutes before we could get back on. They had started to clear the crew while we were down there waiting.

So we got down for the tour and met up with Christine the guide and we started the hike up the hill to our first stop for a Majorca pastry and then a chocolate Martini, made with Vodka, Baileys and a chocolate cocoa powder. We then headed to the next location and were served pork shoulder with beans and rice, a sauce and a fried plantain. The meat was really tender and juicy and went well with fruit rum punch. The next location had a watermelon  mojito and a ceviche Mahi-mahi with taro chips, we’re not big on ceviche but the mojito was delicious. The last place we stopped at was a popsicle store where they made out of a gelato, Lisa had fruity one and I had the Wedding Cake flavored one, they were pretty darn good!

This was a short stop so when we got back at 2:45 the ship was almost ready to leave. The Captain announced it was going to be a pretty rough ride tonight starting with our exit from the harbor. As I looked out the harbor I could see this departure was going to be a challenge. The Chanel leaving the harbor was just to the right of the wave breaks, we had a pilot on the ship to help get us out of here. The pilot boat stayed on the side of the ship until we were out of the harbor, that little boat was getting tossed around like  it was a tiny fishing boat. After we cleared the harbor it took the pilot boat some time to get positioned so the pilot could jump from our ship onto their boat. He was finally able to get back on board with a loud cheer from all the guest watching the process. 

We are on our way to the Dominican Republic and should arrive early tomorrow morning. We were going to do the waterfalls there and decided we didn’t want to risk it so we opted to do the dune buggies and beach break for our final excursion.

The cast and crew has a variety show tonight at 6 and we have our final reservation in Prime 7 Steakhouse and its the second formal optional night, I plan to wear optional. We got down to the show and Lisa was starting to have that look where she wasn’t going to make it. She headed back to the room and I stopped back after the show and she still wasn’t doing well. We had a reservation at Prime 7 the steakhouse and after I checked on Lisa at 7:30 I went up and cancelled the reservation. Well we made it an early night and will try to get up early and hopefully she will be better in the morning.

Our butler did call me and asked if he could bring up something light for Lisa or a dinner for me, I told him she just needed sleep and after 22 days, it won’t hurt me to skip a meal 😊