We got into Puerto Rico last night … on our way to our southern Caribbean cruise.  My girlfriend Andrea and I, along with a group of friends, are finally on our way.  I had blogged about the cruise quite a while back, and got a good response … there are 11 other friends that joined us, about half of them flying in with us yesterday.

The flight from Salt Lake City to Atlanta was nice … but they didn’t use the aircraft with the  onboard Trivial Pursuit … bummer.  The flight from Atlanta to San Juan was nice … we were upgraded to first class, and it was uneventful until the aborted landing in San Juan.  It ended up that the plane in front of us was too slow to get off the runway.  Oh well … no biggy.

We took a cab into Old San Juan, and it is very cool … the entire area is built on the foundations of the old fort here.   We checked into our *very* nice hotel … the El Convento … which is a remodeled convent.  We had a great outdoor dinner at the tapas restaurant that is in the hotel – El Picoteo.  The food was wonderful and we had chicken, lobster, squid, beef, and some of their paella.  Too good.  Afterwards we took a walk through town as the nightlife began to pick up.  It was fun to see the various bars and clubs in the narrow streets, and the young people hanging out … and even some late night skateboarders that were very talented.

Today we are heading to go and see Arecibo … I’ll see if I can post some pictures later tonight.  Of course we are also closely tracking the various tropical storms … Felix, the latest tropical storm … but it is going to nicely move out of our way before the cruise leaves tomorrow night.  🙂

More later …