The Severed Cortex

I slept fairly well last night except for the drunk lady screaming in the hall at 3:00 am. Hope she's in a lot of pain this morning.

Nancy heads off to yoga class while I write. I catch-up on yesterday's adventure, clean up the room a little bit, then take a shower. No way am I shaving today because I'm on vacation. I've realized that I'm going to have to shave more than I'd like to already. Once I get cleaned up I crank up the computer to start writing the book review for the Curt Flood book I finished. I just get started when Nancy gets back. She informs me that she is very stretchy and loose and needs some breakfast. We head to the Windjammer for some buffet style breakfast. I load up on three kinds of portk; good thing I'm neither Jewish or Muslim.

After breakfast we head back to the room so Nancy can clean up. I use the opportunity to finish up the book review. Nancy takes off before I can finish and we agree to meet at the Ixtapa lounge for the walking tour of Old San Juan at 2:00. I pack up my belongings and head to the pool deck to read ... and of course write. I expected to see more people writing but it appears that I'm the only one. I need the practice anyway. I crank up the Trance Tuesday podcast to drown out the awful cruise ship band butchering reggae tunes.

I've already seen more cleavage on this trip than I thought was humanly possible. It's not the fake boob, Maxim cover, kind of cleavage either. Some people have no shame about their disgusting bodies and while I don't either, some of these people should. I'm not the only lecherous one sitting by the pool, but at least I'm pretending to be not interested. The guy sitting two chairs beside me is being blatantly obvious.

We arrive in San Juan just before 2 p.m. I'm impressed with how narrow the harbor entry is and how the captain made it into the dock. There are breakers left and right and the channel can't be more than a 1,000 feet wide. Then to top it off, there's a hard port side turn to get into the piers. All this and he had to do it into a 20 mph head wind. Very impressive.

We met in the Ixtapa lounge for our Old San Juan Walking tour. By the time they moved our group to the pier and we got going, it was almost 3:00. Normally Nancy and I wouldn't have done the tour thing, but my folks wanted to do one group thing as a family. We've wasted an hour of exploration time waiting for the tour to begin. Once we start, we are led to a bus that looked as though it was built in 1958. The short ride to the top of the San Juan area reveals that the wheel cylinders are completely shot in the bus. It vibrates and jumps every time the driver turns or brakes.

Our tour guide first takes us around to some government buildings with great looking designs. I quickly try to sketch them out in my travel journal. After the government buildings we head over to El Campo de Morro, an old fort at the entrance to the harbor. We explore the chapel and cover some history. We also learn that Puerto Rico only receives around 35 inches of rainfall per year. A half inch of that is coming down today in a steady drizzle. The reason for the rainfall history is because El Campo de Morro has an elaborate water collection system that captures the limited rainfall in cleverly designed cisterns.

After El Campo de Morro, we stop in Fifth Centennial Square, then head to the old Ponce de Leon house. From there we head to Christ's Gate which has a legend that it was built to keep horse riders from spilling over the edge and into the sea. This concludes our tour.

I ask if Jen and Parker want to shop and check out the local cuisine, but I apparently did so by pissing them off. Oh well. Nancy and I wander around the shops and restaurants and settle on a restaurant called Barrachina, which is tucked away in a courtyard. Nancy has a mojito while I enjoy a Presidente beer. It's not too bad, but it is a little on the sweet side. We order paella marinera, which is basically seafood paella. It had lobster, clams, sea and bay scallops, shrimp, and squid along with fried plantains. It was fantastically good even if it was overpriced. The service was very good, plus they gave us free pina colada samples.

We head back to the ship around 7:30 and enjoy a nice coffee beverage on the Promenade deck. I make small talk conversation with an older lady who I think was hitting on me until she realized that Nancy was sitting next to me. All I could think of was that Royal Caribbean needed to offer a gigolo service for the older ladies. Nancy and I wandered up to the Cosmopolitan Club to enjoy the view leaving San Juan.

San Juan was OK, but I would have liked to have seen more. I feel we were really only exposed to the touristy part.