Puerto Rico Day 1: Weather Woes on Travel Day

The day started early. Very early. 4a early. We were up and headed to the airport by 5a for our 7a flight. I was closely watching the weather as there was a tropical storm moving into PR as well as bad weather in the forecast for Houston. I wouldn't have been worried if we were flying directly from Dallas but I was using COVID cancellation credits on United so we had to go thru Houston first. We got thru security fine and I grabbed some pretzel donuts for a snack. We were planning to grab food on our Houston layover. Things went well at first. We boarded and were just about to take off when the pilot said they had grounded all flights in Houston due to lightning. We only had an hour and fifteen minutes in Houston to begin with so the longer we sat there, the more I was convinced we wouldn't make the flight. I'd already found one more flight out of Houston later that day if we had to reschedule. Luckily we were only delayed about 45 minutes so we were able to make our connection without an issue. That did mean, however, that we didn't have time to get food. I ordered some snacks on board the flight but they were seriously lacking in fulfillment.

We arrived to a beautiful, sunny afternoon in PR. Thankfully our luggage made the short connection and we picked up our rental Jeep and drove to our apartment in downtown, Old San Juan. Our apartment came with a parking spot about a block away so we hauled our luggage down the street and up to our 2nd floor apartment.

We set our luggage down and Alex was STARVING. Just around the corner from our apartment was a Wendy's and we made a beeline to go there for anything that could keep a migraine or sugar drop from starting. We stood in line forever but finally got some chicken nuggets and fries which we scarfed down on a bench just outside. We went back to the apartment to relax for a bit and one of us relaxed a little too much.

I had made dinner reservations but didn't want to wake Alex so I canceled them. When he woke up, we decided to go to a little empanada bar, Dehistoria, around the corner for a drink and some snacks.

These were the strangest looking empanadas I'd ever seen but they were pretty good. We shared an assortment of flavors and had a couple of drinks before walking back to the apartment. Around 11p or so, Alex was hungry again (we hadn't really eaten a full meal all day) so off we went again to try and find a place with food. Pickings were slim at this time of night even on a Friday. We finally found a hookah bar serving....you guessed it....empanadas. These looked much more like what I'm used to and according to Alex, tasted much better as well.

Here they gave him loads of homemade hot sauce, too.

We stayed for a couple of drinks then walked home to fall in bed after the long day.