A Slight Delay

 In which we come to the final part of the journey, the part where you scour your vacation destination in search of unique swag to bring back for family and friends. If you’ve ever been to Times Square or the Theater District in Manhattan, or anywhere frequented by tourists in nearly any major metropolitan area in the United States, you’ve already got a pretty good idea of what we encountered in Puerto Rico. In San Juan, one smallish hole-in-the-wall purveyor of cheap Chinese-made tchochkes, in fact, had thoughtfully but bluntly been named, “The Tourist Trap.”

As with any other trip — whether around the world, or around the block — a little persistance pays off. If you’d like something unique from your stay in Puerto Rico, there are two places that we’d highly recommend. This will sound like an advertisement, but rest assured we didn’t receive compensation from either place; we were just overjoyed to find somewhere that wasn’t hawking the same chintzy t-shirts, beach towels, and license plates that you could probably get on the NJ Turnpike (though if that’s your bag, you’ll find no shortage, either in San Juan or in Ponce).

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 The State Department frequently issues travel advisories for various corners of the globe. Since Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, though, you won’t generally see much by way of advisories. This is a bit of a shame, since it would’ve been nice if we’d known before we went that practically the whole island was on strike the day we arrived. The streets of Old San Juan, if not for their distinctive architecture, could easily have been mistaken for a quiet suburb somewhere in Jersey. Both nights we were there, the largest number of people we saw out late at night were a handful of people playing dominoes in the Plaza de Armas. This isn’t to say there wasn’t plenty to do in Puerto Rico. Sure, the museums were mostly shuttered, but once you’ve run the gauntlet of the scores of McDonalds and other chains, there’s plenty to see. A few highlights:

El Morro: This fort is one of a string of fortifications–along with San Cristobal–that defended Old San Juan. If you’re coming to Puerto Rico from the mainland, this can be quite an experience, given that there’s not much on the mainland that’s any older than about three hundred years old, and many of our landmarks are more recent than that. While Puerto Rico has undergone its fair share of development, luckily it hasn’t all been at the expense of a sense of history.

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 My wife and I once spent the better part of a day trying to find a restaurant in New Jersey that served authentic Puerto Rican food. It didn’t turn out to be the easiest thing. I could think of one place in Elizabeth called La Lechonera, but I refused to go back to Elizabeth on general principle, and she remembered a little spot in Lakewood called Yolanda’s Coqui, which was a disappointment. So we were back to square one. Even though New Jersey doesn’t lack for other kinds of Caribbean, central- and south-American, it’s nigh-impossible to find an explicitly Boricua restaurant.

What’s ironic, though, is that Puerto Rico–at least outside of Viejo San Juan–wasn’t exactly an embarrasment of riches when it came to Puerto Rican food either. Luckily, however, it’s not all Chinese, McDonald’s and Pollo Tropical. Read on for a bit of what we found.

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 So we’ve just returned from Puerto Rico. Armed with the knowledge of a week in the Commonwealth, I feel fully qualified to offer this travel guide for your time on the Island of Enchantment.  

We’d been warned 1,277 times (conservative estimate) about not drinking the water and told to avoid the streets of San Juan after dark, but this advice, however well-intentioned, only goes so far. The following article picks up where the usual advice leaves off, letting you know where you can find those little touches of home throughout the island, so that you can alleviate homesickness, and so you need not be exposed to the local arts and culture, much less the locals themselves. Fear not; you’ll find reminders of home nearly everywhere you go.

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