We haven’t been eating very well since we started this trip, so we went to the supermarket, bought bread, tomatoes and cucumbers, returned to the hotel and made ourselves some Israeli salad, and ate with the bread and some of the leftover meats from the dinner of the night before. The poor quality of the vegetables is yet another reminder that Puerto Rico is a part of the USA. We walked back to the souvenir shop where we saw the good hat for Julia. This time we weren’t drunk and the hat still looked good so we bought it. It has wide brim and a good color mix of light brown and green. We then went to the beach to take a walk. The celebrations to commemorate the purchase of this hat didn’t last very long. They ended when the wind blew the hat right off Julia’s head and straight into the ocean. The hat was retrieved, but the brim became extremely floppy and practically unwearable until we treat it.
We took a bus to the old city. As the doors of the bus opened at one of the stops, a fat American woman was yelling at the bus driver from the outside with thick Southern accent. We couldn't hear the driver’s responses, and I think his English was not that good either, which made the whole thing sound like a ridiculous monologue: “Where is this bus going to? Can you take us to souvenir shops? We need to get to a souvenir shop. Are there any souvenir shops in the old city? well, how much is it for the five of us? Is it true that buses only take coins? But I only have bills! Where can I get coins?” It didn’t matter to her at all what was there to see in the old city. It didn’t matter to her that everybody on the bus was waiting for her. All that she cared about was not going back home without a T-shirt that says “I went to Puerto Rico and all I got was this lousy T-shirt”, which in her case will make perfect sense. “Are you sure you don’t want to blog about this?” Julia asked again.
Blogging a trip takes a lot of effort. You need to constantly pay attention to things, take lots of pictures, and just the writing itself takes me at least an hour and a half every day. This time I just wanted to rest and have fun.
The old city is very pretty and very touristy.
We stared at a whole pig that was roasting in a store front and contemplated whether we should eat there.
“Get the shoulder!” said a woman who overheard us. “It’s my favorite thing to eat here.” We got some shoulder meat, a couple of pasteles, which are a mash of meat and vegetables wrapped in a banana leaf, and we ate it in the street. We walked to Castillo San Felipe Del Morro, a fort built by the Spanish in the 16th century. It’s a real shame that such impressive engineering achievements are the consequences of war.
We took a taxi from the old city to La Placita de Santurce, where we set to meet with Hagit and Kobi. We got there a little early so we found a place to sit and drink. The heart of the placita is a market, and all around it are tiny places, I wouldn’t even call them “bars”, where the locals come to drink after their work day. It’s very lively, and we were told there’s often live music and street parties.
I know Hagit from the Minzar, my favorite bar in Tel Aviv. She left Israel a year after I did, following Kobi, her husband, who has a mango farm in south Puerto Rico. We were supposed to go to Jose Enrique, a very popular restaurant, but they don’t take reservations, and although we got there really early, the wait was two hours. We drove to an Indian and Thai restaurant instead. To be honest, I knew Hagit very superficially, but it turned out both her and Kobi were really fun to hang out with.
After dinner, they drove us to the Marriott, where we had a few drinks in the lobby.
Julia and I left to the hotel and sat on the porch. We talked about how we move around, how we do that so well together, and how excited we are about the future. I then asked Julia to marry me, pretty much the same way I try to open the door every time we come back home: frantically going through my pockets mumbling “I swear it was in this pocket”. Julia wasn’t really surprised. I think between the two of us it was clear that we’re just waiting for me to deal with the logistics of proposing.
And so we went out to get more drinks to celebrate. Over some wine, I told her how I carried the ring in my pocket the entire trip, waiting for the right moment. I told her how opportunity did present itself that very morning, when we passed by a jewelry store, and she jokingly gave me an impatient look. For a second, I wanted to take the box out of pocket, shove it in her hand and yell at her in the middle of the street “there! you want a ring? here’s a ring! happy now?!”, but decided that although it may seem funny to me at the moment, it might not be accepted as well as I would like it to.
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