May 18, 2011- San Juan
I ended up waking up around 11 am. It was probably the latest I’ve woken up on a port day which means that I either must be really tired or I am getting used to the bow thrusters and anchor. If today is an example I haven’t had a whole lot of problems with them as of yet. Today was a wonderful port day. When I got off ship around 11:30 I met up with some friends and we headed down to the local Japanese restaurant. I heard it was absolutely wonderful Japanese food but they were a little bit slow on the service. This was absolutely true. The place looked like a gourmet Japanese place yet the touristic side of a hibachi place. It ended up being a mix of the two. I ordered the fillet mingion and scallops with miso soup. It ended up being a hibachi place because they cooked the food in front of you but it was still as amazing as an authentic Japanese steakhouse. We had a good group of people with us. The past few days I have been hanging out with Jen and Kevin the cruise and assistant cruise director and they have been a lot of fun to hang around with. The food was absolutely delicious and it took a good hour and a half to get the food and everything else that came with it. I took the liberty of ordering a Sapporo beer and it was absolutely fantastic. After lunch it took a little while to get the checks and everyone was a little pressed to get out of the restaurant and go and do other things. Jen and Kevin wanted to go to the casino (yes, there is a casino near the pier) and Brad and I wanted to go and get some internet done. Brad said that there was a pretty good frozen yogurt place a couple of blocks from the pier and they had super amazing internet. We ended up walking to the frozen yogurt place which happened to be right outside an outside bazaar. It reminded me of Italy because there were a lot of marble statues yet the street vendors of Rome. I wish I could have stopped and taken a few photographs but we had a mission to get some ice cream and some internet. By this time I was truly missing the outside world and internet was an absolute necessity. Once we got to the frozen yogurt place we ordered our yogurt (I had passion fruit yogurt with fresh pineapple, coconut, and strawberries as my toppings). The yogurt was absolutely amazing. It tasted something like someone made by hand. I especially loved the fresh fruit as toppings. By this time we only had about an hour left before we had to make our way back to the ship and honestly, it was the quickest hour of my life. I had so much to do on the internet it was amazing. I also found out, through my mom that calling the states from Puerto Rico was not free. Total whoops. Everyone on the ship who had Verizon said that calling was free because we were in the united states and the research that I’ve done said that the Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands was totally OK. Apparently that is not the case. I may have to sift through the bill and see how much I owe. Apparently it is quite expensive. Now the only time I am able to call is when I’m in Miami which is not cool at all. The sad part is that everyone I know onboard says it’s completely ok to call the US when in Puerto Rico. Oh well. I guess that limits when I can actually call people. I need to call Verizon when I get back to the states to be absolutely sure. After time spent at the frozen yogurt place we needed to get back to the ship. We started to make our trek back when Brad came across a CVS and a much needed stop to resupply on food in case the mess was serving something that was not really edible. I didn’t really see much that I needed so I waited near the front. After all, I had already picked up my contact solution in Miami. After we finished at CVS we made a beeline for the ship. At this point it was already 2:15 and I was starting to get a little bit paranoid. As we were walking we saw the casino on our way back. I didn’t know you could gamble in Puerto Rico and I’m not the gambling type so I didn’t pay much attention to it but Brad needed to stop in and make a quick bet. If you show your crew card with the casino they give you $20 casino credit to use on the bets. They have it planned out that the only way the casino pays out that extra $20 is if you place more than $20 on a bet with something else. For example, if you place your casino $20 in addition to your $30 on a roulette table and win you get back $50 which isn’t that bad at all. I don’t really like gambling so I didn’t place any money down but Brad placed $50 on a red roulette spin. The spin ended up being black. So Brad lost $50 in a single bet. Last time he was in Puerto Rico he made $80 on a $50 bet so now he’s still ahead $30. That’s not something I really want to do considering I’m here to save money (I know it seems otherwise). After we left the casino we headed towards the ship. We made it back by 2:30 which was well before our sail time so I wasn’t worried at all. We went through security and had no problems. I still had a good half hour before I had to do the repeaters party for this cruise. I decided to head back to the boot and get set up early mainly because I didn’t have much else to do and had very little cell phone reception anyways. I mainly read during the repeaters party and tried to check my emails with the kindle. If anyone wants to buy me a gift for whatever holiday, get me a kindle gift card. This way I can actually put it towards good use (and I love Amazon). Repeaters went off fine and dandy with no hitches expected. After repeaters Ryan and some other friends made a reservation for the “supper club” onboard (basically our own steakhouse and winery). I had been a couple of weeks ago and it was the best steak I’ve eaten in my entire life. I feel like I’m getting fat because I went from one gourmet restaurant to the next in a matter of hours. Dinner was absolutely fantastic. I had escargot and spicy tuna tempura as my apps and a 16 oz 5 spices steak as my main course. Neither one was too far out of proportions as everything else. I did pretty good on the steak eating about ¾ of it. We had two bottles of red wine for the 4 of us and it was delicious. I wish I could eat there every night. For desert I had a sorbet ice cream with fresh fruit. The fruit was as fresh as could be. Mangos, strawberries, kiwi, blue berries, strawberries, the works. It was something to die for. I wish I could eat fresh fruit like that every day. By this time I was stuffed to the brim and it was only 6 o’clock. I still think I’m in a food coma now. Sadly tomorrow I’ll have to go back to regular mess food with corn and nonsense cold fish as my main course SIGH. So, tomorrow is Grand Turk and although I have a LOT of work to do repairing the moving rig I’m going to go to the beach and enjoy myself. God, I love this job. I haven’t gotten tired of it yet although I’ve been here almost a month. I miss everyone a lot though and I hope that everyone is doing ok. After dinner I pretty much camped out in my cabin trying to digest the many courses I had to eat while catching up on some journal-ing. I hope tomorrow will be just as amazing.
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