I was in charge of planning the activities for this weekend. Originally, we were planning on going to the rainforest on Saturday and Old San Juan on Sunday, but Fernanda, who was visiting the Observatory to see if she wanted to work here after getting her PhD, wanted to see Old San Juan with us and had a commitment to watch Brazil in the World Cup on Sunday (being from Brazil herself), so we switched the activities. Originally Lisa was going to go with us, but she couldn't on Saturday, so Ramesh went instead. It was a huge group--all the summer students, Fernanda, Shikha the post-doc, and Ramesh--14 people in all, in 4 cars. Just getting to Old San Juan in a 4-car caravan was quite an adventure, as people complained about each other's driving and we lost each other repeatedly, but eventually we all made it, 3 cars to a parking garage and one outside a fort. The fort was called San Cristobal, and we decided to look around. We saw the expanse of the fortress, which contained cannons and cannonballs used to defend it in days of old. There was also a lookout from which soldiers used to watch for ships.
After seeing the fort it was time for lunch, so we split up into two groups, depending upon interest. I was with Andrew, Sam, Dan, Martin, Fernanda, and Ramesh. We went to the Transylvania Restaurant and Art Gallery because of the exciting name, but it was closed, so we went to a ordinary-looking little restaurant instead. Ramesh and I ordered omlettes, since they were the only vegetarian item on the menu. It tasted a little like fish, but it was pretty good if I didn't think about that. We then went in a few tacky little shops, and Fernanda bought a figurine of a toilet with a coqui (the famous Puerto Rican tree frog--I hear them every night) on the rim. We had agreed to meet back at El Morro, another fort, and since Fernanda, Dan, and Martin were eager to go to the beach, we got the cars and drove there. We found Ingrid and Shikha, but not all the other girls. A cop told us to move our cars from in front of the fort, so Ramesh said he would find the others and that we (Andrew, Sam, and I in one car, Fernanda, Dan, and Martin in another) should go to the beach.
It was a slow drive getting out of Old San Juan because of the traffic, but eventually we made it to Isla Verde and parked behind a KFC. We used its bathroom to change and went to the beach. It looked like the front of a travel brochure--white sand, palm trees, and hotels lining the background. There were a fair number of people there. We had a nice time floating in the water and lying on the sand, until we got hungry. We were supposed to meet everyone else back in Old San Juan, but we knew the traffic would be awful because there was a youth festival going on there, so we called the others to say we would eat elsewhere. But they said that they had been stuck without a car, since no one had seen Ramesh since we last spoke to him. With this news, we began the crawl back into Old San Juan. Eventually we reached a parking lot and jumped at the opportunity, for walking was much faster than driving.
By the time we reached the others Ramesh had found them too. They were grumbling about waiting around for us, because they had gone right up to the entrance to the fort, across a big field, while we had expected to see them by the road. I felt bad about this, but we all went to an Indian restaurant called Chef Ramesh's which Ramesh recommended to us, knowing the owner (having the same name, of course he introduced himself upon first eating there). Ramesh and Shikha, who are both Indian, kept ordering tasty appetizers for us to try. The food was excellent, and there was a belly dancer. I even got to dance with her right before we left.
