WARNING: THIS IS A VERY NEGATIVE POST
I'm not usually this negative about things, but I'm sure you will see why I'm still dramatic and emotional about everything that happened.
Okay, let's start from the very beginning: So, Jer and I mention going on a cruise this year.. this was back in March. Mattie was on her mission at the time and said YES let's go on a cruise when I get home!!!! So, awesome, we start planning, and get Merilyn and Matthias to join in on the fun.
We decide which cruise we want to go on and where we would like to go in July, and in August, we book it! Below is the picture of the amazing itinerary.
WOW WOW WOW am I right!!?? We book the cruise, and our flights, and we are sOOO excited. We have three months to get our travel documents ready, pack our swimsuits, and purchase travel size everything.
In the mean while, My Permanent resident card had expired and of coarse I paid the $600 to renew it, but the actual renewed card with the new exp. date takes 6 months to arrive in the mail. So I call the USCIS Government to ensure I can travel with this expired card, and the response was YES, OF COARSE, just make sure you bring your receipt that says you renewed it (I have flown twice using this card). GREAT! Then my Canadian Passport was expiring in October (1 week ago) and so I call the Canadian Government to find out the best way to renew my passport while in the states, the response was: Next time you are IN Canada, bring it and all your documents and it's easiest to do it all wile you are here. I say... "Well, will I be able to get into the country with an expired passport" the response: "Yes, because you can just use your US PR card." Alright, I am SET!
I take the week to get work off, organize everything there, find people to watch Belle, pack etc. etc and FINALLY, we are off!!!
FRIDAY NOV 7, we drive down to LA (Via Van Nuys), meet up with Merilyn, Mattie and Matthias and get on the plane!!! 6 hours to JFK, and another 4 to San Juan.
Middle of the night, but feeling excited.
We arrive in SJ at 4:30AM, their time, and can get on the boat at 1pm, so we decide to rent a car and explore around. Turns out MAPS/GPS does not work in PR... you will see how many times we get lost as you continue reading. We decide to go and check out the Rain Forest, and of coarse get lost... 1.5 hours later, we find it but everything is still closed, and actually the road to the forest are closed because of a recent storm (fallen trees etc.) Well- we decide that that's not going to stop us, and we explore around anyways. Heck, we came all this way!
By this time I am delirious from lack of sleep and feeling sick - got sick on the plane, and very hungry for an actual meal.
WELL, let's just power through and wait to eat and rest until we are on the ship.
Excuse my tired face.
(Mattie and Mer stayed in the car to sleep)
After this, we hit up a Burger King where I realize no one can speak English, and all the people around us are extremely unhelpful. And BTW 3rd world country Burger Kings will not give you a soda refill... wow the lady yelled at me to tell me this but okay, no biggy.
We decide to find a beach to go chill on since we still have a few more hours until we can get on the boat... We get lost again, but eventually find a little strip of sand to park on, at this point I decide to sleep in the car (I had taken a sleeping pill so I could get some rest on the plane and it was WORKING!)
Alright, FINALLY we get to go to the port and get on this Luxurious cruise!!! Heck, all I wanted was a meal and a shower!
Jeremy and I decide to drop Mattie Matthias and Mer off with the luggage, go return the rental car (3miles away) and walk to the port. We get lost finding the port.
We find the port, and drop them off.
We get lost finding the Rental car drop off. We find the rental car drop off.
YAY YAY YAY, the walk wasn't too bad, just hot and humid.
NOW- we are checking in to the Celebrity Summit and they have a problem with my Permanent Resident card.. I show them the receipt and tell them I am perfectly legal.
The worker gets some mean lady who yells at me about not having the "proper documentation"- I say "This IS the proper documentation, I checked and double checked. she gets her manager. After an hour, this other lady says "Sorry you will not be able to board the boat." because she needs to have my canadian passport, not my USA PR card- (WHICH, I HAD ENSURED PRIOR THAT THAT WAS ALL I NEEDED)
My Heart literally fell out of my bum at this point.
So, how can we resolve this issue? After another hour, she says I can go to Canada (consolate opens on Monday) get a passport (takes three days) and then meet the ship where ever they're at on Thursday (the cruise ends Saturday morning). Well, that's not helpful. After another 30 minutes- AH, there is another solution: Fly to Miami, obtain an emergency passport, AND meet the ship then... well if I wanted to spend another thousand dollars doing that, maybe I would've.
I try to get Jeremy to still get on the boat and enjoy his family vacation, telling him I would just fly home, but of coarse he is the best, most amazing, most kind, most thoughtful, most considerate, most selfless husband in the whole world, and he refuses to leave my side. So before we leave we need to make sure that that extra 500 bucks we spent on the travel insurance will be able to help us out... on the phone with them- Nope, sorry, this is not a valid reason to claim the insurance-so unhelpful, insurance is bogus. OKay, call the customer service at Celebrity Cruise line, and "nope, this is your fault, we will not do anything for you" wow. So I say I'M SOOOOO SORRY to his fam, they get back on the boat and we leave.
It's 6pm by now. We are walking with all our luggage away from the port, hoping to find a nearby hotel. I am dehydrated, hungry, full of stress and anxiety, feeling absolutely sick to my stomach with the money we lost and as well as the lost memories and quality time spent with family (can't put a price on that), crying my face off, feeling JUST TERRIBLE- then I feel it coming, I feel feverish, nausea, and my heart goes a million beats a minute ( I know I am going to pass out) BUT I fight it off because I don't want to make Jeremy mad (not that he would be, but because I'm so out of my mind I honestly thought he would be mad if I asked to stop and rest) The inevitable happened and WHAM, I faint on the sidewalk, luggage in tow. With a few slaps on the face (which Jeremy later claimed to enjoy) I woke up feeling EVEN MORE TERRIBLE if that's possible. A kind man and woman had seen this and stopped. The woman was a cab driver and we asked her to take us to a hotel (which took forever because she didn't speak a lick of english) You'd think if your job was to drive tourists around you would learn a few English words like "HOTEL"... anyway, she takes us to a hotel, we get out NO VACANCY. walk to the next hotel down the way NO VACANCY... This trend continued for an hour. Everywhere was full. Couldn't find anything online (when you book online, it needs to be at least 2 days before the time you need it for credit card confirmation etc.)
Vagabonds. walking around the streets of San Juan with our luggage, drained of all hope and happiness. Oh, you think I'm being dramatic? Well, it gets worse!
I find a place online that's called the COQUI INN. Call them, no one answeres. Walk around some more. Call again, YES they have 1 room left, and we will take it! We take a taxi there (it ended up being 3 blocks and $20 later we were there.) Checked in, and entered the room. FILTHY. DISGUSTING. I think, at least I'll get a shower... nope just a cold trickle, the kind that won't get the shampoo out of your hair. FINE, I'm starving. Where can we get some food? "Just across the bridge" What do we find across the bridge?
We are lost. Do some more walking, and we find a place... the only thing in English on the menu that we could understand was "Roast Beef" so we got it. Headed back to the hotel to rest with the bed bugs. YES, I said bed bugs- I'm still itchy.
Lying awake, feeling miserable, trying to find ways to make this up to your husband apparently CAN take all night. I took 2 sleeping pills just to quieten my thoughts for a whopping 3 hours.
Woke up, could not move my neck and had 3 new stress pimples the size of a cruise ship... too soon. Now I'm just complaining...HORAY, A new day!
I tell Jeremy that all I want to do is GO HOME, (We didn't plan on being here- who goes to a foreign island in the Caribbean with no plans, and no place to stay.+ in my mind all the extra $$ we'd have to spend which I did not feel I deserved) so I work on getting our flights changed, while he finds us a rental car. First person I talk to says that will cost $900, but that he can get it down to $590. Second person I talk to says he can do it for $490. Not good enough. YAY I talk to a KIND woman on JetBlu that changes our tickets at no charge after explaining my situation. SERIOUSLY; JetBlu is the BEST.
The rental car place can pick us up from the COQUI INN- awesome... 3 hours later. during this time I say, why don't we go out and swim? Open the door, It's pouring rain. Okay let's plan our day, we really wanted to go and see the bio bay... ALL closed on Sundays of coarse. Ah, good thing this room has a fridge and we can eat the rest of our roast beef sandwich we saved for breakfast... FROZEN SOLID. So, now I'm, crying again, sitting on the edge of the bed bug bed, eating my frozen roast beef sandwich thinking NOTHING can possibly get worse. "First world problems".
The rental car arrives, HALLELUJAH!
I talk to this girl, who ends up knowing the only company that does Bio bay tours on a Sunday. YES. We plan our day and go and visit Old town San Juan and one of the Forts.
Okay okay, the rest of this day almost was completely awesome!
FORT
Obelisk downtown
After this, we park the car, meet up with our driver and head to the Bio Bay. It was great.
The brochures look like this:
And what it's actually like is this:
No big deal, it was still super cool and we were glad to do it. At this point, we were thinking that MAN we came all this was just to go home.. maybe we should have stayed and still made a trip of it. We get back to the rental car.. the parkade was CASH ONLY, but don't worry there's an ATM 5 blocks away... I run.
Now, it's 9:30PM and we are famished, some guy told us about these two great places to eat: Metropole. We look it up... we get lost. The other place B?something BBQ. We call, make sure they're open... We get lost.
Honestly, EVERYONE on TRIPadvisor needs to say YOUR GPS WILL NOT WORK IN SAN JUAN.
Now it's 11pm. We decide we made a good choice in coming home early. We check into our hotel.. the Radisson... not too bad, only thing available and ANYTHING is better than the Coqui inn at this point. Neither Jeremy or I do well with not eating and staying happy, so we are extremely grumpy at this point and I just want to strangle myself... Thinking about how terrible I feel for messing up and having my actions affect so many people. The bell boy tells us there's a yummy restaurant thats open 24 hours a few blocks away, so we go there to get some authentic food:
Mashed plantains and some sausage stuff, it was actually really good. We got bottled water of coarse because we didn't want to get sick, and this restaurant was so classy the bottle labels didn't match, were open and not even filled to the brim. AND they cost $5 each. An 11:40am Monday morning flight was not soon enough to get me out of there.
Woke up in the morning and went snorkling first thing.. we only had 1 snorkel with us so we took turns... kinda funny, but it was cool. PR beaches aren't like the other Caribbean beaches we've been to, they aren't a sparkling clear blue... it's like a san Diego beach, but warmer.
We go back to the hotel, shower, get ready, eat. Then stop in at another fort on our way to the airport:
The walk up: We are already in our travel clothes but DRENCHED.
9am 88 Degrees, 75% humid.
We loved exploring this Fort, and learning about PR's history.
Woah woah woah- did I just say something positive?
Returned the rental car, checked our bags and we were off. Still sick in our stomachs with all the WHAT IFS and how much this whole thing sucks. Once in LAX, got in our car (lost the parking ticket so had to pay extra of coarse) hit the road to Bakersfield. Early Tuesday morning I unpacked everything and it felt like this never even happened.. kind of.
What I learned from this experience: My husband is an angel. JetBlu is awesome. San Juan is a part of America, but feels NOTHING like it. Never listen to government officials who tell you what travel documents you will need. prepare..and then be more prepared. Don't bother to try and look nice on an Island that has 100% humidity. NEVER NEVER stay at the Coqui Inn. ALWAYS Travel with 16 sandwiches. Learn from your mistakes. Lost memories and cherished time can never be made up. Sit down when you know you are going to pass out. Need to learn Spanish. Do not trust SIRI in Puerto Rico. Bring 2 snorkels. Don't pay $5 for an unsealed water bottle. Don't plan vacations so far in advance... it makes you anticipate more so that if something goes wrong it's a bigger disappointment.
So when you ask me how my vacation was and I say I don't want to talk about it, please know, this is something that I am trying to forget, not re-live.
