Travels in the 2nd half

Well, The Amazing Ms. D and I have come to the end of our time in Puerto Rico. We had a great time here. We spent a lot of time with family and explored the San Juan area more than we had in our recent trips.  But the end of a trip always brings sadness to me. Yes I am happy to be heading home. However the end of a trip brings thoughts of all of the things that i didn't get to do. I start questioning my choices.  Should I have gone to the Museum of Contemporary Art, instead of the Museo del las Americas? Should we have gone to Ponce?  At the same time I am mourning the end of an adventure. I love traveling. I love finding someplace new. Seeing something I haven't seen before. Heading home means the journey is over. It changes me from traveler to homebody. From explorer to native. Anyway, tomorrow it's back to NYC.

Museo de las Americas One of the highlights of visiting the Museo de las Americas  (web site) in Old San Juan is the “Indian in America” which is a permanent exhibit. This is recognition of over 20 tribes from around the Americas. What makes this exhibit special is the statuary produced by Filipe Lettersten. Felipe Lettersten (1957-2003) was a Peruvian born child of Swedish parents. He was an amazing artist who made it his life’s work to pay tribute to the many native tribes in existence throughout the Americas.See video  here He used a method of making full body casts of members of a tribe, and then using that cast to create full size bronze casts. He would often travel up and down the Amazon and other South American rivers on a boat that contained his portable workshop. He would introduce himself to the tribe and show examples of his previous work. He would spend several days getting to know the members and leaders of the tribe. When he convinced the tribal le...

BxTeacher in Old San Juan Today was a day of changing plans and crowd avoidance. We had planned to go to Museo de lasAmericas in Old San Juan. This is a new museum in the building of the InstitutoCultura puertoriqueno near El Morro. Things were looking good. We caught the T5 bus not 2 minutes after we got to the stop in Isla Verde. The weather was beautiful. There was no traffic and we breezed right into the bus terminal in 30 min. Then we encountered our first problem. 3 cruise ships were in dock. That meant that almost A busy day in San Juan port 8000 people were being discharged where we were at the same time. We just missed the trolley to El Morro, so we waited, and we waited, and we waited. After 45 minutes it finally showed up again, completely full with people who had boarded at the stop before ours, near the ships. No room for anyone to get on. Now, some people might complain about there not being enough trolleys to service the crowd, but one must remember w...

There is a trend that I have noticed on my past few trips to Puerto Rico, which has become even more obvious this trip, maybe because it is Christmas time. It is that shopping here is identical to shopping anywhere else in the United States. Now you might ask “why is that a problem?” Well, I feel that there has been something lost by this homogenization of America, and the world. I first really noticed this 8 years ago when I traveled to Moscow. One of the things I had been looking forward to was seeing the G.U.M. department store. For years I had heard about the “largest department store in the world. It was even in the Guinness Book of World records. Well, I obviously had not kept up with post-soviet changes. I walked into G.U.M. and found a modern mall, complete with all the biggest European and American chains. Bath and body Works, Nike, Addidas, Gap. All were represented. Right outside of Red Square, another, underground mall with more big name stores. I have also see...

Most of the Caribbean Islands that I have visited give you two basic choices of accommodations (if you are lucky) – The big fancy resort or the small funky guest house. Puerto Rico has other options and the Isla Verde area ( see map ) is a great place to find the kind of stay you want. Isla Verde is right next to the airport between the beach and lagoon. It is a tourist center, but it also has many Puerto Rican amenities. Let’s start with the feel of Isla Verde. It is a tourist area. However it is also the place that many locals come to go to the beach. So the area has shops and restaurants for both groups of people. It gives Isla Verde a down home feeling that Condado (the other San Juan resort area) doesn’t have. There are restaurants for all income groups including many that serve criollo cooking. I strongly recommend MiCasita Restaurant for inexpensive down-home cooking. It is also served by 2 supermarkets and 2 Walgreens drug stores Isla Verde is also well served by...