Right now I'm in the shittiest "fancy" hotel on the planet. We arrived around 11:30pm and there was nowhere to get anything to eat, and the one place that was open was charging around $20 for a cheeseburger. They really know how to bleed tourists dry around here. My first impressions of San Juan are pretty scattered. The city itself looks like a more run-down Los Angeles, with everything packed in really close but nothing of substance, just Burger Kings and liquor stores. Everything is packed really closely together, but you get an odd sense of community that isn't present in cities like L.A. There are many open-air pool halls and bar/discos that have people actively milling around on the street, which you don't see in the states. It's hard to make any solid conclusions about the financial situations of the people living here, because on the way to the hotel we passed cruise ships and natives driving Mercedes-Benz, but we also passed places that could be defined as nothing but a ghetto. In Puerto Rico just like every else it would seem that the wealth isn't exactly spread out evenly among the population.
What was strange was that on my flight to San Juan there was mostly Puerto Ricans and a few Americans, while on my mom's flight it was almost exclusively tourists. I guess the cruise lines book up entire flights and pack them with fat families (this isn't me exaggerating, there was a startling number of overweight tourists on these flights.) Tomorrow we get on the cruise ship for seven days, so I guess I should get used to seeing these people.
I'm gonna take a lot of pictures and post them online, and it turns out internet on the boat isn't as expensive as I thought, so it's possible that I'll be able to post while I'm aboard.
Kaylin is also going on a trip to Madrid and Barcelona, so hopefully she'll take some good pictures of that trip too. We're officially over the mid-point of our long-distance relationship, so that is cause for a bit of celebration. I think I will make use of the free drink card on the boat tomorrow.
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