At home and abroad

Steve keeps referring to Puerto Rico as “America’s biggest colony” even though I know that’s politically incorrect (both literally and socially). But I’m used to him being provocative. What we agree on is how weird it felt to be in a place where all the residents are entitled to carry US passports, but everyone speaks Spanish, and the capital city looks like Havana would probably look had Cuba not been governed by brutal Communist dictators for the past 65 years.

For our visit, I brought along the article that appeared in the New York Times last month: “36 Hours in San Juan.” Steve and I actually had 52 hours, all of which we spent in the oldest part of this oldest European city in the Western Hemisphere. A vast metropolis surrounds the old town, but I know nothing about it, except that our ride from the airport felt like we were back in the US.

Judgments based on such limited exposure are bound to be pathetic. Still, I’ll share four of my strongest impressions.

— San Juan’s old town looks great, particularly considering that two monster hurricanes (Maria and Irma) rampaged through 7 years ago, leaving in their wake apocalyptic destruction. The hurricanes knocked out all the power and shut down nearly all the digital and physical highways. However, from our vantage in the old town (an Airbnb just down the street from the 500-plus-year-old cathedral), we saw no remnants of that disaster. The Puerto Ricans cleaned up and have rebuilt their lives, and today throngs of tourists are strolling among the brightly painted buildings, shopping, consuming prodigious amounts of rum, and gobbling down ice cream.

— The temperature hit 90 both weekend days, with so much humidity sweat dripped from us like drops of rain. This was a good thing. Old San Juan was so pretty and lively, had the weather been excellent, I might have felt tempted to move here. But not with weather like that.

— We ate four meals in restaurants (two lunches and two dinners), and all of them were better than anything we ate in the Lesser Antilles. There the food was solid but unexciting. Not so in San Juan.

— The town’s biggest attraction — El Morro — belongs on any list of the Most Impressive Forts in the World.

Sir Francis Drake tried (and failed) to overcome it. A second attempt by the British navy at the peak of its imperial power ended with the English slinking away in defeat. Today the United States park service shows a film there that nicely recounts the history of Puerto Rico and the role played in it by El Morro. The only bad thing about our visit was that Steve forgot to bring along his National Park Pass (which we would have allowed us to enter free).

Now, once again, we have no need for it. Yesterday afternoon we took the 40-minute flight on JetBlue from San Juan to the Dominican Republic, second largest island in the Greater Antilles.