Breakin' away

Ten seconds later, Carolina took a tumble. But man, she got up and ran some more. 

I'm glad I didn't think too much about this trip before it happened. It was a nice surprise to discover Puerto Rico without a lot of preconceived ideas. I kind of let Nacho do the research since he was the one making arrangements with his friend about the apartment, so I took the opportunity to let it all be revealed to me once we got there. And sometimes on vacation that's a blessing. You just give in to whatever happens, and we made up our itinerary as we looked ahead to each day. In fact, sometimes we were making it up hour to hour. But the girls hung in there and for the most part, it wasn't too hard on them to do a little city walking and save the beach for later. Elisa only really lost her cool when her new earring broke (of the plastic, clip on variety) and we couldn't fix it as we toured Old San Juan. There were many tears shed. It seemed to color her whole morning. But my lunch time, she had turned it around and we managed to meet up with some Sunnyside friends who were docking in the city from a cruise ship for a few hours.   Then we were off to the beach for a sunset swim where her mood improved greatly.  

The weather was amazing with brief rain showers early or not at all and lots of dramatic skies everywhere you turned.  Carolina was a death marching machine when it came to visiting the castillo or hiking through El Yunque. She even shared the stroller with Elisa for a bit on our morning in Old San Juan, only to try to ride on her lap on the way out of the fort and get thrown for a loop on a bumpy ramp down. It wasn't a highlight of the day, but after consoling her and kissing some skinned knees, we were back in business. Since this was vacation, the girls consumed obscene quantities of Coca-Cola products, we hit McDonald's drive through for the happy meals twice and I don't regret any of it. Normal life can wait. The girls are turning into real little travelers and I was amazed how easy bedtimes were being in a new place with new beds (Carolina loved her twin so much she's taken to napping in Elisa's bed now at home) and new noises--did I mention the schoolyard outside that seemed like it was on constant recess or the rooster that crowed all day and night? Oh yes. It was all kinds of noisy. But we managed and the white noise phone app did wonders to soothe them to sleep, I think. Me, I had to listen to the rooster without even a pillow over my head (since there was only one pillow, I opted to use it for my neck). But hey, vacation isn't always about having the perfect conditions. It's how you adapt to the imperfection and find ways to enjoy yourself anyway. And despite a few moments of pure annoyance, the girls did good. It gave me hope that we could do this kind of school break trip again with even better results.