Day 4 –Tuesday
Day four started with a breakfast on the rooftop that reminded us of Antigua, Guatemala. We went to a historic house that had an art bookstore in it and the person there was so happy to see visitors that he kept us for an hour telling us about all the wonders of Puerto Rico. One of the useful pieces of information he gave us was about fruits unique to Puerto Rico. Taking his advice we bought three strangest looking objects he touted as delicious fruit --- mispero, guanaguaba and corazon. Guanaguaba (see picture) was the ugliest, but tasted the best – a cross between a pineapple, banana and sweet lemon.
Then we took a tour of the city. For $2 per person we had an almost private tour (in English) on an antique-looking red bus that took us all around the old Ponce. The low point on the tour was the sports museum, which consisted of photographs of minor sports figures from Ponce.
Lunch turned out to be another adventure. The Chef’s Kitchen restaurant highly recommended by the guidebook was out of food when we got there at 2 pm. We braved the local cafeteria and survived. A quest for wine took us to the local grocery store, which had no decent wines so we settled for a sixpack of local Medalla beer instead (the only brewery in Puerto Rico only makes light beer!).
Day four started with a breakfast on the rooftop that reminded us of Antigua, Guatemala. We went to a historic house that had an art bookstore in it and the person there was so happy to see visitors that he kept us for an hour telling us about all the wonders of Puerto Rico. One of the useful pieces of information he gave us was about fruits unique to Puerto Rico. Taking his advice we bought three strangest looking objects he touted as delicious fruit --- mispero, guanaguaba and corazon. Guanaguaba (see picture) was the ugliest, but tasted the best – a cross between a pineapple, banana and sweet lemon.
Then we took a tour of the city. For $2 per person we had an almost private tour (in English) on an antique-looking red bus that took us all around the old Ponce. The low point on the tour was the sports museum, which consisted of photographs of minor sports figures from Ponce.
Lunch turned out to be another adventure. The Chef’s Kitchen restaurant highly recommended by the guidebook was out of food when we got there at 2 pm. We braved the local cafeteria and survived. A quest for wine took us to the local grocery store, which had no decent wines so we settled for a sixpack of local Medalla beer instead (the only brewery in Puerto Rico only makes light beer!).
Across the street from our hotel is this bizzare looking red building of a firemen's museum (Parque de Bombas) with a lovely white cathedral right behind it.
This evening our quest was to have a drink in a local watering hole. We walked for miles trying to find a decent place to have a drink. We took advice from the hotel, the tourist office and several people in the street, to no avail. Finally, a young man selling tacos from a cart sent us to Bamboleo, which turned out to be a real find.
We are now sitting in the city’s central square, plugged into an outlet in the bushes and using the free city-wide wifi posting this (see picture).
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