Well, today was pretty wild to say the least. The day started off pretty well when we decided to hit up the beach right outside the condo where we are staying. The weather has been pretty spotty so far, but today was clear and sunny. It wasn't too crowded at first, but at around 1:30PM it started to get super crowded and the already limited beach space, became even less. Apparently here in Puerto Rico, if you're sitting back a ways from the beach that means you're giving up all the space in front of you. Basically, this big family decided to plop down right in front of us since we were laying out a ways back because of the high tide. So much for a direct view of the beach, instead we got a nice view of some beach chairs and coolers for awhile. As it turns out, this family taking up our prime beach space would be the least of our worries today.
Upon arriving back to the condo, we decided to take a look at our bodies in the mirror to see if we got any good color, boy did we! Our good buddy Tim must have used some poor quality sunscreen because he was red as a tomato and had some solid stripes lined on his back. Bear in mind, Tim came into this trip being pretty pale, so the sun got the best of him for sure. Paige (Tim's gf) didn't fair much better and must have used the same sunscreen as Tim because she was bright red all over as well. Kenzie & I faired pretty well because we rubbed our sunscreen on for the most part and didn't use the spray type. I'm guessing this is the route we will take from here on out! However, even with all the sunburns, Tim & Paige wanted to go back outside before dinner to play some beach volleyball. We were game and went to get ready. They headed down before us and we followed suit right behind. Before we left the condo, I asked Kenzie a few times if anyone had the keys and she said, "yes, Tim does". Okay, fair enough, I took her word for it and proceed to lock the door as we left. Upon arriving downstairs, we saw Paige standing outside and asked us if we had the keys to which we responded, "no, I thought Tim had them?!". Oops, now nobody has the keys and the door is locked with all our phones inside the room. Paige went to sort this whole thing out with security, but the process was taking quite awhile, so Tim & I decided to take matters into our own hands. You see, we remembered that the balcony sliding door was unlocked, so if we could just get up to the balcony, we would be golden. There was only one problem, we are on the 3rd floor of the building. Tim said he could just stand on the railing of the 1st floor and pull himself up to the 2nd and 3rd floors respectively. At this point, it has probably been over 30 minutes from the time we got locked out, so we are up for anything. Just as Tim begins his ascent to the 2nd floor, a worker for the place we are staying starts yelling at Tim to get done (he thinks Tim is trying to break in), so he gets down and we scrap that idea. That same guy ended up staying outside our place for the rest of day, always occasionally looking at us. Luckily, Janet (our local support person) finally came to our rescue and let us into the room.
After beach volleyball was abandoned, we decided to get ready and go out for dinner. The lady we are renting this condo from provide dos with some local restaurants to try out, so we picked "El Parilla". This little place on the side of the road specialized in seafood primarily, but also had some meats. Nothing jumped out at me, so I decided to just get the steak with a house sauce on top (steak is steak to me). Paige ended up ordering the same thing as me and off went the waitress to place our order. She quickly returned though and had some bad news for Paige & I, they ran out of the steak so we needed to pick something else. She recommended a different steak dinner and we went along with it and decided we would try it. However, a few moment slater, she returned and had more bad news for us, they were out of that steak as well. Dejected, we asked her if they had nay meats left, but she said that they were out of it all. With nothing else sounding too great, we asked her if we could order off the kids menu and have the chicken fingers. Thankfully, she said that would be just fine and went away to place our order. We thought dinner would be the last of our wild day and bad luck, but more was in store.
Upon arriving back to our condo complex, we saw that the security guard was out of the office and thus we couldn't get past the gate. We were told that the guards do walk throughs at different times of the day to make sure the complex is safe and secure. The papers indicated that the walks usually only take 5 minutes to complete and begin at the top of every odd hour. Fair enough, we got to the gate right at 9PM, so the guard must have just been on his walk. Time continued to pass and cars continued to file in behind me creating a line down the road. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, still no guard and we are getting a little antsy. This whole time, cars are freely leaving the complex an staring us down in the meantime as we wait helplessly at this gate. Good thing we had a solid Spotify playlist to keep us jamming until our guard finally arrived a little past 9:30. We were free to enter and proceeded to our condo. All the parking spots are marked for each room and as we approached ours, we saw a police cruiser parked in what appeared to be G 305, our room. Oh boy, why are the cops in our spot? Did that dude call the cops because Tim was trying to scale the building to let us in? To our avail, they weren't in our spot, just the one next to us and they quickly left as we unloaded the car and walked inside. The day is finally over and wow, that a day it was. Tomorrow will depend on the weather primarily, but we hope to be back outside (wearing non-spray sunscreen) and evening out our wicked tans!
BTW, check out the sick sandcastle above that Tim & I created today before our real estate was overrun by a large family.
-Andrew
Andrew and I started our morning dining on our Voodoo donuts, and man, were they good! I had the Diablos Rex - a chocolate cake donut with chocolate chips and an icing pentagram - and it was fantastic. Andrew had the Arnold Palmer - a plain cake donut with vanilla frosting and lemonade/iced tea dust with fruit loops in the middle - which he described as "interesting". We also had an old fashioned for comparison, but I still like Doughnut Vault in Chicago best.
On our drive back into the city, we decided to stop and explore the Red Rocks Amphitheater. The place was extremely crowded with people working out on the steps and tourists getting pictures. There really isn't much I can say to do justice to the view, so I will just have to let you look at our pictures.
By the time we got back into Denver, it was time to grab lunch and head to the airport. We walked along the mall one last time to Union Station, and hung out in the station (it is really pretty) a bit before we jumped on a train to the airport. I slept the whole ride, so I don't have much to say about that except its a lot comfier and cleaner than the el!
