Honeymoon in Puerto Rico, Part One

After completing my series of posts on the St. Lucia part of our honeymoon, let’s take a look at the Puerto Rico segment.

We actually went to Puerto Rico first. There are two airports on St. Lucia, one on the north of the island and one on the south. If you fly from the mainland, you have to fly into the larger airport in the south. To get to the Sandals Grande from there, it is a two hour van ride through the mountains. Given that my bride dislikes the cab rides in San Francisco, this sounded like a poor choice.

If you fly from another island in the Caribbean, however, you can go into the small airport on the north of the island. This leaves you just fifteen minutes from the resort. So, we spent four days in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

We stayed at the San Juan Mariott Resort & Stellaris Casino. On the positive side, the hotel is right on its own private beach, has a nice pool and is in a nice, safe neighborhood with lots of good restaurants within walking distance. We also had a wonderful view from our eighth floor (I think) room.

On the negative side, this resort has kids everywhere. After four days, we were ready for the Couples Only policy at Sandals. In addition, the casino in the resort is tiny. Granted, we were there during the week, but there wasn’t much going on there at any time. And we were told by at least one local that it is one of the nicest casinos on the island. Not sure you’d want to make Puerto Rico your destination if you’re interested in gaming.

The first night there, we had an interesting experience. Somewhere around 2am or 3am, I hear the doorknob to our door rattle. Ok, so someone is trying to come into the wrong room. No big deal. I’ve got the dead bolt locked and that rotating bar (whatever it is called) latched.

The rattling stops and I drift back to sleep. Then the door knob rattles again. And a few minutes later, it does so yet again. Now I’m awake. I go to the door to see what the hell is going on.

Looking out the peep hole in the door, I see a man who is clearly very much lost, very much drunk, and very much naked! He seems to be walking around our floor trying all the doors, making it to ours every few minutes.

Now I have to decide what to do. If I open the door (or engage with him in any way), one of two things is going to happen:

1. He’s going to be an ass and there’s going to be a confrontation.
2. He’s going to be a nice guy, and the compassionate part of me is going to force me to help him.

Frankly, I don’t like either choice. So, I call Hotel Security.

Upon my saying into the phone, “There a naked man trying to get into my room,” Shea awakes. Security says they will send someone up. I hang up and explain the situation to Shea.

It turns out the door across the hall leads to the utility elevator, so we get to watch everything go down.

Security sends up three people, including one lady who can’t stop laughing. The head security guard asks our drunken guest where his room is. The intellectual response is, “Dude, I don’t know.”

The guard then pulls out a list of what I assume is all hotel guests and their rooms. Clearly, this is not the first time a lost, drunk, naked guy has been reported in this hotel; there is an established protocol!

They then walk away from our line of site, and I assume that they got him back to his room.

And, no, I’m not photoblogging this part of the trip!

Next up, we’ll take a look at our tour of Old San Juan.