I'm not exactly sure why I struggle to sleep on planes. I'm always infinitely jealous when I look around the aircraft and everyone around me is sawing logs. Elisa has developed a keen gift of falling asleep right around takeoff and waking up right around landing. Knowing that I really needed to sleep on the way to New York, I tried to utilize my trip planning prowess to solve the problem. I found lots of suggestions, but landed on two key ones. Get a good neck pillow and take a Melatonin after boarding. So here I was with a new neck pillow (Elisa got one too) and a Melatonin in my stomach just after boarding.
Once we were airborne, those around me started settling. I looked around and Miles was dead to the world. Sam had fallen asleep as we were taking off. Elisa was asleep. Lukas and my Dad, seated behind me, seemed to have settled. My Aunt was awake, as was my Mom. But I was confident they would be asleep too. So I put on my noise cancelling headphones, adjusted the neck pillow, and tried to sleep. You must understand something about me, though. I'm a...particular sleeper. I really like everything to be just right. Yes, I'm the Goldilocks of sleeping. I hate being warm, hate repeat noises (stay away, clicking fan!) and like it dark. While the headphones took care of any repeat noises, and I had the little air vent blasting me in the face (well, let's be honest...blasting is the understatement of the century. A gentle tickling would be more apt.), I just couldn't sleep. I fell into a routine of try to sleep, adjust neck pillow, try some more, remove neck pillow, put pillow back on, adjust seat, move legs, try to sleep. Nothing seemed to be working. I estimate we were about 1/3 of the way into the flight, however, when I realized just what was causing my problem. Suddenly, the cabin was incredibly dark. For some insane reason, the flight crew thought it was a critical step to do a full drink/snack service on a midnight flight, so we had to endure the lights being on while they worked the entire plane. Once that was done, lights went off and lo and behold, while it wasn't restful, I started getting some sleep. No, it wasn't great, and I'd feel it later for sure, but it was some sleep.
Everyone else seemed quite settled, besides us all reacting to Cough Boy, one row in front of us. Just as the entire plane was starting to go into a deep sleep, cough boy would...randomly cough. And I was quite convinced it wasn't due to a cold. Nah, he just needed to clear his throat. Every 5 minutes. For an entire 4.5 hour flight. Thanks Cough Boy. I'd personally shove a cough drop down your throat for the pleasure of another hour of sleep.
But before we knew it, we were starting to descend into a very quiet and dark New York City. I was disappointed. I have never been to NYC, and my luck...I picked the wrong side of the plan to be on. I never really got a view of the city while we were there. Oh well, Elisa and I will get there for an actual trip sooner rather than later. We all departed the plane, and the boys seemed to be hanging in there, except for Sam. He wasn't crying, but he was cold and had no interest in walking. So I had him bundled up and in my arms. That was fun. Good thing JFK is such a small airport.
I was also struck by how old school JFK was. We had to switch terminals for the second leg of our trip, and I was shocked that we were escorted outside into 20 degree temperatures to await a physical bus that would transport us over to our next destination. Maybe I've been spoiled by airports like Orlando and Denver and their monorail like set-up. Needless to say, if anyone was sleepy, that faded away with the blast of frigid wind in our faces! We boarded our bus and made the quick trip over to our next terminal. We then slogged all the way down to our gate and I was able to finally put Sam down. Oh my aching arms. We had about 30 minutes before boarding would begin, so I looked around and saw a nearby Dunkin Donuts. I wasn't the only one. As it seemed to be the only thing close, everyone was running on Dunkin. I walked over with the boys, my Dad, and my Aunt, and we got in line. I snapped a picture of the menu and texted to Elisa and got everyone's order. After waiting through half the line, I glanced over to the left and saw kiosks. Order your food on the kiosk and skip the line! Brilliant. I exited out and started entering everyone's orders.
And good grief, everyone had an order. Some wanted American cheese, others wanted cheddar. I had to order each coffee separately, to get milk for some and Half and Half for others. It took...a bit. Finally, having successfully entered breakfast for our party of 8, I hit "Checkout". And got an error message. Oh no you didn't, Dunkin! I went back and forth between Checkout and Error message for the next 3 minutes. Finally, one of the cashiers asked if it wasn't working. Hey, that's perceptive of you! She informed me that after she finished with her current order, we could enter the line and get our order taken care of. I'm not sure everyone still in line was happy about it, but I did try to help line management by doing the kiosk, so my guilt was a 0 on the scale of 1-10. I walked up to the cashier when she was next available and...had to individually give her every order again. She seemed just as thrilled as I was to make all of our individual cheese and coffee selections. It was SO fun doing it twice.
But the order was finally entered, our food was provided, and we were on our way back to the gate. Unfortunately, the double ordering process had taken most of our waiting time, so it quickly escalated to pushing everyone to eat as fast as they could. Yes, that's the key to getting on another plane ride to sleep. Overload your stomachs with breakfast sandwiches! I was the only adult to skip coffee, because I was convinced I would find a way to sleep on the way to San Juan.
Once again, we were in line, boarded, and seated. The plane was actually on time and before we knew it, as the sun was really starting to come up, we were off despite some windy conditions. Everyone settled down and crossed their fingers that the Dunkin Donuts would start to digest somewhere over the Atlantic. I pulled out my neck pillow and was ready for sleep.
Oh, who am I kidding. Sleep was just not on this menu. First, I switched neck pillows with Elisa, who seemed to be having a deflating problem on her original one. Then as I was dozing off, Miles and Lukas wanted to play Super Smash Bros on Switch with me. After a few fun games of that, I looked around and noticed that Sam, Miles, and Lukas had no interest in actually sleeping. So I browsed through movies and fired up Infinity War. I watched the whole thing, and even ordered coffee from the nice flight attendant. After a few sips, I regretted not running on Dunkin. After Infinity War (a movie I love), I switched over to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. I got about 30 minutes in (yeah, that's just a mess of a movie) and then we got the notice that we were descending.
I could palpably feel the excitement from the family. The kids were almost off their longest day of flying ever. Elisa was looking out the window at the beautiful ocean and then the Puerto Rico coast. We all watched as we flew over San Juan, caught our first glimpses of Old San Juan, and then started really descending. I was struck by what looked to be hurricane damage throughout the city. Over a year later, they were still trying to recover, and that was definitely a theme of the trip. We saw damage everywhere we went.
But we were finally on the ground, and finally off the plane. You could immediately feel that the frigid weather was behind us, even before getting out of the airport. I was aching to feel the sun and warmth. We went to baggage claim and finally recovered all of our luggage. Man, 8 people have a lot of luggage. By my count, we had 9 suitcases, 1 large bag of snorkel equipment, 7 backpacks, and 2 booster seats. I wasn't overly worried though. We had similar luggage when we all went to Orlando and I had found us a Ford Expedition. It fit us perfectly, and there was plenty of room for the luggage in the back. In preparation for this trip, I had reserved a "Ford Expedition or Similar" so I was confident. We made our way out of the airport and I did enjoy the newly found warm weather. It was beautiful, warm, and not too humid. We trekked over to the rental car facility and I proceeded straight to the Gold board for Hertz. There was my name, just as planned. We walked over to our stall, and saw our car.
It wasn't an Expedition (I don't think I ever cared to actually decide what it was). It was large and had three rows of seats, but it just didn't seem as long. Opening the back only confirmed my fears. This could definitely hold 8. It could not hold the luggage. Boy, don't you just love when you sit and look at the people, luggage, and backpacks and have dawning comprehension that there is just no possible way to fit us all in there?
But I didn't let that get me down. Elisa and my Dad started plotting with me as well. We piled everyone in the car and fit what we could (only about 3.5 suitcases) into the back. Then I started handing people suitcases. My Aunt Connie, my Mom, and Elisa all had suitcases on their laps. One suitcase was between Elisa and I. The boys held their backpacks. My dad placed three suitcases on his lap. We were fit to burst, but somehow, we fit everything. Yay!
We pulled out and I drove over to the exit when the car beeped at me. Despite our best efforts, the back hatch wasn't properly closed. Great. I now had visions of us driving away and all of the suitcases falling out. So once we exited, I started looking for somewhere to pull off. The problem was there wasn't anywhere to pull off. Longer and longer we drove, and we saw no natural exit to the freeway. Finally, when the directions told us to switch freeways, I just pulled off on the turn and jumped out. I slammed the back hatch a couple times until I got the all clear from Elisa and jumped back in. Now I was feeling the humidity and was actively sweating. Clearly, vacation had begun!
The other problem with Puerto Rico was that the cell coverage was pretty spotty. So my plan to use Google Maps (and my lack of printing off any directions) caused an immediate problem. As a result, we had our first "adventure" right out of the gate. I missed a turn, which put me on a bridge. Obviously, bridges have no off ramps (cue "The More You Know!" sounder), so we were stuck going the opposite way. At the end of the bridge, we met our first toll. $3.55 (what a strange amount) for the pleasure of getting off the bridge. We paid and I quickly found a place to U-Turn. Back we went...to the toll bridge! $3.55 more for the pleasure of going back across the bridge. We were already down $7.10 thanks to my lack of driving skill. I also wondered what the toll attendant was thinking as they looked into our car and saw luggage everywhere. Nothing says tourist like a car full of luggage and a clueless driver.
But we were finally on our way! Well, sort of. Not long after, I again missed a turn. How am I so bad at this? Google Maps was thankfully working, though, so I just had to make one other U-turn and I was back where I needed to go. So THAT is what Google Maps meant when it said "turn left, stay right" in quick succession! I am pleased to report, however, that I made no other driving mistakes on the way to the hotel. We found our resort and slowly made our way in.
Upon pulling up to valet, everyone opened their doors and the luggage spread across the street like glitter. Okay, not really, but it wasn't that far off. We pulled all of our suitcases, backpacks, and people out of the car. While I arranged for valet, the others discovered two distinct birds in cages on opposite sides of the hotel entrance. Geoff and Bob. Bob seemed to be the crowd favorite. He would bob (pardon the pun) and weave as Elisa and the boys did the same. The birds even spoke. Geoff was an expert at saying "Hola". Bob was trained to say..."Hi Bob!" Hopefully, this doesn't make sense to you either. But maybe I'm thinking of it wrong. I'll try it out over the next week. Whenever anyone says hello to me, I'll respond with "Hi Brad!". I'm sure they'll like it.
After a few minutes, we finally did enter the hotel. And man, what a view. You are greeted by a fantastic picturesque framing of wide windows overlooking some gardens and just beyond that, the beach and ocean. Just exquisite. We checked in and headed up to our rooms. We were up on the 6th floor, which was really nice because that also gave us beautiful views of our pool and the ocean. I was immediately in heaven. We dropped all of our backpacks and then separated the luggage into our separate rooms when the bellhop arrived. And then it hit us...we were all starving.
That's right. The only morsels of food we had enjoyed (beyond cookies on the flight) were from Dunkin. We were no longer running on Dunkin. Our stomachs were eating themselves. So at about 2:30pm, we headed down to the It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere Bar" (yes, that's the real name) and sat outside to get some food. We had a good lunch of a variety of salads, wings, sandwiches, and I drank as much water as I could. I was...parched. Then, the boys wanted to go swim in the pool.
On the way, I found Elisa a place to get an iced coffee (and it really was the BEST). Up we went, changed into swimming suits, and we headed down to the pool. To say that the water was "chilly" would be an understatement. Brrrrrr. But the boys wanted to swim, damn it! So in we went. First, the boys went for the waterslide. Sam was immediately hooked as well, but his poor old habit of drinking pool water reared it's ugly head after the third ride and he near vomited into a towel. Honestly, is there any worse sound than a kid deep coughing up pool water? Yum!
With that, I wanted Sam to have a break, so he and I headed to the hot tub while the boys played water volleyball with my Dad. Before long, though, the boys were back with us in the hot tub. That was nice. Warm and definitely took the chill away from the pool itself. We then headed upstairs to get showered and changed so we could do what any self respecting vacationer would do...head back to the bar and have some drinks.
We all pretty much decided on Pina Coladas, except for Elisa. She was incredibly tired, so she stayed in the room to get some shut eye. The rest of us had a great welcome drink for the vacation and then discovered one of the less advertised parts of Puerto Rico...the bugs. They weren't swarming around us, no. They were just eating our legs alive. Wheeee! Drinks and bug bites all on the first day!
It was bad enough (were they bugs or ants?!) that we got up after paying and headed back to the room while I researched dinner. There was a restaurant called Roots that was serving up Southern/Caribbean flair, so I went up and let Elisa wake up a bit. We engaged in a full conversation where she stated she wasn't hungry and didn't want to go to dinner...she just wanted to sleep, which was fine. The rest of us headed down to the restaurant and settled in with some appetizers. And then Elisa texted me, wondering where we were. Trying to explain the conversation that we had to someone that didn't remember a word of it was...interesting. But finally, Elisa was awake enough to realize she was indeed hungry. She headed down and joined us. The meal was amazing. Connie, my Mom (Gayle), and I shared a bucket of chicken. Lukas had ribs. Sam had Mac and cheese that he hated but the rest of the table enjoyed. And my Dad ordered Snapper, which came out as a full fish that had been deep fried. Man, it was good. In all, it was a fantastic starting meal to our trip (and for me, the first addition to my waistline).
After dinner, though, it was clear. The crew was exhausted. So at 8:00pm San Juan time, we all headed up to our rooms and one by one, we went to sleep. I was especially pleased to discover that the right side of the bed closest to the window got a direct arctic blast from the air conditioner. Oh, it was heaven and we were all soon asleep.
No one would stir (unless you count banging other people around due to snoring) until the next morning. In the end, I was very glad that I had planned a chill day for our trip. We had so much planned for the rest of the adventure, but easing into our time change, sleep issues, and the rest was a welcome addition.
Coming up next time, our trip goes into high gear as we head to the seas and find our own sort of "culebration".
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