*Warning: Long Blog Post Ahead*
I've been sitting on this blog post for a while. I didn't know what kind of approach to take. Just recap the events of spring break, write about my feelings, or write about lessons I learned. There were just so many angles to take and I didn't want to make the longest blog post ever. But it is long anyways. I wanted to give this Spring Break the justice it deserves considering it is my last one (hello graduation!!).
Melissa and I had been planning a Spring Break trip since she got hired on at JetBlue. Our original plan was to go to New York. In February our plans changed. Melissa wanted to go to Puerto Rico and I just wanted to spend time with Melissa. So naturally I said yes. I was so excited to travel and to not have a plan (ha ha. I love making plans). This trip was unlike anything else I have done. I am that person that packs the entire week leading up to the trip. But this time I didn't do that. I made a list but I didn't actually pack until Saturday night/Sunday.
Melissa was in charge of the flights, so I just knew to be ready by 10 PM to go to the airport.
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| Melissa and Heidi SLC Airport |
We were on our way to the airport talking about boys (naturally) and also talking about the possibility of me not making it on the plane since we were flying standby. Melissa said she was 60% sure I would get on and she only had 40% of doubts. I could live with those numbers. As we pulled into the airport, Melissa checked the list to see our chances and she noticed that everyone on the standby list had loaded the plane. That was everyone but us (ahhhhh). Our plane was leaving an hour earlier than we thought. It made my heart race and my brain crazy. Luckily Melissa keeps her cool, and we had Whitney help us get onto a flight to JFK instead of Orlando. We ran from security to the ticket desk back to security and to the terminal. It was an extremely eventful 30 minutes.
The actual flight to New York wasn't eventful. I got some sleep which was good and watched a few Friends episodes. Once we landed, we tried pulling up our boarding passes for our next flight. Turns out our flight was still booked for the following day. Which means we had to go out of the terminal to change our tickets and then check back in through security. No biggie, expect security gives me anxiety. But I got through security in SLC with no problem, so I should get through security at JFK. Which I did. Little victories worth dancing about.
The flight to San Juan wasn't exciting. I watched more Friends and slept just a little bit more. Once we landed, everything turned Spanish. Of course there was still English everywhere, but we definitely were not in the 50 States anymore. We got in a taxi and turns out the taxi director person (new official job title) gave the wrong directions to our taxi driver. After talking to him a bit, and after talking to our AirBnB host, we figured out the direction we were supposed to be headed. We drove through some interesting neighborhoods. The entire ride I kept thinking to myself "we aren't in Utah anymore." I could feel myself going into culture shock, which seems so silly but you can't stop it. Believe me, I tried. Back to the taxi ride, we were driving through a street and there were two teenagers riding their bikes in the street. Since all driving laws go out the window in Puerto Rico, the driver got close to the kids riding their bikes trying to get them to get out of the way. But the teenagers thought they owned the street so they got upset that this car (which is 50 times larger than them) is trying to run them over. As we passed them on the road, they started hitting the car. I'm not going to lie, it totally freaked me out. But wait, there is more. We get to the bottom of the street and we got stuck at a red light. The kids catch up to us and start hitting the car even more. So what does our taxi driver do? He gets out of the car and chases them down. It's cool. We were just chilling in the back of a taxi with the driver's door wide open. A minute later our driver came back and just resumed driving like nothing happened. I was dying on the inside. I was laughing at what just happened but also couldn't believe what I just witnessed.
When we got to our apartment, we met our host, who was totally adorable, and then we ran to the SuperMax for food. After we picked up a few items, we went back to the apartment and took a short nap with the intention of going to the beach once we woke up.We were exhausted from the emotional roller coaster we took just to get to San Juan. When the timer went off saying our nap was over, neither one of us moved. I felt like I was hit by not one, not two, but ten semi trucks. I haven't dealt with extreme jet lag before so this was a first for me. I woke up a few hours later and I stood up and the world was spinning (more that normal, ha). I walked into the other bedroom to check on Melissa and she was knocked out on the bed. I turned back to my room and totally ran into a wall. Yep. Not my proudest moment on the trip.
I was texting my mom and snapping my sister. I was slightly freaking out. My anxiety was through the roof and I couldn't reel it back in. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed and never come out till it was time to go home. I felt stranded because it was dark outside and my "translator/travel companion" was asleep. I knew it was silly to freak out. This trip wasn't going to kill me. But it felt like it was. So what did I do to make myself feel better? I watched Frozen and more Friends episodes. A few hours later Melissa woke up and watched Friends with me. Eventually we went to bed and promised each other we wouldn't spend the next day in bed.
Old San Juan was my favorite part of this trip. The city was so cute. It was the perfect mix between New York City (for me) and Argentina (for Melissa). First off we took the bus into the city. I think this was a bigger victory for me than it was for Melissa. Once we reached the city, we started walking up and down the roads and taking pictures everywhere. We walked to the edge of the island and followed it up to the El Morro Fort.We spent a few hours exploring the fort. We decided it was time for food so we exited the fort and we saw a tram heading back to the city. We thought it belonged to one of the cruise ship tour groups. We thought we were rebels jumping onto someone else's shuttle. Turns out it was the free shuttle that drove through Old San Juan. We lost our street cred as quickly as we gained it. After we found some food, we walked through souvenir shops until our feet couldn't handle any more. We headed back to the apartment with the intention of going to the beach. Except I had six blisters that begged to differ. We we called it a day and watched Friends, talked boys, and had one of our great midnight conversations at 9:00 at night.
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| Old San Juan Street |
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| Old San Juan Street |
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| El Morro Fort. Built in the 16th Century |
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| El Morro |
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| Melissa playing on the edge of El Morro |
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| Melissa and the fun look out at El Morro |
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| hashtag tourist |
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| No filter peeps. Old San Juan is just that pretty. |
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| I love the water against the rocks. |
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| I spy our initials. ME + HEA '17 |
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| Melissa found her new boyfriend |
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| Our cute AirBnb Apartment |
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| The walkway to the street from our apartment. So many geckos on these walls. |
We finally made it to the beach. I guess you can say third time is the charm. The beach was about a 10 minute walk from our apartment. Since we went in the morning, we basically had the beach to ourselves. Occasionally other tourists would pass by but it was mainly just us two. Since there was a storm moving in, the waves were fairly big. That made Melissa upset because she wanted to swim. It made me happy because I love listening to the waves and taking pictures (obviously).
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| Seaweed is gross. but the view was pretty. |
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| I love standing right here ^ and letting the water wash my feet. |
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| Okay. We are just adorable. |
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| Bye Puerto Rico. It's been real. |
On the way home we lucked out by sitting by each other on both plane rides! On our way to Orlando we watched Charly. I knew the ending before we started the movie, yet I still bawled like a baby. The flight to Orlando was so smooth that once we landed, we figured something was wrong with our boarding passes. Melissa wasn't able to pull up the standby list to see our status so we left the terminal, went to the ticket desk, they fixed the priority of the list and then we went back through security. It seems so silly now, but we just didn't want to chance it with our luck. So we figured better safe than sorry.
I got my ticket for the flight and I was sitting on row one. By the end of the trip I had sat at the very back, middle, both sides, and the front of the plane. We had a super cool flight attendant named Joel. I had an empty seat by me so Joel asked if I wanted Melissa to come sit by me. Of course I said yes! Joel gave us so many snacks and drinks. At first we thought Joel was treating us so nicely because we are cute ;). But really he is just great at his job.
The turbulence once we hit Salt Lake City was a little rough but if you look at it like a ride at Disneyland instead of your plane wiggin' out, life is a little happier.
This trip was definitely one for the books. I learned so much in so little time. I am excited to see what travels the future brings.
Alternate blog post titles:
-You Can Never Watch Too Many Friends Episodes
-I Didn't Eat Geckos In My Sleep, I Think
-Humidity Hates My Hair
-The Empanadas Smelt Funny
-How Many Memories Can You Fit Into Four Days?
-20 Minutes Into The Trip We Missed Our Flight
