Prettiest Street on Earth

I still maintain that that is what it is. In a break with tradition, I'm going to put a photo right here at the top to back this claim up:



We hit the road about 9:00 (early for us!), spending 75 cents per person in bus fare for the A5 to Old San Juan. (The one we took was the same one that had been hanging around our building last night. Kind of embarrassing all 'round.) The bus was crowded, but people made way for us - in fact, one very nice woman with a three-year-old son of her own offered up her unoccupied thigh as a place for Tess to sit. We thanked her and plopped Tess down, but despite calming noises from everyone, she decided that the woman "me da miedo", which made us all laugh. One of the endlessly delightful aspects of this island is the immediate, family-like intimacy all around you all the time. I can not imagine an unknown adult offering to let another adult's 3-year-old sit in her lap on a bus in the continental US. It would all but never happen - everyone's too afraid of each other, too afraid of accusations or scandal. But here, it's the norm - once Tess got back into my arms, it wasn't five minutes before we tried again with another nice older woman two rows back, who'd gotten on and gotten a seat because a younger woman had gotten up for her. This one lasted a bit longer, but Tess is a real gringa in that she's having none of this intimate contact with strangers. "Keep your lap to yourself, lady. My dad has arms of steel - he'll hold me." And while that is true (the "arms of steel" part), I do wish she would lighten up a little and make the ride more comfortable for all concerned.

We arrived at the street pictured above and its museum around 9:30, and the temptation to immediately start snapping photos of the area was immense, but I managed to put the children first and go into the museum. Which is really very, very nice - there's a table where the kids can put plastic obstacles in the way of flowing water to see how eddies and such form, and that alone, in terms of synapse-firing stimulation and long-term learning, was worth the price of admission ($7 for kids, $5 for adults, in a bit of a reversal of the usual way of things that seems to be common on the island, at least for kid-related activities). But they also had a minature mock-up of a cave, a butterfly farm (currently out of butterflies), a hands-on music area, an arts and crafts area, oversize representations of the human body and its systems, a neighborhood store in miniature, and, much to Tess' delight and to the joy of anyone who's a fan of photos of her in cute outfits, a dress-up area. Go ahead, skip on down to the photos. No one will know.

We had lunch in the little park area just in front of the museum, in the shade, soaking in the unbelievable beauty of this spot. Talking to Janneke about mofongo (it's hard to get me to talk about much else these days), I was overheard by a very nice Puerto Rican gentleman who told us how exactly to make it. It sounds really simple. We chatted about how enamored we are of this place, and bonded a bit on linguistic issues - he was waiting for his son or daughter, not sure which, to come back out with his 8-year-old grandson, who was inside having his mind expanded. They come down regularly from Tampa to pound Spanish into the boy's head. He apparently understands fine, but needs these immersion vacations before he'll speak. He told us also that the last remaining city gate, which is something I'd really been eager to see, was right down the block - all we'd have to do to walk there would be go down Calle del Cristo. We needed no convincing.

The walk down the street was at once sublime and torturous. Sublime to walk in the cool of the dappled sunshine and glory in the refurbished buildings and tingle with excitement about the grand old palaces yet to be refurbished. Torturous, because one of the houses in great condition was for sale. I really, really wanted to call the number and ask what they wanted for it. But I resisted. We noticed that some people had left cat food out on trays, and the steel trap that is my mind immediately deduced that many people must do this, as the food was present on the trays - if it happened only rarely, it would by this time have been gobbled up. Odd.

Our desire for after lunch was to have a dessert of piraguas, Puerto Rican snow cones with many tropical flavors in the syrups. And as it turns out, there was a piraguas salesman (un piraguero) at the end of this magical street, right in front of the old city gates. So we all (minus Janneke, whose will power is matched only by her beauty) (and her brains) (and whatever else she will strike me for omitting) had piraguas and marveled at the city gates for a while. Quinn and I walked to the end of the jetty there, and found that a vague discoloration, spotted here and there with gossamer strands of what looked a lot like toilet paper, was flowing slowly westward in the water, originating at the terminus of the jetty. And the smell clinched it: The jetty was a disguise for a pipe that discharged nasty water of origin I prefer not to contemplate into the otherwise brilliantly clear water. Right in front of one of the most majestic sights in the city, at the end of the best street ever construed by man. Not a good call. When I'm mayor, that will be directed elsewhere. I'm leaning toward the previous mayor's wazoo.

On our return trip through the gate back into the city, we noticed a sign declaring the illegality of feeding street cats, and the many health hazards that such a practice brings about. The cat food we saw up the street must be some sort of tradition that The Man is trying to stamp out. And once I started looking for them, I did see a number of cats in the old city that didn't seem to belong to anybody, but didn't seem completely feral either. You know, I'm not a cat guy, but there are worse traditions to have. Sure as heck beats street dogs.

Bus ride home, with Tessie sweaty and asleep over my shoulder (can't get on the bus with a non-folded stroller), and where something strange happened: Our bus driver, at a stop about halfway home, left us all in the bus a while and stormed out to bark angrily into his cell phone. And when he got back on, he continued the route, and would let people off before the bus stop, but wouldn't let any new passengers on. It made our ride home speedier, but left a wake of angry bus patrons sprinkled behind us like nasty, poisoned bread crumbs. I tell you, never let an American design a bus system. Best to go either the hyper-orderly way of the Germans, or the devil-may-care, no-holds-barred pure capitalism way of the Ecuadorians. Either way, you'll get where you want to go, and fast. One is smelly, though.

The beach to end the day, home for supper, and a sleepy post-meal interim before the kids collapsed into bed. Which I intend to do any second now. I did invent a contraption for doing chin-ups on a bar I found at the park that's too big around for me to grip - I'll let you know how it worked tomorrow.

Oh yes: A Klingon is an alien from the Star Trek television series. They are a warlike race who have invented a cloaking device that renders their spaceships undetectable. They can slide their ship right up next to you and you won't even know it. Luckily, they can't fire their weapons unless they "de-cloak", so you do get a moment's notice before being attacked.



Dad tries to show the kids about science.



Kids ditch Dad for someone who knows something.



Not everyone can pull this hat off.



Let alone this one.



Brain expansion complete. Resume eating.



For 300 years, San Juan's second-to-last
line of defense has been this gate.



For 300 years, San Juan's last line of defense
has been snowcones.




Someone's been keeping a secret...



Ah, the smell of the sea air.
And of poo.