Because I’m craving another vacation…

…I decided to finally start/complete my post(s) about Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico Day #1:

It is apparent that if my head wasn’t already attached to my body, I leave the damn thing behind. To be so intelligent, I’m pretty dag on loopy. I normally take several trips abroad every year, but somewhere between my move LAST YEAR, I managed to misplace my passport and just haven’t had the time to go sit in the DC office to renew it. Problem: I was craving some island weather…something different and Miami just wasn’t going to cut it this time around. Solution: *spins the globe a la Coming to America and lands on “Queens!”…no, Puerto Rico*

Previously on “Just call me Sangria San Juan”…

Casey and Amanda (she’s not a blogger, but she’s my best friend, so get used to reading/seeing her name) not only were getting drench during what appeared to be Waterpalooza 2011, they manage to drown their kidneys in Chambordy sangria goodness. For the stateside recipe, click here.

While swimming in pitchers of Chambord Sangrias, my bff and I decided to sample a few items off of the menu at the suggestion of Dah-veed (David).

Took a high dive into that pitcher!

Well as I was typing this, I got so excited to show you guys the Latin Sliders, but realized that I ate them too fast to catch them on camera. *sad face* They were three little burgers with a perfect mix of angus beef and longaniza sausage, caramelized onions, a slice of pepperjack cheese and a smidgen of roasted garlic aioli. HEAVEN!!! Now I could go on and on about the wonderfulness of longaniza and how that changes with the region, but I won’t. I encourage you to just try it sometime…anywhere where there’s Latin or Spanish influence, you’ll find looooooongaaaaniiiiiiiiizaaaaaaa. So now you can understand why there is no picture…

In the meantime while I was waiting for the sliders to come out, Amanda and I ordered shrimp cocktail. The shrimp were probably about the same as any that I had had before, but these were laid over a nice helping of pineapple salsa with a side of spicy pineapple cocktail sauce. Both were made from local pineapples harvested from Hacienda Don Juan in Lajas. And maybe I was so impressed with the pineapple sides because I’m a fan of locally harvested foods, but I swear it was the sweetest, juiciest damn pineapple I’ve ever had. I think I finished the salsa before I did the shrimp!

Juicy pineappley shrimp

Once the monsoon let up just enough for us to get back into the hotel without being washed away, we retired to the room to catch one of those good, after meal, during the rain, mid-afternoon naps. Fast forward a few hours to darkness, of course I was starving and ready to get out to do some damage. I was thinking about mojitos and coconut flan, something a little less touristy, but somewhere where the servers could understand and the menus were written in English.

Creamy, dreamy coco flan

Exactly what I asked for...

Now I’m craptastic for not remembering the name of this restaurant, but it started off my obsession with camarones al ajillo (shrimp in garlic sauce). I was looking for napkins and anything else that wasn’t nailed down to sop up the rest of the sauce!

Starting to see a trend here...

I no longer wanted to try anything else on the menus when we went out…I wanted camarones everywhere we went. The same thing went for drinks…Chambord was callin’ my name! And it was always worth it! At the end of Day 1 and a long full belly walk later, I was wishing I had a doggie bag…