Nothing like a bout of the flu...

I spent most of last week crashed out with a strain of the flu. We even closed Ola Lola's one night because of it. This a weird strain. It moved back and forth between my chest and my head. the worst part about it was the constant headache that nothing would ease. Imagine your worst hangover. Multiply by 5 to 10 (depending on how much ibuprophin you've had). Stretch out over 6 days. Welcome to my world.

But all is better now.

Sunset view from the deck at Llave del Mar.

We - Elaine, our friend Kelda and I - had a Tuesday adventure for dinner. Of course, so many restaurants around here are closed on Tuesday that Tuesday dinner is always an adventure. We went to Quebradillas and found a seafood restaurant right on the cliff overlooking the sunset and ocean. It wasn't the restaurant Elaine and Kelda planned, the one where they had dinner last Tuesday (while I was home nursing my non-hangover headache). That one was closed this week. But we found another one we enjoyed, Llave del Mar. The seafood was really fresh and delicious and the service was great. The only thing that was a bit strange were the three mounted hunting trophies - two stuffed deer heads and a bear head, not the sort of thing one thinks of at an oceanview restaurant on this island.

On Wednesday, Elaine and I had another adventure, this time off to San Juan. Not for fun or pleasure, but so Elaine could file all the paperwork needed to get her Speech-Language Pathologist's license her in PR. The first part of the adventure was finding the place. Elaine did a great job of navigating us there. We landed just a block short of where we needed to be. Most of the paperwork went quickly. The only hickup was finding an attorney (!) to notarize the documents. Normally, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an attorney's office but we walked five blocks before we found one. All in all, this was a very smooth encounter with a government agency. We got there, got our business done and got out with very little hassle, delay or waiting in line. Rebecca, the woman in the licensing office, was very helpful. And, we - that is, mostly Elaine - did the whole encounter in Spanish!

We had one more adventure on our San Juan trip. We were very close to Plaza Las Americas, the largest shopping mall in the Caribbean. We had to stop. Now I can (finally) say I've been to Plaza Las Americas. I can also say if I don't go back for another four years (or more) I will be just fine with it. It's actually very difficult to shop there. As our friend Tito said, your head just spins. There is so much stuff competing for your attention and so much sparkle and just so MUCH, it's hard to concentrate on anything. Even the bookstore, my favorite store in any mall, was overwhelming. Guess I'm just an out-island beach bum who can't take the big city.

And I'm okay with that.