Ok, it’s cold, so we decided to go to Puerto Rico. I’m not really sure why, but we did. I guess Florida was too easy. Anyhow, we decided to spend the night at a hotel near the Baltimore airport and park the car there for the two weeks we’ll be gone. We got the room and two weeks parking for $115 which was cheaper than just two weeks parking at the airport. We checked in early and drove up to the Canton neighborhood in Baltimore and visited a few of the local establishments. A couple of beers at an Irish pub called Looney’s started us off followed by a stop at a place that Derek recommended called Nacho Mama’s, a Mexican restaurant with a great and very hard to resist menu. One thing I really wanted to try was the Margarita served in an old hub cap that you had to drink with straws…Sylvia was not impressed. I was. After Nacho Mama’s we went next door to a Jessica favorite, Mama’s on the Half Shell. This was our primary destination. We started with oysters on the half shell, followed by a shrimp and grits with tasso ham. The oysters were small, but very good and served very cold with both vinaigrette and cocktail sauces. The shrimp were blackened and placed on top cheese grits with Tasso ham. It didn’t last very long…Sylvia liked them. Feeling fairly full, we were debating on the relative merits of ordering something else as we watched the two guys next to us devour an order of shrimp, mussels, and chorizo in a spicy beer and tomato broth. After catching their breath they told us it was called Beer Mussels. Not to be outdone, we ordered it…very, very good. By then we were hooked, so we split the White Chocolate Bread Pudding with Rum Sauce. I would suggest that anyone going there should try it. We then waddled out to the car and drove back to the hotel. Canton’s a neat little neighborhood to visit if you’re in Baltimore and are hungry and thirsty.
This morning we caught an early flight to San Juan. A cab took us to the Hotel Milano in old San Juan. The hotel is in a great location and is satisfactory (rustic) at best. There are plenty of tourists in old San Juan but not many hotels. We did a quick walk around town and made friends with a local who happened to be the bartender at the Barrachina Bar and Restaurant. It turns out it was in this bar that the Pina Colada was invented. I know this is true because she told me so. The Pina Colada was good even though it was pre-mixed. Another hour of walking and we stopped and had fish ceviche at Lupi’s which is a little bar owned by Ed Figueroa who was a New York Yankee during the same time we lived in New York – the 70s. The ceviche was terrific. For dinner, we walked around town again and settled on a little place up the street called El Restaurante Jibarito. It’s a mostly local family place with complete with screaming kids. Sylvia had real roast pork and I had grouper. Both were good and given enough time in San Juan, I would certainly go back. After another short walk we headed back to the hotel and called it a day. It seemed like a long one.
No comments:
Post a Comment