February 21 – 25, 2026

With no annual Hanson trip to Jamaica this January, I still wanted to get a quick tropical trip in somewhere with my friends, and I figured combining it with my birthday weekend made the most sense. After comparing flight prices to various islands, Puerto Rico was the winner.

We flew into San Juan Saturday afternoon on my actual birthday, and by the time we got settled into our hotel room, we had just enough time left in the day to freshen up for a celebratory dinner. Whether it’s true or not, we happened to see a random TikTok claiming La Casita Blanca was Bad Bunny’s favorite restaurant in San Juan, and if it’s good enough for Bad Bunny, it’s good enough for me. We ordered the spicy crab arepa, shrimp stuffed avocado, steak and onions, and a tres leches cake for dessert. I honestly felt the shrimp avocado and steak and onions were lacking in flavor, but the arepa and tres leches made up for it in spades which makes me think we just chose the wrong things to order. If given the chance, I would absolutely go back and try something different.

We spent Sunday exploring Old San Juan, just walking around and taking in the colorful buildings. Our first stop of the day was lunch at Restaurante Raíces, which is tucked around the corner from Plaza Colón. We ordered another round of shrimp stuffed avocado, and this one had a lot more flavor to it, and shared some croquettes, seafood paella, and tried Puerto Rico’s most well-known dish, mofongo (mashed plantains).

We wanted to see the famous street leading to the governor’s mansion, which is often decorated with umbrellas hanging in the sky, but apparently it gets changed out from time to time and we just missed them. We did see a mock up of it in a little shop at least, and found one little alley way with a colorful crotchet piece hanging above us. We eventually made our way over to the Bacardi distillery for a tour, which was a lot of fun, and our tour guide was great. He really put an emphasis on the way everyone has different tastes, and just because one bottle cost way more than another, doesn’t mean it’s a “better” rum, and each style works well for different purposes. He said his personal favorite is their 8-year rum, and that he likes to pour it over ice made from coconut water, which I now want to try at home. They ended the tour by giving us a sample of their most expensive rum, which runs at $200 per bottle. It was good, but I honestly wouldn’t have known it was worth that much had they not told us. We ended the evening in the hot tub after door dashing way too much Chinese food and a whole box of tostones.

Monday morning, we picked up a rental car and drove about two hours west for a beach day. Along the way, we stopped at Túnel de Guajataca. It’s an old train tunnel that used to connect two towns, and it sits right on the edge of a beautiful beach full of coconut trees. As beautiful as it was, the waters there are too rough and dangerous for swimming, so we continued our way west toward Crash Boat Beach. Before dipping into the ocean, we stopped for lunch in a nearby town at Peña Blanca. We split the creamy shrimp rice, mofongo, cod fritters, pork and onions (a Puerto Rican friend told me this tastes like her childhood), and got drinks that turned out way larger than we anticipated.

Crash Boat Beach was absolutely beautiful, and we enjoyed the way all the locals were blasting Bad Bunny. It was fun to see how proud they were of his success, especially just weeks after both the Grammy’s and the Super Bowl, and we know we would have been “those” tourists had we been doing it ourselves. We stayed at the beach just long enough to catch the start of sunset, then made our way back to San Juan so we wouldn’t be out driving too late in the dark. While I don’t have a photo, we made a quick stop for dinner in some random town on the way and we couldn’t help but notice how at night, when you can’t see any signs in Spanish, all the lit-up signs looked like any other American suburb: Walmart, Walgreens, McDonald’s, etc. We chose a local fast food joint, Meson Sandwiches. Per a friend’s recommendation, I tried the ham and cheese sandwich which really hit the spot.

On Tuesday, our last full day, we drove out to El Yunque National Forest after a quick breakfast stop at Kasalta, a bakery on the outskirts of San Juan. Our first stop in the forest was Mt. Britton Tower, which we naturally climbed to take in the views. We then spent most of our time at Juan Diago Creek, where after a very quick hike in, you reach the base of a waterfall. Many people were getting in the water, but knowing we were spending the rest of the day out and about, I chose to stay dry. There is a bit longer of a hike you can continue on to see more of the waterfall, which I opted out of since I was wearing open toed shoes. My friends went on and enjoyed the trek while I relaxed on a boulder and had fun people watching.

We had originally talked about going to Luquillo Beach on the way back after hiking, but then our Bacardi tour guide told us about “pork highway”, a mile-long stretch of road in the mountains in the middle of the island full of lechoneras. These are all big, open-air pig roasts, and while it was quiet for our Tuesday afternoon lunch, on weekends and in the evening they have big salsa parties, which would have been really fun to see. So, we opted to explore this and see a different side of the island in our limited time, rather than going to another beach after the previous day. We stopped at El Rancho Original and ordered pulled pork, “party rice” (rice with pigeon peas), and pasteles, which are a Puerto Rican version of tamales. Everything was delicious, and it was so fun driving through the smaller mountain towns to get there and back.

Overall, we all had a really great time, and my only complaint was that the trip was too short. I’m already looking forward to another visit to explore the southern end of the island, Vieques, and the bioluminescent bay. Until then, more adventures await…