Days of sun and breezes

My husband arrived Wednesday (Delta has this nifty system for keeping track of a flight's status) and the next day we spent several hours in Old San Juan. He had a meeting with one of his main freelancing clients, and I took advantage of the day to purchase $150 in texts in Spanish that I can't get anywhere else for my project of turning my dissertation into a book.

But before all that, we had breakfast at our favorite coffee shop, which has been around since the late 19th or early 20th century. As we walked into La Bombonera (roughly, the bonbon shop), we found out that the Travel Channel was filming an episode of Andrew Zimmern's "Bizarre Foods." I'm not actually sure what food they would find that was bizarre there, since everything sold is quite delicious and basically derives from the Spanish and European traditions that gave us our very fattening Puerto Rican pastries, but I'll try to check out the show's website now and then to see when the Puerto Rico episode is shown.

After breakfast, my husband went off to his meeting and I walked around to my favorite haunts in the Old City. I did a little shopping and a lot of walking up and down the hilly, cobblestoned streets (very similar in their hilliness to my small college on the hill), and stopped at my favorite Starbucks (even their coffee tastes better here!). I then met up with my husband and we did a bit more walking. We'll likely return to the Old City to get a few more things before we leave next week, and to get some pictures because the tropical rain didn't allow us to take any that day.

We've been staying at my titi E's small apartment in the city, and my husband took a picture this morning of the panoramic view from the living room. It's a cozy little place that she uses when she has business in the city (she lives about 45 minutes away in a beautiful retreat in the mountains), and she generously loaned it to us for the week. The apartment is only 10 minutes away from my parents' so it's been very convenient for us and, last night, my husband even walked to a nearby store to get some groceries before we called it a day.

At my parents' home, things continue to improve each day. My father gets stronger and my mother today will go to her favorite Saturday exercise class for the first time in months. Outside, the sun shines, the sky is pristinely blue and the ocean breezes blow, reminding us that we're on an island.

Slowly, but surely, las aguas vuelven a su nivel. God willing.