{Anniversary Trip to Puerto Rico }

For Christmas Aaron surprised me with a trip to Puerto Rico for our 15th wedding anniversary, this week. It is one of the most thoughtful presents he has ever given. He totally kept it a surprise until he gave me the present-a hard thing to do since I usually always find out and am not one for surprises too much. I just love that he wanted me to have a foreign experience without having to worry about passports or having to take off two weeks to go abroad somewhere (not too feasible with the kids still in school). He even arranged the babysitters for the kids all week too. That itself was such a burden off my shoulders. He gave a little booklet he had made with a schedule and pictures of some of the places we would go and things we would do, the resort information, everything. It was perfect.

We left on Monday morning, with a quick 3 1/2 hour flight there. No time change, no layovers- a nice relaxing flight with just the two of us. We realized that we have NEVER been on an airplane together just the two of us. EVER. When we were dating he came home to Iowa at Christmas after I was already there. When we were married we drove to Park City for our honeymoon, drove to Iowa for our reception, and then still drove everywhere else until Brianna came along. Our only other trip without the kids for any extended period of time was on our 4 year anniversary to Hawaii-but he went first to do some military training and I came later, and I left first. So needless to say, we had a great flight, just the two of us. I am sure I probably talked his ear off-talk time without interruptions, it was heaven.

A view of San Juan, Puerto Rica from the plane as we came into the airport.

As we arrived at the airport we followed all the picture signs to gather our luggage and then found the shuttle that was going to take us to our resort-El Conquistador. It was about a half hour drive to the resort through the city, and then we turned off in this neighborhood, and the resort was just tucked away behind all these trees.

We were lucky enough to have our room upgraded to a full ocean view room because it was our anniversary, and we got to see this every morning we woke up. It was beautiful. That island out in the distance is the resort’s private island that we went to and enjoyed ourselves quite nicely. It was like a beach paradise.

The resort was built into the cliffs 300ft up overlooking the ocean, and had a few different levels where rooms, restaurants, and pools were. We stayed on the upper level, but would take the funicular (a sky railway cable car) down to the lower level marina to eat at some of the restaurants and to board the ferry to go to the island. The views from it were gorgeous. The resort is situated in a bay, so we could look out and see the rest of this side of the island poking through.

A view of the whole resort from the ocean as we rode out to the island.

That night we ate at a restaurant grill, Café Bella Vista that was out on the terrace overlooking the pool and had views of the ocean at sunset. We each had an individual pizza, and a appetizer of some pita bread and specialty chips with all these different types of sauces-some kind of humas and an olive based one. The pizzas were great, but the “chips” were a little different. One to chalk up to as an experience of being there.

Views of the marina as we ate dinner.

After dinner we took a walk along the shore and the edge of the hotel. I think we both thought it would be more beach like right by our hotel, but our beach was out on the private island, so we enjoyed our rocky ledge and views of the lit up island surrounding us as we sat on the grass.