Spring Break in Puerto Rico!

This post is a collaboration with my dear friend Amber. This was our first Spring Break trip in college and we were so thankful to have each other through this journey. Tbh, this was mostly written by Amber lmao.

Oh, the joys of thinking ahead to graduation as you enjoy your #SeniorSpring. All we did at this point was go to class, run our extracurriculars, make some chump change, hopefully fit in a few hours of sleep and maybe a couple of meals in, but the most important part was the #TurnUp. We lived for the #TurnUp at this point as we completed whatever tasks we had for the day just for the sole purpose of going out with our friends for one too many drinks. Who truly cares about graduating when it's just so close?

Amber and I spent a lot of time together as we were heads of two of the most prominent culture clubs, CSA and LAO. While we both kicked ass for our clubs, I think we can all agree that LAO is the best lol. If you're from HWS you would understand our friendly competition to be the best and have the most extravagant events. Putting that all aside, we were two best friends just trying to make it out of #SeniorSpring alive. As we buried our heads in our textbooks, booked beautiful venues for our events, and ran to work right after class, we did not even feel how quickly #SeniorSpringBreak was approaching. In fact, it may surprise you all to realize that our trip to Puerto Rico was our first actual ‘Spring Break’ trip. Believe it or not, we came up with the idea, planned, and traveled to the Island of Enchantment in a matter of less than two weeks. How did we make it happen?

Let us back up a bit and give y’all some back story. About a week and a half before Spring Break many of our peers had already begun talking about their plans and how eager they were to get past midterms in order to get to drinking in the sun. It made us start to think about our Spring Break plans, or rather, the lack thereof. On a random day, Amber immediately begun to look up places to go for Spring Break. I know, crazy, right? What’s even crazier, was that she asked me (Lesly) if I wanted to join, and I agreed right away. After forty minutes of digging, we decided that we wanted to either Miami or Puerto Rico. We smiled awkwardly as people continued to ask the horrid words, "what are you doing for Spring Break?" Each time they asked, our answers were different. Girl, what we doing?

There were two main things that we had to figure out: flights and lodging. Amber knew that her uncle had a time share and that it was possible to use it anywhere around the world. So, a big part of our thoughts involved hoping that he would be able assist us with that, rather than worrying about overly booked hotels. For flights, Lesly did most of the research and tried to find the cheapest flights possible, considering how last minute we were with planning everything. After the logistics were figured out, the next thing we knew was that we were on our way to JFK to go to Margaritaville, Puerto Rico!

On the plane: we were seated in the emergency passenger seats, an oversight on the airline's part we would say since our (really cute btw) flight attendant decided to give us free alcohol the ENTIRE way. In sum, we were a bunch of semi-lit girls drinking vino on a night flight sitting next to the emergency exit. Yeah, we were a lil scared too. Needless to say, we landed safely and we were off to our resort.

Us on the plane lol

Disclaimer: Amber does not speak Spanish. So as you could imagine, Lesly did most of the talking being that 1.) She was born the DR and Spanish was her first language. And that’s it. Just that one point.

That night, we checked in and we went to sleep with so much anticipation to see what our resort would look like in the morning. The next morning, we woke early and we were in complete awe of our surroundings. We quickly got dressed and headed to the beach. On our way there, we were greeted by friendly hotel guests and hotel staff alike. We walked into the lobby to the resort and Amber remembers thinking to herself, “So this is how the other half lives”. The lobby was HUGE—it was two floors with floor to ceiling windows facing the ocean. It was simply breath taking. After we explored the beach, we explored our surroundings and left the resort to see what Margaritaville had to offer. To say the least, we were not disappointed. The food that we ate was amazing, and the locals that we met were very interesting too. They gave us advice on things we should do and helped us figure out our way around.

One of our favorite parts of the trip was when we went to San Juan for the day. San Juan was about forty-minute drive from the resort so we rented a car for the day. Lesly did all of the driving because that was way before Amber had a license. It was very hot that day, but we still wanted to walk around and experience San Juan and Old San Juan on foot. We took a lot of pictures and we saw many more tourists. We ate at a local restaurant in Old San Juan, and we also took the bus for a few stops just to see what the public transportation was like. We also visited Castillo de San Cristobal, which is a fort that was built by Spain to protect San Juan. Construction on the fort began in the 1634 and it is the largest fort built by the Spanish in the New World. It was amazing to be able to experience this historic part of Puerto Rico.

El Castillo De San Cristobal

All in all, San Juan was a beautiful experience that we would never forget.

Thank you, Puerto Rico!

Oh, how could we forget to mention: We were super close to getting tattoos. Near the resort, there was a plaza with a lot of shops and restaurants, which is where we spent most of our time here during the trip because of the vast options of entertainment that were available to us.

On our last night, and we were in our “When in Puerto Rico” mood, and we thought that it would be fun to check out the tattoo parlor. We looked at some designs, and had settled it. Amber gave the “This is not actually happening” face, and Lesly looked at her like “Yes, bitch. This is really happening.” Unfortunately, had just missed the tattoo artist by five minutes, as he was packing up shop.

Sometimes we wonder if that was a blessing in disguise because TBH, Amber's a big chicken and we do not know if it would be something that we would look back and be fond of. Who knows, maybe that opportunity will present itself later on down the road.