Café con leche
Diner in Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico 2004
The name escapes me but it had a good café con leche and a cozy atmosphere. What would be a Greek diner for NYers.
What does el coqui have to do with me?
Laying in a Spanish colonial style bed and staring at the mahogany beams on the ceiling a few years ago in the converted convent-now-luxury hotel “El Convento” in Viejo San Juan… I started to close my eyes to immerse myself in the aquatic song of el coquí. For those who don’t know, el coquí is the national symbol of Puerto Rico, known for the “co-quí” this frog makes.
Cy booked the trip there to spare me, he said, of the shame of being Boriqua and never having set foot on la isla de encanto. True, true, but Boriqua to me meant skyscrapers, not palm trees, but I suppose he could have made the same argument about Greek diners, and he was right so off we went.
What does one think when laying in a Spanish colonial canopy bed in El Convento listening to el coquí? Whether a special place is reserved for you in hell because you are engaging in pre-marital fornication in a room where a nun once pledged her virginity to Christ? Not unless you want to ruin your vacation. How about: where are all those froggies living that I hear them outside my door? Does the hotel import them into the courtyard for the benefit of tourists? Or are they really indigenous to the island and living any place they can in an encroaching concrete world?
The answer seems a little bit of both, if PBS or the nature channel is right. What does el coqui have to do with me? – continue reading …
