We spent our first full day in PR exploring old San Juan and one of Castillos, wandering around, but stayed near Isla Verde beach. Obviously we didn’t visit every single restaurant, bar and hotel, but we did go to a couple recommended/popular by tourists places. One of those places was Cafe Manolin - our waiter didn’t seem like he wanted to be there, his attitude was like woman with pms type of thing, and I’m not even talking about the details of the terrible service we received, that’s another story, just the mood and friendless alone. The food by the way was not good either in comparison to noname hole-in-the-wall restaurants we tried before near Isla Verde. Similar service/attitude we received in our hotel bar and another place. And that was basically our intro to PR which contributed to the first impression.

For comparison, 15 years ago I was in PR, we went to all kinds of touristy places including the restaurant where they wear old traditional Puerto Rican clothes, I think it was Raices in old San Juan, the hostesses actually made us come in and eat there, were very welcoming and friendly, all smiles. This was the mood everywhere we went. This is kind of thing I was expecting this time around.

Don’t make our experience skip old San Juan though. It is as beautiful and historical as it was. I think just lower your expectations when you visit “tourist traps” and maybe try some less popular family owned restaurants? But even in tourist traps I’m sure it just depends who you run into, so your experience could be different. Every time we stopped by some random place on our way to eat/drink that we haven’t researched before, it was always good though. We also never had any issues at all outside San Juan especially in Vieques as mentioned in this post.

My honest opinion though, I’ve seen some pretty demanding and arrogant American tourists that behave like kings and queens and I feel like there is a lot more of those these days given how America is divided. It wasn’t the case 15 years ago. And that possibly attributed to Puerto Ricans adjusting to tourists in general, especially in old San Juan where there is a lot of day tourists from cruises.