San Juan, the capital city of Puerto Rico, is a neat place. It’s one of the few cities I’ve visited that felt old, dirty, fresh, and alive all at the same time. We docked in the port downtown and waited for our tour guide. The day’s mission? A cooking class, which delighted my twelve-year-old daughter.

Traipsing through the streets of San Juan, one gets a sense the city is rather proud of both the mishmash of cultures and capitalism that seems to make Puerto Rico so interesting. Everything’s in Spanish, yes, but there’s a lot of English signs and speakers to get where one needs to be if necessary.

One of our first stops was a church that had people buried in the basement. It was apparently standard practice to bury people in the basements of churches in Puerto Rico until someone figured out the bones were contaminating the local water supply, at which point many of the buried parishioners’ bodies were moved to a different cemetery on the island. This would not be a problem for the wealthiest families, whose remains remained in the basement of the church. Take note of this for those “you can’t take your money with you” types as you may want to get interred in a basement somewhere after you shuffle off this mortal soil.

Me? I don’t judge. Personally I want to be buried in the basement of a residence in a suburban neighborhood like it’s a huge mausoleum and have my surviving loved ones charge admission to enter. You know, like a haunted house.

That would be awesome.

But I digress. Let’s get to the cooking. The restaurant where our cooking class was held was closed to all but our tour, which was pretty cool. The adults were treated to margaritas when we arrived, with kids getting an alcohol-free version. Both of my kids liked it; the taste was described by my son as “fancy lemonade.”

The dish we prepared was “mofongo.” It was basically a bowl of mashed plantains that contained some chicken stew. Honestly, it doesn’t sound very appealing when you describe it but the stuff’s delicious. Dessert was a puff pastry filled with some kind of cream filing that was sublime. Say what you will about our island territories, but they can make some damn fine food.

After lunch the tour group split in two: the morbidly obese rednecks (including one woman who wore a T shirt featuring a snarling possum that read “First of All, I’m A Delight”) who wanted to slink off into a food coma and the rest of us who wanted to see more of the city. The more able-bodied among us climbed a huge hill into the oldest part of San Juan where we came upon the Governor’s Mansion.

Here’s a fun fact for you: When the governor of Puerto Rico is in residence at the mansion, three flags fly above it. Two were on display when we got there. Out of nowhere a flock of Navy personnel came to the mansion, then a huge motorcade bearing the governor made its way in.

Lady’s got style, I tell you. And getting to see her make a grand entrance back to her residence was quite special. Beat looking at dead people in a church.

My kiddos were quite bored with walking all over San Juan at this point, so we thanked the tour guide and made our way back to the ship so they could have some time at the pool before dinner that evening.

I was overall a fan of San Juan. I didn’t get to see very much of the city, and I was polite and didn’t pester the tour guide about where the best places to visit for pro wrestling were, so I need to go back one day and check the rest of the place out.

Before we leave San Juan I’ll give y’all a few more fun facts about the city:

1. They all are proud of a Bad Bunny.
2. No one knows where he is or why he’s bad.

See you next week!