Friday morning came pretty early on the heels of a busy thanksgiving day. I put a ham in the oven around 10am and did what I could to continue packing. The Troupe dinner was at Pacifica, Jean’s living facility, was 1:00-3:00. From there we went to Mom and Dad’s to eat yet again! And man was it good! My mother is an excellent cook!
Walmart had $98 32″ TVs for their Black Friday sale, that started at 6pm. Bob wanted to go by there just to see how bad it was going to be. So we left in time to get there before 7:00 – if you were there between 6:00 & 7:00 they guaranteed you at least a voucher for the tv if they ran out of them so we figured we didn’t have much to lose. Pulling up in the parking lot about 6:30 showed very few parking spots at all. I pulled into one that was just vacated. We walked into the store and there wasn’t a single cart left. To say it was a madhouse would be an understatement. I spotted a cart that appeared abandoned and grabbed it … just in case we actually were able to grab a tv or two. People were EVERYWHERE!! It was madness!! I finally just found a place to hide and let Bob go look for the TVs or find out what line we needed to get in for a voucher. It didn’t take long and, thankfully we were outta there 10-15 minutes later. However …. Punch line … We had to come back to Walmart by 2am that night to pay for the vouchers. Then we had to go online to register and have them shipped to the store for pick up. I guess that was better than actually walking away with the TVs that night because the lines were to the back of the store. We’d have been there for hours just to check out.

So we went home to finish packing and get things in order. About 10:30 we thought it would be safe to go back up there and pay for them. It was. The place was nearly empty. It was still after midnight before we got into bed and the alarm was set for 5:15. Short night.

We were checked in, through security and to our gate around 7am. Rick and Regina were already there. And the fun begins. The flights to San Juan were uneventful and we landed about 3:30 local time, which is one hour ahead of our time. It was around 5:00 by the time we got checked into our hotel, the Marriott – Stellaris. What a beautiful resort. Wish we had more time there. The weather wasn’t cooperating much. It was raining on and off. After a little chill time we met the Riddles in the lobby and walked to this restaurant about 15 min away called Casa Lola. It was divine! We all wanted original Puerto Rican food and this place delivered. Everything was excellent – food, atmosphere, cuisine, service – it couldn’t have been better. Good choice Gigi. I needed a damn crane to get back to the hotel. Good thing we needed to walk.
This was a perfect start to our exciting week ahead!