San Juan, Experience the Culture
- Written by Jason Feinberg
- Published in Travel Articles
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One Dance at a Time...
Puerto Rico offers everything from water sports and historical tours to fine dining and shopping,
making it a great destination for an extended weekend or weeklong vacation.
It is also a place of rich dance and musical culture and during a recent trip I had the opportunity to experience that culture with salsa and bomba lessons from prominent Puerto Rican dancers. Although I am not a good dancer (full disclosure: I’m actually pretty horrible), I packed my most comfortable shoes and headed to the Caribbean to join Mickela Mallozzi, host and creator of the travel/dance web series Bare Feet, in her mission to experience the world – or in this case, San Juan – ‘one dance at a time.’
The first time I visited Puerto Rico, I hadn’t ventured far from the white sand beaches and as I sat on the balcony of my ocean view room at the San Juan Marriott Resort and Stellaris Casino, I remembered why. Sipping a complimentary rum punch, it was hard not to get lost in the picturesque views and the sound of the waves crashing below.
Located on Condado Beach in the heart of the city’s cosmopolitan neighborhood, the San Juan Marriott offers guests access to many of the comforts they would seek stateside, including a Starbucks and Walgreens located directly across the street. The resort is also within walking distance of everything from authentic Spanish tapas and celebrity chef-inspired restaurants to happening nightclubs and designer boutiques, making it perfect for those looking to explore the city.
Each of the resort’s spacious city and ocean view rooms and suites have been upgraded with luxury, functionality and comfort in mind. Each room features new 47 inch TVs, balcony furniture, wood toned furnishings, sandy textured carpeting and artwork. The resort also offers a 24-hour casino featuring table games and slots, two elaborate swimming pools, multiple beach decks, meeting facilities and a spa and fitness center along with a restaurant, pool and coffee bars and upgraded lobby lounge.
By day, the San Juan Marriott’s Red Coral Lounge is the perfect place to hold a meeting, read the newspaper or sip a cup of fresh-brewed, mountain grown Puerto Rican coffee. At night, it serves as a local hotspot, serving up cocktails (I highly recommend the Dragon Berry Mojito), live entertainment and dancing. It is also the perfect place for some salsa lessons.
Puerto Ricans love to dance and it is no surprise that the island is the epicenter of salsa. A group lesson in the Red Coral Lounge our first morning in San Juan gave us an insight into what makes salsa dancing one the island’s must popular pastimes. It also helped that our instructor was Rafa Cancel.
Lead instructor at Cambio en Clave (Change in Key), Rafa holds classes at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum – Puerto Rico’s largest indoor area. With more than 1,400 students, every Thursday is like one huge party and the best part is that tourists are encouraged to stop by and watch or try their hand – and feet – at the sensual dance.
Needing to refuel before our next dance lesson, it was a quick walk down from the Marriott to the vegetarian eatery and juice bar Pure & Natural. Here we joined locals and dined on salads, garden burgers, fresh-squeezed juices and smoothies before heading off to Old San Juan to learn to bomba!
One of the oldest musical styles on the island and a mixture of the island’s Spanish, African and Taino cultures, bomba is a rhythmic music created by barrel-shaped drums played by hand and accompanied by the rhythmic beating of sticks and maracas. In bomba, the dancer executes a series of improvised gestures and steps that encourage the musicians to provide a synchronized beat. Thus, unlike other styles of dance, it is the musician who follows the dancer and not the other way around.
And who better to conduct our group lesson than Margarita “Tata” Cepeda, granddaughter of bomba and plena music patriarch Rafael Cepeda. As owner of La Escuela de Bomba y Plena (The School of Bomba and Plena), Tata is dedicated to teaching adults and children the centuries old dance. We made every attempt to follow Tata’s instructions – right foot tap, left foot tap, repeat – all the while shaking and gesturing the hems of our billowing bomba skirts to stimulate the drummers’ rhythmic pattern.
Exhausted from dancing, we settled in for a quiet dinner at the San Juan Marriott’s La Vista Grill. The casual three-meal-a-day restaurant features popular traditional and fusion dishes, including a not-to-be-missed Nutella
crème brûlée.
All dancing aside – temporarily – much of the following morning and early afternoon was spent in Old San Juan. We toured San Cristobal Fort, walked along cobblestone streets, marveled at centuries old architecture and shopped in and around Columbus Square. We had been told that no trip to Old San Juan would be complete without the experience of dining on comida criolla (local fare) at El Jibarito. We took the advice and were more than happy we did.
Returning to the hotel, I headed out to the beach to soak up some late afternoon sun. Then, for our last night in San Juan, it was dinner at Blonda –an international restaurant within walking distance of the San Juan Marriott that serves up a wide-range of appetizers, homemade risotto and gnocchi and a variety of desserts. From there, it was a quick taxi ride to Redline Bar. As local as San Juan gets, Redline was happening for a Tuesday night and the perfect place to show Rafa and several of his students our salsa moves.
While I won’t be participating in any dance competitions anytime soon, my two left feet didn’t fail me as much as I thought they would and I couldn’t help but brag about my experience to the woman sitting next to me on the flight back to New York. I even think I may have even inspired her to add ‘learn to dance’ to her next travel itinerary.
A Bare Feet™ Tour to Puerto Rico through Open Sky Expeditions is scheduled for January 2014 and will include accommodations at the San Juan Marriott, private salsa lessons with Rafa Cancel of Cambio en Clave and a semi-private bomba lesson with Margarita “Tata” Cepeda. For information visit TravelBareFeet.com or OpenSkyExpeditions.com/MusicTours/PuertoRico.html.
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