San Juan, Puerto Rico: Glitz @ El Condado & Isla Verde

Our last few hours in Puerto Rico had arrived. We left Dorado and took coastal Highway 165 again for a pleasant stress-free drive into San Juan. We had just about two hours before we had to return our vehicle at the airport and decided to visit another couple of areas in San Juan that we had not seen before. We drove through an area called "El Condado" which is a busy ocean-front community with many high-rise hotels, somewhat reminiscent of Fort Lauderdale or Miami Beach. We then drove further east to another San Juan district called "Isla Verde", a beachfront suburb that also features many condominiums and some highrise hotels. After returning our rental car we were ready to check in our luggage when the US Airways representative informed us that our flight to Philadelphia was cancelled due to the winter storm that had been blanketing the northeastern US and Canada. Fortunately he found a flight to Charlotte, NC, that would connect us with our destination of Buffalo after all. We had to race to the plane as everybody was already boarding. We finally arrived at about 10:30 pm in Buffalo, and not surprisingly were greeted by a continuing snowfall. Our car was buried under several inches of snow and after finally finding a gas station in Buffalo we crossed the border into Ontario at midnight. Having arrived at 2 am in our driveway in Toronto, we couldn't even get our vehicle into our driveway because the snow was so deep. So we had to spend an hour and a half shoveling, just to make room for our car at the end of our driveway. The following morning we had to spend another hour and a half each to clear the rest of the driveway. But despite these little inconveniences, our little getaway to Niagara Falls, Buffalo and Puerto Rico had definitely been worth it.