My parents arrived on Friday evening, their second visit to Puerto Rico – the first one was at Christmas with my brother and my sister. We picked them up at the airport, brought them home, and they handed over a few tubes and packages of Swedish cheese for O as well as some home-made lavender biscuits (lavendelskorpor) - he is for sure being spoilt by my parents! I didn’t get any sweets as my mother had forgotten to buy my favourites 
so I had to be content with some brushes for doing the dishes (diskborstar) and Wettex sponge cloths, perfect gifts to a housewife, ha ha! Well, I did get a few of my favourite magazines as well. Then we sat down for a short chat that became longer than planned… My father started looking at my computer, as Windows was refusing to start, and he didn’t seem too hopeful to my despair.. I was happy that I had at least backed up my photos a few weeks ago.
Saturday we took it easy, slept late except for my mother who woke up early because of the jetlag, and had a nice relaxed brunch with muffins. In the afternoon we went shopping – first stop was Plaza Las Américas (the mall) where my mother and I browsed in Pottery Barn and West Elm, two new interior design shops that opened a month ago. We found some nice things in Pottery Barn for the new summerhouse but I told my mother to wait and see what we could find in Marshall… which was our next stop! We actually found almost identical objects to a much lower price and of course O & I found a few knick-knacks as usual (a new frying pan, and some socks for O – he claims that he is building a sock inventory for when we move back to Europe, I think that he’s too influenced by work!). The funny thing was that my mother was looking for a new beach bag and managed to pick up a Tommy Hilfiger bag that I had been meaning to buy for her – talk about knowing my mother’s taste!
Second stop was Costco where we bought lots of yummy food, and O looked as usual at cameras, printers and KitchenAid mixers – he wants to buy, but he doesn’t like spending and it takes a lot of consideration before he parts with his hard-earned money.. Maybe we will one day buy a KitchenAid, probably just before leaving the US power system so a power transformer will be needed as well 
Once we got home my father sat down in front of my computer again and after a few hours of hard work he had fixed it!! It felt good to have my own laptop back with the Swedish keyboard! We had a great dinner with oven-baked potatoes and salmon with gorgonzola cheese, and a bottle of Argentinean wine. Mmmm…´
The view from el mirador La Piedra Degetau over the Puerto Rican Central mountains
Yesterday I woke up to make pancakes – not for breakfast but for the pic-nic! I filled them with cheese and ham in a French crêpes-style, and improvised a potatosalad with the left-overs from Saturday’s oven-baked potatoes, some sundried tomatoes and a few pieces of lettuce. We had decided to go to the Central Mountains, the same excursion that I made with our Puerto Rican neighbour a few weeks ago. The drive is lovely, and we stopped first at one view point called el mirador La Piedra Degetau, which had lovely pic-nic tables surrounded by lots of greenery, butterflies and birds. However, we were not hungry yet so we continued on to Aibonito and Barranquitas, two mountain towns (read more about Barranquitas in my previous post about the Central mountains).
La Plaza in Barranquitas
The second mirador, Villalba-Orocovis turned out to be closed, which was strange as it was Mother’s Day and a lot of people seemed to have planned a pic-nic. The area was filled with cars parked outside the locked gates, and people standing outside the two road-side bars / restaurants. There was even a live band playing! We were debating whether to sit in the car and have our pic-nic (last time O and I tried to have a nice pic-nic we ended up in the car because it was pouring down with rain) but in the end we decided to drive back to the first view-point. It was a good choice, we had a lovely lunch, despite it being a bit late (16.00 to be precise!)!
Yellow blossoms on a tree
O impressed us with tasty jamón tapas as a light dinner when we came home – toast with Spanish jamón (ham), pesto and sliced tomato. It was a great ending to a nice, first weekend with my parents. They are staying for two weeks and we already have excursion plans for next weekend.
Our pic-nic with ham & cheese crêpes, potatosalad, muffins and fresh strawberries. The pic-nic table cloth is a bargain from Marshall – it had to be a red and white one!
This morning my parents were ready to hit the beach, and spent more than two hours on la playa – and they are definitely going back tomorrow!
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