The Story of Tonight

Puerto Rico Trip

Day 3

"Hamilton"

Centro de Bellas Artes - Luis A Ferre

Sunday, January 20, 2019

Some sharing prior to writing about today:  Back in LA, Miss O eagerly gave me a piece of paper with the Puerto Rican flag on it.  

Text:  Pinch (at bottom), Pull (at top)

Here is what happens, like a pop-up book!

Isn't that the coolest?!  V made that.  I left it at their house because I didn't want anything to happen to it during our travels.  

When I woke up this morning, I decided that I would make it a routine to go downstairs, get coffee, and sit at the pool while Bro and V got ready.  We decided to go to breakfast on the way to the theater box office to get our tickets for the show at will call.   We saw a few Church's Chicken signs that showed the company as one of the sponsors for "Hamilton".

Thank you, Church's!

Several places were not yet open, probably because it was Sunday morning.  We ended up at El Meson Sandwiches.  V ordered her food in Spanish, until the woman taking her order started to ask her questions in Spanish.  I was going to order my food in Spanish, but was afraid that I would receive questions, so I ordered in English.  The food was super inexpensive, and I thought of getting more stuff to go for later, but never did.

We continued to the Centro de Bellas Artes, and I needed to take a photo of one of the barricades.

AT&T was one of the sponsors, too, but their sign was not as cool as the one for Church's.

Thank you, AT&T!

There was a long line of people trying to buy tickets, and I wasn't sure if they were for the ticket lottery or a regular box office line.

Sign Over Theatre Entrance

I really liked the sculptures of the different women of art.  Maybe they were supposed to be muses.

I also liked the Hamilton decor, of course!

Meet Me Inside

There were a few people with "I love PR" photo-op signs, and decided to take some pics.  V calls this one a Hidden Mickey, but it seems more like a "Hidden Sherry".

You'll Be Back

We walked back to the hotel and got ready for the show.  We were glad that the venue was moved from the University because this one was closer to us (the venue was changed due to security issues for possible protests on campus).  I decided on the hilly morning walk that I didn't want to walk to the theatre in my heels, and V agreed, so we called an Uber.  We saw on the app that our driver, Diane, was driving very quickly to get to us, and were a little concerned, but traffic was a bit of a pain, and she dropped us off before the regular dropoff point, which didn't bother us because the line to enter was long and we just wanted to go inside and get souvenirs before the show.

I love these PR Flag shirts with the Hamilton logo as the star!

 I was able to get to two different kiosks and get to the restroom before getting to my seat before the show started.  Our seats were in the balcony, 3 rows up, about halfway to the left center of the row.  The levels of the seats were very well-situated, as the whole stage was visible from our vantage point.

When Lin-Manuel Miranda entered the stage and sang the words "Alexander Hamilton", the entire audience gave a standing ovation for at least a minute or two before Lin patted his heart as a "thank you" so that we would sit down and they could continue the show.

• I may have cried even more this time than I did when I saw the show in LA.   I tried to reach for my tissues at one point, and couldn't find them, so I just forgot about that and tried to wipe away the buckets of tears accumulating on my face so that I could see the show.
• I think I even lost some air in my lungs because I screamed so much for LMM when he took the stage.  There he is!  AAAHHHHHH!!!!!
• The cast was superb, especially the lead guy.  I loved Sabrina Sloan's voice (Anjelica), Julia K Harriman's raw emotion during "Burn" (Eliza), Simon Longnight's playfulness (Lafayette/Jefferson), and Rick Negron's humor (King George).
• This was the same George Washington as I saw in LA, Isiah Johnson, and he was great again.
• I love all of the clever turns of phrase. 
• Everyone was clearly having a great time performing the heck out of this show. 
• Funny to see the conductor raise his own copy of the Reynolds Pamphlet when the four guys walked toward him. 
• "Hurricane" was especially profound, because here was LMM, playing the role he originated, in his home country, singing about a storm that caused the kind of devastation that brought him here to raise funds to help the people recover.  
• I don't remember seeing the lighting of the target on the floor at the last beat.

At intermission, I had time to ask someone to take a picture of me with the big sign.

Not Throwing Away My Shot

There was no real curtain call with the performers receiving individual recognition.  They just had the whole cast at once.  I'm glad I had my camera ready for the moment when LMM pulled out the Puerto Rican flag.

Viva Puerto Rico!

We bought more souvenirs because Bro and V hadn't seen the kiosk for LMM's company Tee Rico, and I saw something else I wanted.  While taking pictures outside, we met Edin and Carmen, PR natives whom told us the different activities we could do around the island.  I asked where we should eat for dinner, and they told us that our hotel was in a great location because one of the cross streets was a street that had a lot of restaurants.  Edin had just eaten at CRU the night before, and highly recommended the farm-to-table restaurant.  We told them that we were trying to get used to the "PR Time" style of service, and Carmen said that they weren't really proud of that.  That's OK, Carmen, my tribe has "Filipino Time".  We took an Uber back to the hotel and told our driver, Gustavo, to try to get tickets to the show via lottery.  I hope he wins tickets!

I might have bought a bunch of stuff 

We walked to CRU, which was a few doors down from Bebo's Cafe.  Our dinner was delicious!  What a great way to end a once-in-a-lifetime day!  Thank you, Bro and V, for the awesomer than awesome birthday gift!

Raise a Glass to the Four of Us
(I'm counting LMM as the fourth)

Next up:  Take A Break