Avid Swim's Favorite Retreats
Five Days at The Weekender
One of our favorite destinations. A saltwater pool in an open courtyard, a restaurant that just opened downstairs, and a neighborhood in San Juan that runs at exactly the speed I wanted. Here is the whole trip, and the five pieces I packed to do it.
I have a short list of places I send people to without hesitation. The Weekender is on it.
It is not a big property and it is not trying to be. Twenty something rooms on a quiet residential block in Ocean Park, five minutes on foot from the sand, a few blocks from Calle Loíza. Adults only. Small enough that you learn the staff's names by the second morning and they learn how you take your coffee. Nobody is competing for a lounge chair. Nobody is holding a clipboard.
I went for five days. I came back with a packing list, a restaurant I could not stop talking about, and the specific feeling of having actually rested, which is rarer than it should be.
Ocean Park
The neighborhood, first
If you have only ever stayed in Condado or Isla Verde, Ocean Park will read differently the second you turn onto the street. It is residential. Painted houses, gates, dogs, laundry lines, somebody's radio. The beach at the end of the block is wide and largely local, with a proper break and enough wind that kitesurfers use it. There is no wall of towers between you and the water.
That matters more than it sounds like it does. When the hotel is embedded in a neighborhood instead of parked on a strip, you end up walking. You walk to breakfast. You walk to the sand. You walk back at eleven at night and it feels completely normal. Five days in and I had a route.
The other thing worth knowing is the geography. Ocean Park sits between Condado and Isla Verde, which means you are ten minutes from a Michelin caliber dinner in one direction and ten minutes from a rooftop brunch in the other, while sleeping somewhere that feels like neither. That was the whole appeal.
The Property
Terrazzo, warm wood, and a pool in the middle of it
The saltwater pool sits raised in an open air courtyard, stone pavers running alongside it through grass, palms leaning in from every direction. I did most of my thinking there. Terrazzo underfoot, warm wood, arched doorways, greenery everywhere, a koi pond tucked into one corner. It reads Caribbean without ever tipping into theme, which is a harder line to walk than most hotels manage.
There is a cocktail bar at the poolside, a gym, and Rituals in the bathrooms. Rooms open onto the courtyard and the garden rather than a corridor, so the light comes in low and green in the morning. Rates start somewhere around one hundred and fifty a night depending on the season, which for what this is feels like an error in your favor.
A detail I appreciated: the pool is genuinely quiet. Adults only does a lot of work here, but so does scale. There were mornings I had the entire courtyard to myself until nine.
Small enough that you learn the staff's names by the second morning. The kind of place where nobody is competing for a lounge chair.
Working From The Courtyard
Because I always end up working
I run a swimwear brand. There is no version of a trip where I fully disconnect, and I have stopped pretending otherwise. What I look for instead is somewhere the work does not feel like a punishment, and The Weekender turned out to be one of the best places I have ever opened a laptop.
The rhythm was this. Down to the courtyard by seven thirty with coffee, two hours of real focus before the heat arrives, then in the pool. Back out around four when the light goes gold and the palms start throwing shadow across the pavers. Emails at a table under a ceiling fan with a cocktail nobody rushed me to finish.
Practical notes for anyone who works while they travel: the wifi held for video calls, there is shade at every hour of the day somewhere in that courtyard, and because the property is small the ambient noise is close to zero. I took two calls from a lounge chair and neither party knew.
SÓN Kitchen & Cocktails
Just opened, on the property
The hotel just opened its own restaurant, and it changed the whole rhythm of the stay. SÓN sits right on the property behind a terrazzo wall with the name in rust red. You walk out of your room and you are there. There is no lobby to cross, no shuttle, no decision to make.
It runs as a café and breakfast room in the daylight, stretches into long slow brunches, and shifts into an intimate cocktail bar once the sun drops. Puerto Rican owned and Puerto Rican led, which you taste. Sitting there in the morning with the fans going and nowhere to be is the closest thing to the point of the entire trip.
Go early. It is the kind of room that is best when it is half empty and the staff has time to talk to you.
Good to know
SÓN is currently serving breakfast and brunch, Wednesday through Sunday, roughly eight to two. Hours are still settling as they open, so check before you plan around it. Follow along at @son.kitchenandcocktails.
Where I Actually Ate
Five days, five worth naming
This is the part people ask me about, so here is the honest version. Not a list I researched. The list I ate.
Kasalta
1966 Calle McLeary, Ocean Park · Breakfast
The Ocean Park institution and a five minute walk from the hotel. It is a bakery, a deli and a restaurant at once, the case is enormous, and at seven in the morning it is full of people who live here. Order at the counter, point at things, get a cortado. This became my default first stop and I am not sorry about it.
Kumo Rooftop
Isla Verde · Brunch
Rooftop Japanese, ten minutes east. Brunch runs Friday through Sunday and you want a reservation. This is the meal you get dressed for. Sheer top over a bikini, wide leg pant, sunglasses on, and you are correctly dressed for a rooftop at eleven in the morning without having tried very hard.
The New Reef
Carr. 187, Piñones · Lunch, then the ocean
Drive east past Isla Verde onto the Piñones coast road and it is right on the water, on a huge open deck that looks back across the bay at the Isla Verde skyline. Local Puerto Rican food, seafood mostly, generous plates and strong drinks. There are steps straight down to the sand, so we had a long lunch and then walked down to swim, which is exactly the sort of afternoon that justifies packing swim you can eat lunch in. One of my favorite hours of the trip.
Levant
La Concha, Condado · Dinner
The newest serious dinner in San Juan. Mediterranean, from Chef Michael White, set inside the shell shaped dining room at La Concha in Condado. It is a beautiful room and a beautiful meal and it is fifteen minutes from Ocean Park, which is the argument for staying where I stayed. You sleep somewhere quiet and eat wherever you want.
A boat to Icacos
Out of Fajardo · All day
We chartered a yacht out of Fajardo, about an hour's drive east, and ran twenty minutes offshore to Icacos. It is an uninhabited cay with impossibly clear shallow water and nothing on it. We grilled on the boat, swam until we were tired, and came back sunburned in the good way. If you do one thing outside the city, do this. Book a private charter rather than a group boat if the budget allows, the difference is the whole day.
What The Mornings Look Like
I want to describe this properly because it is the thing I actually miss.
You wake up early without meaning to, because the light comes into the room green and low off the courtyard. It is already warm but not hot. You put on a bikini and something over it and you go downstairs barefoot, and the pavers are cool for another hour. The pool has not been touched. The palms are moving. Somebody is setting up at SÓN and the fans are already on.
You sit. You do not check anything for a while. Around eight the neighborhood starts, and you can hear it happening a block away without any of it reaching you. Then you either walk to Kasalta or you stay exactly where you are, and both are correct.
Five days of that reset something.
Five Pieces, Five Days
What I packed
Ocean Park is barefoot in the morning and dressed by eight. That is the whole styling brief. Everything I brought had to work wet, work at a table, and work in a carry on. These five did all of it.
Zinae Sheer Crop Top
$59
Over the Zinae bikini, straight from the pool to a rooftop table.
Zinae Bikini Set
$139
Black and white against all that turquoise. Wore it four of five days.
Zinae Sarong
$59
The one piece I packed that did four jobs. Skirt, dress, towel, shade.
Bloom Sheer Crop Top
$59
Thrown over a bikini for brunch downstairs at SÓN.
Chloe Beach Pant, Bloom
$98
Beach to Calle Loíza with no stop in between.
Five Days In A Carry On
The method
I have not checked a bag for a trip under a week in years. The trick is not packing less of everything. It is packing pieces that change jobs.
How it works
- Build around two swim sets, not five. Swim dries in an hour in this climate. Two sets in rotation covered five days with one of them always dry.
- Every cover up has to pass as clothing. A sheer crop top over a bikini reads as an outfit at brunch. A terry robe does not. That single rule cuts a third of the bag.
- One wide leg pant does the evening work. The Chloe pant went to lunch, to dinner, and onto the boat. Nothing else needed to come.
- The sarong is the multiplier. Skirt over swim, dress with a knot, towel on the boat, shade at Icacos, wrap on a cold flight. It weighs nothing and it replaced four items.
- Two pairs of shoes. A sandal you can walk Calle Loíza in and one you can have dinner in. In Ocean Park you are barefoot most of the day anyway.
- Pack the accessories, not the outfits. Gold hoops, a good sunglass and one raffia bag made the same swim set read three different ways.
That is it. Everything above fit in a carry on with room for the things I bought there.
Would I Go Back
Yes, and I already know when. The Weekender is the rare property where the design, the scale and the neighborhood are all pulling in the same direction. Add a restaurant on site that is genuinely good and there is very little reason to leave, which is the highest compliment I know how to give a hotel.
If you go, stay at least four nights. Walk everywhere. Eat at SÓN before nine. Take the boat.
Avid Swim
Luxury swim and resort wear for women who travel.
Tag us at @avidswim and tell us where you are wearing it.
