*i am re-posting this from my old (broken) blog so that my entire Costa Rica trip is documented on here*
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| the tile floor in the lobby of Gran Hotel |
San Jose
was the starting and ending point for our 10 day trip throughout Costa
Rica. it is the capital city of the country; similar to other big
cities, it is crowded, dirty in some areas and not in others, has lots
of great hole-in-the-wall food joints, a plethora of opportunities for
people-watching and a universal favorite: one way streets.
We arrived into San Jose just after dinnertime on friday, walked
straight off the plane to immigration and then to the rental car place.
after getting the car, we drove into the heart of San Jose to find our
hotel,
Gran Hotel.
what ensued was nothing short of a classic ‘tourist’ moment in a
foreign city: we had difficulty identifying streets because they didn’t
have signs…maps become irrelevant at this point, we were trying to
navigate one-way streets blindly while driving around the same 4 blocks
probably 10 times, and we were all trying to take it in stride
balancing frustration with the hilarity of the situation. it turns out
there is no parking near the hotel and we found that out the hard
way-ha!
after finally reaching the hotel, we proceeded to do a sneaky
maneuver into the room because we had only booked one room for all five
of us to save money. it all worked out fine and that night we
discovered that nobody snored, which is always a plus!
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| Gran Hotel |
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| this building is apparently absolutely beautiful on the inside |
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| looking down the street from the hotel |
the next morning we left early because we had a 3 hour drive ahead of us to
La Fortuna at the base of
Arenal Volcano. (more on that to come!)
we also ended our trip in San Jose. we,
again, were all in one hotel room and the hotel was not far from the
other one, so we were quite confident that we would be able to find it
easily. not true. we ended up driving in circles again before getting
directions from some guy on the street. we walked downtown to find some
food and ended up at a hole-in-the-wall place that gave us so much
food for our $$. to be quite honest, i don’t love this type of food
establishment (they seem so sketchy and unsanitary) but i was reminded
throughout the trip (i haven’t traveled internationally in 6 years!)
that these places have the most authentic food and the most bang for
your buck.
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| this is a little park across from our second hotel in San Jose |
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| this is the school that my friend Ana grew up going to! it was so special to be able to see it! |
the next morning we had an early flight back to the US and it was
9/11 so we didn’t want to risk anything by cutting it close. our best
efforts were thwarted when we got lost in slum after slum after slum
neighborhood in San Jose trying to get to the airport. we would have
been fine but there was a detour off the highway because of construction
and we spiraled into a complete fail of navigational skills because 1)
no road signs 2) we had only ever been in San Jose in the dark and 3)
the slum neighborhoods are the most complicated labyrinth i’ve ever
seen! again, another ‘tourist’ moment and by God’s grace we made it back
to the car rental place just in time to hop a quick shuttle to the
airport. we made it through security with time to spare and tried to
spend the rest of our miscellaneous Colones before leaving the country.
