Ciudad

Ah, what an escape. Stores and restaurants and coffee shops. The big bad city of San Jose, Costa Rica. With a city limits population of 350,000 and a metropolitan population of about one million, it’s roughly the size of Hartford. A manageable size you might say. Really quite excellent to escape the station and turn off the science button, makes me feel very content.

So, my day, a long one at best, already 11:20pm here. Rose very early at 5:30am and tried to think of the things I might need to take to San Jose. Once that was done, got to the dining hall as they were opening to eat. Picked up our field lunches, which came in handy today. Walked a kilometer out to the highway to rendezvous with a San Jose-bound bus.

About an hour 45 minutes to the city, about a $2.60 fare, quite a bargain considering the bus was comfy. Once in the city, Amanda, Danielle and I, we began by tending to our most pressing errands. For Danielle, a trip to the MINAE (equivalent to US Dept. of Interior), for Amanda & I, a trip to the computer shop and tickets for tomorrow’s game.

At this point I was very discouraged, unanimated, and tired among other things. Had a convenient bus trip up to the suburb of Tibás where Estadio Ricardo Saprissa is located. A line was beginning to form in front of a lone ticket window and as the line grew the scalper population did as well. All the scalpers seemed to have an endless supply of tickets they were trying to offload. Only saw one lady bite in the 30 minutes we waited.

Ended up buying three tickets in general admission in the “sombra” or covered section of the stadium, since rain is inevitable. Little less than $10 for each ticket. After that took a bus back to the center of San Jose and a taxi to the hotel (Hotel Aranjuez). Taxis are very affordable never more than $3 for reasonable trips across town. Dropped our bags and trekked to lunch.

The girls decided to eat at Vishnu, a local vegetarian chain (oh well). I had what they called a Cool Sándwich (sic) with French fries. Sucked it up and ate some fake ham made from soy, but the roll was very delicious along with the condiments. Following lunch we toured some of the more central streets.

Worked in some shopping. First a super discount place where I got a fresh umbrella that I expect to last for about three weeks. Here’s where the Visa troubles start. I try to swipe for the $5 umbrella and am told that there’s insufficient funds. That being highly unlikely since I have a line of credit, is was confused and just paid in Colones. After that onto a department store, expensive video games, lots of Legos.

Went into the Correo Central, the mecca of Costa Rican mail and bought twenty stamps. Paid with cash and then realized I needed more cash so I went to a nearby Banco de Costa Rica ATM. I asked for 40,000 colones, didn’t forget my PIN either. Then it gave me some vague message about being unable to process my transaction. Ay…so I decided to try again. One of the menus asked for Colones or dolares, so this time I chose dolares and asked for $80. To my disappointing surprise this Tico machine spit out four Jacksons. Hmph!

Stopped at the Baja Beach Club bar for a beer. Next on the to-do’s was to find a bookstore I read about in the guidebook called 7th Street Books. Via it’s name and description, English language books where the focus. It was oddly comfortable to stand in the bookstore and look at a couple walls of familiar authors and titles. Hit up non-fiction because that’s been my pace lately.

Ended up purchasing A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, same author as Walk in the Woods. More on that after I finish End of Poverty. In addition to the book, got this week’s Newsweek and some postcards. At this point I was quite timid about using my card again but of course here it worked with no problems.

Okay…marathon post. Walked back to the hotel for a siesta. Took advantage of free wireless to goof around. Met a guy from Glastonbury who was born in Costa Rica and was vacationing for a week or so. I was rocking my Spring Weekend T and UConn ‘ball sticker on the Mac, so this guy was like “Hey…UConn…” Prideful me jumped right in.

Then the biggest surprise of the day; Yanks/Sox! In the room! Caught a couple innings before 7:00 or so. Saw my boys go up by three then Wang throw it all away. Still don’t know the final score, I’ll check soon.

Took a ninety cent taxi ride over to the Clarion Hotel (same chain as the Bristol one) to meet up with Amanda’s friend Stefan who is in town for his job. I became the de facto restaurant picker since we went veggie for lunch. Decided to go with the Lonely Planet’s author’s choice for top end with a local restaurant called Bakea.

¡Qué rico! Just a really superb dinner/conversation/environment. For a very loud city, a nice quiet corner a block or so from the Clarion. I could go on and on, but we’ll keep it simple stupid. Had some choice appetizers, started on the house red wine. Exquisitely decorated with an entire room to us. The restaurant itself is a transformed vintage house. I ordered the tuna, although tempted by “wild meats” which might have included peccary, who knows.

The entire ambience of this place would have me feeling like $30-40 entrees in the States but here it was more like $10-20. Best tuna steak I’ve ever had; from the Pacific coast, alongside sesame scented veggies and drizzled with a chocolaty, caramely sauce (pictured). All very good. Spent about three hours in our private room chatting it up, getting to know each other.

The yawnzies began to set in and we swung Stefan back by the Clarion, he’s also joining us for the futbol game tomorrow. A taxi back to the hotel and that’s where I leave you, clock just struck midnight.

I found a Quiznos (or more affectionately, the Quiznasty) on la Avenida Central, pictures forthcoming in the week. All sorts of stuff went down, and a full plate for tomorrow, I can’t wait. Vacation, 9 weeks of work, 3 weeks of summer, 16 weeks of fall semester. That’s how it looks. Postcard requests are good through tomorrow night. Talk to you after the soccer riot.

BP