February 16 – San Jose

We slept in a bit and then headed down for breakfast.  We spent most of the morning and early afternoon in the room working on things.  Mid-afternoon we decided to take walk and see what there was to see in the area. 

The hotel (Hotel Presidente) is just off a main pedestrian street so we headed down that.  There were lots of shops with fast foods (and several McDonalds and other US fast food chains), souvenir shops, street art, lots of shops for the locals...

National Theater

and a lot of tall, modern buildings.  

We found the Jade Museum (we will be visiting that tomorrow on our organized tour) and the National Museum.

In front of the museum was a giant steel and glass globe.  Inside was a massive stone ball.  With a bit of Googling we found out that there are about 300 of the petrospheres in Costa Rica.  They date from as early as 300 AD.  They range in size from a inches up to 6 ½ feet in diameter.  Their purpose is unknown. 

There found several parks during our walk.

And we discovered that the local taxis are bright red. 

We found the gate to the local China Town…although there wasn’t much Chinese to the China Town.

We found a Pops Ice Cream shop.  Our shuttle driver mentioned it as having very good ice cream so we tried some…and it was very good.

We settled back into more work at the hotel before heading to the hotel restaurant.  They restaurant is on a lovely patio lined with flowering bougainvillea bushes and has views overlooking the city.  The temperatures were pretty good although when the wind came up it was a bit chilly. 

Paul had Thai Curry and Mary had a local specialty, a Pati…an empanada with chicken.  Very flavorful. 

The tables had a shiny, reflective white surface.  And Mary noticed the reflection of the the surrounding palm trees on the table top.  Interesting. 

All in all it was a fine day.