Costa Rica April 2007 - Day 7
We woke up fairly early in order to get an early start on our drive back to San José. We were going to spend Monday night in the big city so that we could catch our 7 AM flight back home on Tuesday. We ate breakfast, got ready and finished packing and we were on the road by 8 AM. A little after 11, we arrived in San José and began the task of finding our hotel.
Costa Rica is a little strange when it comes to street names and numbers. Some streets in the capital and larger cities have names or numbers, but most don't. Houses and buildings don't generally have numbers. How do they get mail? Generally by description. "The green house 100 meters past the large fig tree near the church." This is fine in small villages, but it's starting to become a problem in the big city. Evidently, they're working on it.
Our hotel was between Calles 30 and 32 on 2nd Ave (or something like that) but we couldn't find street signs so we were circling around for a bit. It was very frustrating (and it doesn't help that on one side of town, all the streets are even numbers and the other side, they are odd numbers). Finally, we found the hotel. Hotel Grano de Oro ("grain of gold" - a nickname for coffee) is a beautiful old mansion restored and turned into a hotel in a somewhat questionable area of town. It wasn't horrible, but there were some folks sleeping on the street around the corner.
Our room wasn't ready so they held our luggage and we got back in the car to drive downtown to try a restaurant recommended by our guide book (they also highly recommended the restaurant at our hotel, but we were going to go there for dinner). Downtown was a mess. It was pretty nearly a nightmare driving. Most of the streets were one way, there were cars, motorcycles and pedestrians everywhere. The intersections had stop lights and stop signs, some of which the locals seemed to treat as optional. Instead of signaling to change lanes, Costa Ricans give a slight honk of the horn, then get ready because that means they're coming over whether you like it or not. They seem to ignore the blinker as a request to move into their lane. I didn't get the hang of the honk and move bit.
I think you get the idea. Driving in downtown San José was chaotic and stressful. To top it off, we couldn't figure out where one parked in San José. (And if you can't park, what are all those cars going?) We finally decided to give up (we couldn't find anything anyway because most of the streets had no signs) and head back to the hotel. An hour later, we arrived at the restaurant at our hotel. What a drive!
It was very tasty and when we were done, our room was ready. We relaxed for about 30 minutes before a van picked us up and drove us to the Cafe Britt Coffee plantation just outside of town. Thankfully, I made a reservation for the tour to include transportation online before our nightmare downtown so we didn't have to venture out into San José traffic again.
The Cafe Britt tour was seriously touristy and a bit cheesy, but we learned some fun stuff about coffee growing an harvesting. It wasn't really much of a plantation, I got the feeling that they grow most of their coffee elsewhere but keep a lot of plants on the premises for show. They did say that they roast and package all their coffee there and we got to see the large roasters and coolers, as well as some guys packaging up the coffee. They also did a cupping demonstration which was neat.
We visited their gift shop, walking out of there with a huge shopping bag full of bags of coffee (and even some raw beans for planting back home)! We spent a lot of money, but upon comparisons with souvenir shops and even grocery stores, the bags of coffee were much cheaper when purchased direct.
When we got back to the hotel, we wandered out for a walk in the area before it got much darker. There wasn't really anything interesting so we walked back and went to the hotel's restaurant (again) for dinner. It was actually the most expensive dinner the whole trip and while it was tasty, we found that we actually enjoyed some of the less expensive (and more tico) meals better.
We went back to our room and got everything packed and organized. We set our travel alarm clock for 3:30 AM and went to bed early so that we could catch our flight home the next morning. The rental car return and flight home went smoothly. We had a fabulous time in Costa Rica! It's a place that I could definitely return to.
Click here for Final Thoughts.
Costa Rica is a little strange when it comes to street names and numbers. Some streets in the capital and larger cities have names or numbers, but most don't. Houses and buildings don't generally have numbers. How do they get mail? Generally by description. "The green house 100 meters past the large fig tree near the church." This is fine in small villages, but it's starting to become a problem in the big city. Evidently, they're working on it.
Our hotel was between Calles 30 and 32 on 2nd Ave (or something like that) but we couldn't find street signs so we were circling around for a bit. It was very frustrating (and it doesn't help that on one side of town, all the streets are even numbers and the other side, they are odd numbers). Finally, we found the hotel. Hotel Grano de Oro ("grain of gold" - a nickname for coffee) is a beautiful old mansion restored and turned into a hotel in a somewhat questionable area of town. It wasn't horrible, but there were some folks sleeping on the street around the corner.
Our room wasn't ready so they held our luggage and we got back in the car to drive downtown to try a restaurant recommended by our guide book (they also highly recommended the restaurant at our hotel, but we were going to go there for dinner). Downtown was a mess. It was pretty nearly a nightmare driving. Most of the streets were one way, there were cars, motorcycles and pedestrians everywhere. The intersections had stop lights and stop signs, some of which the locals seemed to treat as optional. Instead of signaling to change lanes, Costa Ricans give a slight honk of the horn, then get ready because that means they're coming over whether you like it or not. They seem to ignore the blinker as a request to move into their lane. I didn't get the hang of the honk and move bit.
I think you get the idea. Driving in downtown San José was chaotic and stressful. To top it off, we couldn't figure out where one parked in San José. (And if you can't park, what are all those cars going?) We finally decided to give up (we couldn't find anything anyway because most of the streets had no signs) and head back to the hotel. An hour later, we arrived at the restaurant at our hotel. What a drive!
It was very tasty and when we were done, our room was ready. We relaxed for about 30 minutes before a van picked us up and drove us to the Cafe Britt Coffee plantation just outside of town. Thankfully, I made a reservation for the tour to include transportation online before our nightmare downtown so we didn't have to venture out into San José traffic again.
The Cafe Britt tour was seriously touristy and a bit cheesy, but we learned some fun stuff about coffee growing an harvesting. It wasn't really much of a plantation, I got the feeling that they grow most of their coffee elsewhere but keep a lot of plants on the premises for show. They did say that they roast and package all their coffee there and we got to see the large roasters and coolers, as well as some guys packaging up the coffee. They also did a cupping demonstration which was neat.
We visited their gift shop, walking out of there with a huge shopping bag full of bags of coffee (and even some raw beans for planting back home)! We spent a lot of money, but upon comparisons with souvenir shops and even grocery stores, the bags of coffee were much cheaper when purchased direct.
When we got back to the hotel, we wandered out for a walk in the area before it got much darker. There wasn't really anything interesting so we walked back and went to the hotel's restaurant (again) for dinner. It was actually the most expensive dinner the whole trip and while it was tasty, we found that we actually enjoyed some of the less expensive (and more tico) meals better.
We went back to our room and got everything packed and organized. We set our travel alarm clock for 3:30 AM and went to bed early so that we could catch our flight home the next morning. The rental car return and flight home went smoothly. We had a fabulous time in Costa Rica! It's a place that I could definitely return to.
Click here for Final Thoughts.
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