Do you know the way to San Jose (or at least around it)

Monday,  Feb 6

I did a quick post yesterday to let everyone (Mom) know that we had arrived safely but I didn't really tell you about San Jose.  We stayed at Posado Trianon which is on the east side.  The city is in a grid,  avenidas run east west and the calles (streets) run north south.  There is a main intersection of Avenida 0 and Calle 0.  The Calles are even numbers in the west and odd in the east, ditto for the Avenidas in north/south.  You would think this would be easy to navigate.  Not so much.  We spent a lot of today backtracking.  I am going to blame the lack of street signs.

Anyway, here are some photos from the city.

China Town

Why is she on a propeller?

The artisan market 

Yesterday, once we got our room, we wandered around a bit.  We found an artisan market with some pretty cool stuff.  I bought nothing.  But I know some things I would like on our way back through before we leave.  We bought some water and some tea at the grocery store near the hotel.  And, then we crashed.  We slept for 12 hours despite the constant traffic, honking, car alarms and train whistles.  It sounds worse than it was but we were so tired, maybe it was that bad and we slept through it anyway.

We had already decided to stay one more night in San Jose while we got ourselves organized.  The guide book is not enthusiastic about the city but we figured it can't be that bad.  Despite the noise, we would have stayed at the same place. However, the Trianon didn't have a room for the next day.  So, to Booking.com we went.  The cheapest place with a double room with bathroom was called Picos Bills.  We booked.  Our cab driver mentioned that Pico Bill is a cartoon rat.  Oh dear.  We got there and the hourly rates were posted.  And condoms for sale in the lobby.  We got our room and paid for it.  It was two beds shoved in a room with a toilet.  The toilet had a shower curtain separating it from the beds.

I suppose it saves time?

The worst part is they charged us more than the
posted 'nightly' rate.

Ok, this was a hooker hotel.  We aren't that bright.  All of a sudden we really appreciated the 'no prostitutes' rule at Trianon. We had already paid and it was pretty cheap so we decided to stick it out.

We left to find lunch and right across the street was Elvis Family Hotel.  We stopped in.  A double room with shared bathroom was $5 less, with bathroom $5 more that Chez Hooker.  So, we went back and demanded our money back.  We are two innocent young foreigners who didn't feel safe and we demand our money back.  Sure, no problem.  We just had to cancel though Booking.com so they could rent it out again (probably make more on the hourly rate) and we were free to see if Elvis is still alive and living in San Jose at the Elvis Hotel.

Our room, with bathroom door.

Nano the cat enjoys a patch of sun

Elvis is on the west side and is very nice.  Wifi is iffy so we are sitting in the 'sala' with Nano the cat and a very loud guest who is trying to get reception on his phone.  Val is researching our next stop, Cahuita, on the south east coast.

We spent the day walking around San Jose.  The guide book was right, this is not a tourist town.  Even the main drags (no cars) don't really have any nice restaurants or fancy stores or coffee shops.  We went to another market but the stuff wasn't as nice as the first market on the east side.  Again we bought nothing but this time I wasn't even tempted.

We had a very nice lunch at a Soda (hole in the wall eatery.  I had Bistec and Val had chicken.  And a crazy delicious 'Cas water' which is watered down Cas juice.  Val made them bring out a sample of the cas fruit because we had never heard of it or tasted it before.

Our dinner was not so nice.  We should have known, it was in a strip mall of Sodas across from a bus station.  We really should have stopped ourselves when the words 'let's just go to the cheapest one' were said.  It turned out to be 'Japanese'.  Those quote don't nealy express enough how not Japanese it was.  We got rice (with prawns!) with fatty meat bits in brownish sauce.  Val got pasta salad and green salad but for some reason I got some weird tempura.  I don't know what was inside that batter but it was better than everything else on the plate.  As we are eating, Val just started talking about how to deal with diarrhea for no particular reason. If we get diarrhea at any point on this trip, I am blaming that 'Japanese' meal.

Here's some more scenes from San Jose

t

near Calle/Avenida Zero.
There are lots of car-free streets here

Also lots of street art

post office (I bought some stamps)

By the way, I just read that it is snowing in Victoria and flights are even worse now.  I feel terrible for you all.  😏

We made it but it was close.

(I haven't slept in almost 36 hours so forgive any typos or irrational ideas or crazy turns of phrase)

I woke up on time yesterday, the first time in three trips that I didn't sleep in.  That boded well. I did some stuff around the house, eat some breakfast, final pack and then I braced myself of another round of online check-in roulette.  Amazingly, I was able to snag the last two seats together for the Houston to San Jose.  Again, good omens.

I picked  up Alisma at  9:15.  She was going to drive the car back from the ferry and keep it while I am away.  Then we picked up Val.  She had packed the tiniest backpack ever.  It is basically a book bag for a middle schooler.   She had mentioned that she couldn't figure out why everything didn't fit this time (as compared to Ecuador).  Umm, this was a completely different bag, about half the size of the last time.  She also had/has a small MEC daypack.

We made it to the ferry by 10am.  11 o'clock ferry, on time. Lots of room on the Bus on the ferry, no traffic problems despite the snowy slushy conditions we discovered as we left the ferry.   We got to the airport and made it through security no problem.  We were happy to discover that we could do American customs in Vancouver.   We had a satisfactory lunch at the Canucks Grill. We found our gate and killed a few hours.

Canuck Grill

Val's wee backpack

Then the flight next to ours was delayed by two hours.  hmm,  ours still showed on time so we didn't worry too much.  But the snow was really coming down, and sticking.  We watched convoys of snow plows clearing the runways.  Then our flight crew arrived and started with the good news, the plane is at the airport.  But as everyone knows, good news is always followed by bad.  There was a very short, super short, so short it will only be like a 10 minutes, delay to get the plane towed to our gate.  That 10 minutes stretched to 50 minutes.

Buddy at the microphone just kept making it sound like we were the luckiest people in the airport to even get to leave.  He didn't say that but his chipper enthusiasm in the face of each delay was somehow heartening.  We finally made it onto the plane.  Mr. Chipper then let us know that we were God's chosen people because we were going to get to go through the de-icer.  It would only take a few minutes to drive there.  Then 30 minutes to de-ice.  Then the joyous wait in line to take off.

Cold

The view from my airplane seat

All told, we left over two hours late.  And we only had a 2.5 hour layover in San Francisco.  I was trying to stay zen about the whole thing but we were a bit worried.  We got to San Fran a bit early and Val and I jumped in with some people who had close connections so we could all scurry off the plane ahead of the crowd.  What we didn't know was that our flight had been moved from 12:05 to 12:30 and that one we cleared Canadian security and American customs in Vancouver, we never had to go through any check again.

After that it was pretty smooth sailing.  No issues with Super Bowl Sunday or protesters at either American airport, at least none that we saw.   Air Canada gave us free movies but not United.  That made for a long overnight haul.

We arrived.  No problems with immigration or customs.  We hopped on the $1 city bus to town, found out hotel, the Posada Trianon.  This place is definitely on the 'dive' side of the michellin star system.  Shared bathroom.  This sign:

our room

The sketchy outside at night

you know it is classy when they
 don't allow prostitutes.  Doubly so if that is
announced in a handwritten note on the door

Edwin the dog who lives in our hotel.

It is 7:45.  We vowed to stay awake until 8 so we don't mess up our sleep cycles to bad.  Val is researching how to best get to Tortuguera.  I'll keep you posted.