San Jose, Costa Rica

This weekend has been an avalanche of social engagements. I turned a certain milestone two weeks ago while in Costa Rica and my family/friends has been celebrating with me this weekend. Friday night was a big party with my friends at a bar where they surprised me with the camera I've been lusting for a year now. I finally have the Fuji x-m1. Very excited to use it. 

I had brunch with my family on Saturday and yesterday was a baptism party for a family friend's daughter. I am exhausted today but at least I have the day off so I can finally catch up on blogging. 

Costa Rica has always been on my radar but for some reason planning never worked out until now. I'm so glad everything finally aligned and we booked our trip. I didn't want an all-inclusive vacation so I planned everything myself. I used Avianca Airline and it was the quickest way to get to San Jose with a 50 minute layover in San Salvador, El Salvador. 

We arrived in San Jose very late so there was nothing else to do but check into our hotel and sleep. The next day was Sunday and all the museums were closed so we just walked around to get a feel of the city. I was surprised that the temperature was cool instead of hot. It suited me fine though because I didn't want humidity. 

A couple of things I noticed in San Jose:

• Lots of fast food restaurants like Mcdonalds, Burger King, KFC, Popeyes etc - it's packed full of people and not enough local restaurants in the main city square. 
• No one was smoking indoors and also outdoors. They have laws on smoking inside any buildings. restaurants, etc. but I was also surprised that no one was smoking even in street corners which is really good. 
• A lot of police presence in the main square during the day but not at night. We had a friend who went to San Jose before and advised us not to go out at night so we stayed in for dinner.  

We only stayed in San Jose for a short period of time before exploring the rest of the country. More on that soon.