Today I was weatherstripping the new front doors of the hotel. I realized after a while that I was not working alone. I had attracted a teeny tiny friend standing on the sidewalk next to me watching my work-I can only assume that he wanted to see if I was doing a good job :)Unfortunately for him, now that the weatherstripping is up, he's locked outside! I put him on a rock a bit farther from the doors and he seemed to be just fine with the new accomodations [img=http://f [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday we had our final taping for the show House Hunters - Airing should be in a couple of months. The Inn came together so unbelievably over the past week that we even surprised ourselves! All of the furniture is here, all of the projects are done, and we got all of our art up on the walls! The bathrooms are spectacular, and the bedding and window treatments really finished off the look of the rooms- To see our gallery click here - The househunters shoot went really well this time. The crew was amazing and things went much more quickly [View Full Entry]

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Well, if you’ve been following my blog you have seen things were looking pretty dismal for a while. Construction was moving relatively slowly and the house looked like it would never be done! Fortunately, over the past week things have flown as we finished all of the bathrooms, the kitchen, and the new front doors including a beautiful slate ramp making luggage transport a breeze- and that’s just in the big house. In the small house we have completely remodeled the kitchen, the bathroom, all of the rooms got paint and varnish, and we enclosed a porch that faced the street [View Full Entry]

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For our last big adventure before heading back to the US, we zipped through the canopy suspended from steel cables strung between 8-foot-square platforms in the rainforest. Sound crazy? We were pleasantly surprised by the well-maintained facility, the professional and thorough staff, and the safety procedures followed. And we had a great time. [View Full Entry]

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It’s been a long time since I made an entry. Last week my mother was in town, it was her first time visiting Costa Rica. It was a nice visit, but unfortunately she had to deal with our crazy day-to-day of not having a moment of peace, waking at 5:45 to jackhammers in the bathrooms and going to the hardware store 3-10 times a day! I think she enjoyed the trip, it’s just that she missed out on the touristy Costa Rica and in its place she was given the real Costa Rica. We wanted to go on one of the [View Full Entry]

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As we wind down our Costa Rica adventure, let us take this time to look back and answer the questions “What do Dara and I do all day?” And “Do we feel we have made the most of our time here?” Well, it would be great to be able to tell you we've "found ourselves" and now know exactly what we want to do with the rest of our lives, but the truth is, we don't. I think we do both feel like we've made the most of our time here though, and that it's been time well-spent, and very much [View Full Entry]

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Yep, we're here. It's been just over a week and we are still pinching ourselves -- and just figuring out where we are. Streets are generally not named here, or if they have a name, no one uses them, so much of our attention has gone to learning how to get around in the neighborhood of our hotel -- find groceries, a playground for the guys, some twine, miscellaneous stuff like that. The hotel is at the top of a hill from which there are spectacular views of green, lush mountains, usually with clouds over their peaks like pillows sitting on [View Full Entry]

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We have been in construction for a month and things are going well. Although that may be difficult to tell from the photos We are almost finished with all the bathrooms, since the tile is going up, which means we will be done within the week The kitchen even started yesterday -(see pics of the guys using the grinder below). It looks like we may eve start the pool next week!!! Hopefully this keeps moving smoothly. Exterior of new bathrooms Supplies [img=http://stati [View Full Entry]

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We started our Sunday by going up to the Poas Volcano and hiking around, since we couldn’t see the crater due to dense fog that had rolled in we hiked their trails. The hike was amazing; the paths take you through these amazing habitats where you feel like you are walking through fairy tale woods. After we left Poas, we went to meet one of our contractors who wanted to take us on a tour of a local coffee plantation. We have other plantation tours near our house, but they give you a somewhat glorified view of what coffee plantations can [View Full Entry]

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Opening a kosher hotel in a Costa Rica, a country where kosher food is not common has proved to be far more challenging than we could have ever imagined. It is not the luxury items that we miss, we can get some types of kosher cheese, and all of the ingredients Rachel likes to use to make her favorite blueberry muffins (a staple at any good bed and breakfast). We can even get our Morningstar Farms Grillers, and yesterday we found wasabi coated peas!!! We can eat wonderfully here if we don’t mind searching for imported food. The problems that we [View Full Entry]

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