A day in downtown San Jose

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About 10am today Margie & I caught a bus and went to downtown San Jose. It was about a 30 minute ride. One of the places we wanted to go was the tourist office to get a bus schedule and also go to the large produce market we had heard about from another guest here at La Casa de Nitzi last night.

As we worked our way through crowds of people, buses and cars we eventually found a tourist but they unfortunately gave out their last bus schedules the day before. But he did take the time to find out the info we needed online. We want to check out two small communities (Atenas & Grecia) so the bus schedules are needed for those trips. I'm hoping to rent a place in Atenas where it's a bit warmer & not so populated. San Pedro is actually an extension of San Jose, where the metro area population is over 1,715,000. So it's a very big city.

Margie likes the idea of being that close to the big cities and staying here at this guest house. There are 10 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms, we've been told but haven't found all 6. I'll take some photos tomorrow, probably, and post them so you can see where I'm staying. Most of the people living here now are long term renters. It's almost like a hostel as we're on our own for meals so we provide our own food (there's 2 kitchens here) or eat out.

Now back to our day in San Jose....about noon we ate lunch at a cafe and had plates of chicken with rice, black, beans and salad. It was good but not great. After lunch we got serious about trying to find the produce market. I think we asked about 10 people and walked about a mile, at least, just trying to find the place. It was indeed big and nice to see all the fresh fruits and veggies. We didn't buy much as we didn't want out backpacks too heavy to handle.

I forgot to mention that earlier on we stopped in at a couple of health food stores since I'm trying to find gluten free breads, etc. Well all of these health food stores pretty much just have supplements and that's all. In fact when I asked them about pan sin gluten I usually got a strange look! I do believe there's a place or two in Escazu, where a lot of Expats live, that has gluten-free stuff. Not sure I'll make it there but I'll see.

Once we had our visit to the produce market behind us we were getting tired and ready to head home. This is when the fun and slight amount of panic, started. It wasn't too long before we realized that neither of us had any information about where we were staying in San Pedro. In addition we soon learned that there was more than one bus that would take us to San Pedro. So not only did we not know which bust to take, we didn't know just where to catch it and we didn't know the area around the house to be able to find our way home if we were dropped off at a different location.

So after talking to many people (I must add that through this experience and that of our first night here that Ticos are extremely helpful people) about which bus and where should we catch it we were at least headed in the right direction. While on that bus we had three other Ticas enter into a discussion as to where Margie & I should get off the bus. We honestly didn't know. But the three of them figured it out based on the meager amount of information we remembered about where the house was. So we were just a very short distance from Nitzi's House when we got off the bus!

Margie & I are still not in the rooms we have been promised. We're sharing a large room until someone else moves out. So we're told that will be tomorrow morning. We will see!

I'm going to try to upload some photos from today....either tonight or tomorrow.

Ciao,
Barb

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Comments

[sis]

Well, that was an interesting but not a real productive day since you weren't able to get a bus schedule or find gluten free anything but it was interesting nonetheless. It looked like you had fairly nice weather. How scary to realize that you didn't really know how to get back to the house!!! I can't imagine. A sinking feeling for sure. Love you! Me

[BarbinCostaRica]

I think the saving grace here in CR is that..
the Ticos are so very helpful if you ask them for help with directions or whatever. They'll sometimes even walk you to where you need to go.

[Margarita]

Did you find the Gluten free food you looked for or any restaurants? I've never seen GF bread here. Some say they have GF stuff, but they use rye or barley, we know that's gluten. So be careful. Automercado in Escazu and other parts of the country have some GF items. I've found a few places and will soon be featuring an article on a restaurant with a GF kitchen. We are a family that follows 100 percent gluten free diet. The site is: http://www.thehealthydish.com/ All recipes here are GF. Saludos

[BarbinCostaRica]

I haven't found
gluten-free breads anywhere. I was just at the autonercado in Heredia with a couple of friends but we didn't see any there. I've shared some info with a woman in Atenas that has a macrobiotica about some good gluten-free breads and other foods from the states. She says she wants to start carrying some in her store.