Well, there's no turning back now! Sarah and I left early this morning on our journey. My dad was kind enough to drop us off at Newark Airport shortly after 5am so we could catch our flight to San Jose, Costa Rica.
One bag each, ready to go.
We almost always fly out of LaGuardia or JFK; we forgot there is a pretty cool view of the city from Newark.
Nothing notable from the flight to report. It was on-time, had little turbulence and the woman in the window seat next to Sarah didn't make us get up once.
We landed around 11am local time (2 hours behind New York) and were able to easily grab our luggage and meet the shuttle to our hostel. Yes, this is my first time in a hostel. No, it's not a shared room with 15 other single people. It's actually a perfect accommodation for what we need: a place to stay for tonight and tomorrow as we explore San Jose before heading up to La Fortuna to see the Arenal volcano on Friday. The highlight of our shuttle experience was when Sarah tried to tip our driver with an old Colon note she somehow got at work - which is actually no longer in circulation. What's "oops" in Spanish?
We settled into our room and headed into town to grab lunch. Afterward we walked around some more, but it started raining so we cut our sightseeing short. Still more to explore tomorrow but we did see a few landmarks.
Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica.
Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica (from the inside).
View from one of the pedestrian streets.
The rain kept up so we headed to the hostel to relax a bit before dinner. We did some research to find a good place to eat (ended up deciding on a local restaurant called Limoncello), but we were unable to find it! They don't publish an address on their website (only general directions on how to get there) and no one seemed to have heard of it...despite the glowing reviews online. In any case, we ended up just having a burger at a pub close to our hostel that turned out to be amazing. Sarah described hers (which had mozzarella, bacon and short rib on top) as one of the best burgers she's ever had.
$2 beers were also a big win.
We're both pretty tired after a long day but looking forward to another day in San Jose tomorrow. Fingers crossed it's a little less rainy!