Danela's view

We finally, finally, got to our hotel rooms! That's not to say that spending two hours at the mall was a terrible experience--quite the contrary, in fact. The food in the food court was delicious, and the clothes, while being similiar to those of the United States in some ways, had their own flairs that made them truly Costa Rican. Plus, practicing our Spanish with all the different cashiers and vendors was a fabulour experience on its own. Still though, we were tired, and weren't complaining at all once our time in the mall came to an end. We boarded the bus and headed to our first hotel.

Our first hotel is called Hotel Villa Tournon, and it's an adorable little hotel that fits very well with the surrounding area. The rooms are decent, and there's an outdoor pool in the back. Unfortunately, it started to rain as soon as we got there, so our plans to go explore the city of San Jose was postponed. But that was okay. Everyone was exhausted, so we all pretty much collapsed into bed for a couple hours. Not everyone fell asleep, but the downtime was a nice break from the near-constant traveling we'd been doing for the past 14 hours. (Literally, it was 14 hours of travel from State College to the hotels and all of the wait time in between. We'd been going from midnight to 2:00 in the afternoon.)

Anyway, a couple hours later, we all roused ourselves and went for a walk. San Jose is a small city, and the downtown area has a lot of stores interspersed with old and/or historical buildings. Our hotel was only a few blocks away from el centro (downtown), and we made the walk in only a few minutes. We passed by the Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica (National Theatre of Costa Rica) and were allowed into the lobby area to take a few non-flash pictures before we made our exit. We also passed by the Museums of Pre-Columbian Costa Rican history, the history of Costa Rican currency, and Costa Rican art. After wandering around a little longer, we decided to stop in the central area of downtown San Jose and got some ice cream before walking back up to the hotel.

Dinner was served at 7:00 PM, and consisted of bread, chicken, pasta with a chili-type sause, and white rice and black beans. For drink, there was a black raspberry punch, which was an new experience for most of the students.

After dinner was free time until bed. Tomorrow, we'll be hiking up the Poas Volcano, taking a tour of the INBioparque, and working really hard on our Costa Rica tans.