down town San Jose, Costa Rica

Central Park Inside the National Theater
Back view of the National Museum (former Bellavista Fortress)
Front view of the museum

Owl butterflies in the "secret garden"
Today we went on what I like to call an "adventure". Typically, in my world, that means I get lost. It wasn't quite like that, but sure makes you realize how difficult some things may be. Our list of school things included "recommended" auido recorder. Notice "required" was not there. Well...our teachers told us on Friday that starting Monday we needed to bring them in and when recorded things onto it, that was how we were going to be tested in our phonetics class. Hence the need to go buy one. After 4 stops and 4 different locations, we finally found (believe it or not) a Radio Shack. We purchased it, and off we went on our new adventure to downtown San Jose,.

We started out in Parque Central (central park). We then walked to the Teatro Nacional (national theater) which was built in 1890 and modeled after the main theater in Paris. Very beautiful, but not sure it was worth the $5.00 a piece charge (Madison was free). Then we hoofed it over to the Museo Nacional (national museum). This is an old fort that used to house the now defunct army. It is pocked with bullet holes from their civil war. Inside held artifacts that covered a thousand year period. Incredible, beautiful - and the neat thing - there was a "secret garden" in the lower area of the fort - turned out it was a butterfly garden. LOTS of mariposas (butterflies) flying all around. Tried to catch the bus back, but never managed to find the right bus stop (presada de autobus) - so...caught a taxi, but only $3.00 total to get from downtown to our front door. Not bad at all.