First Afternoon in San Jose

EXPLORING THE CONCRETE JUNGLE!
DAY 1
Holiday Inn Downtown San Jose
My room is on the 16th floor, with only
the 17th floor Dining Room above me.
San Joe, Costa Rica
I mainly look south with fewer tall buildings, but parts of sunrise/sunset.
San Joe, Costa Rica

 

Temple of Music in Morazan Park across the street
San Joe, Costa Rica

 

“Kissing Statue”
Is another thing Morazan Park is known for.
San Joe, Costa Rica
1890 Escuelas Graduadas, famous metal school building
San Joe, Costa Rica

 

1890 Escuelas Graduadas, famous metal school building 
San Joe, Costa Rica
This is one block from hotel and my check-in desk clerk Javier
went to school here and was proud that I photographed it.

This metal school building of course reminded me of the metal church building in Grecia, Costa Rica I shared it back in 2015. See a photo of that equally unusual church building in my gallery.

 

Museum of Modern Art??
Well, that was one name and there was some,
but it was mostly a children’s art museum
with a few adult works in one of 4 galleries.
Disappointing.
San Jose, Costa Rica
I did like this adult installation, for
the color in Museum of Modern Art.
San Jose, Costa Rica

In the first gallery, there was a lot of clothing designed in CR, some book covers designed here, and a few other adult-made installations like the umbrellas above. The other three galleries were all work of school children interpreting life on other planets. Those galleries probably rotate or change and I suspect that some of the schools of design here display their work from time to time. So I will check their website before I go again to see what I’m getting into!

Children Play in Water Fountain
Plaza of Culture
San Jose, Costa Rica
NOTE: After I made this image, a security guard came up to me and said
something like, “I’m sorry sir but we do not allow making photos of
children here. Please stop.” I stopped and was amazed! Interesting!
The security of children here is very important!

 

Feeding Pigeons
Is an activity in every park in Costa Rica, by all ages.
San Jose, Costa Rica

 

The National Theater  or  Teatro Nacional
Beside the Plaza of Culture
San Jose, Costa Rica

 

Flutist Statue
at the National Theater
San Jose, Costa Rica

 

Clowns Sell Face-painting
Plaza of Culture
San Jose, Costa Rica

 

Indigenous People Music
On sidewalk across from Plaza of Culture
San Jose, Costa Rica

 

And You Can Buy CD of the Indigenous MusicOn sidewalk across from Plaza of Culture
San Jose, Costa Rica

Big city life is always colorful and interesting anywhere in the world. No exception here!

“Happy Hour”
By Holiday Inn in a 15th floor corner room watching the sunset.
Lots of free snack food and drinks was my dinner after a big lunch!
And that building above is Banco Nacional, my Costa Rica bank.
San Jose, Costa Rica

And I made loads of photos of interesting old buildings on the streets I walked today. I may eventually add them to my San Jose or other photo gallery at Charlie Doggett’s COSTA RICA. This city has lots of interesting things to photograph! Tomorrow I start with old historic churches and then see what happens after that. This is almost as much fun as the real jungles, though I like their animals better!  🙂

Temple of Music

Ceiling of the acoustically perfect band shelter in
Morazan Park, San Jose, Costa Rica

“Temple of Music”
Morazan Park, San Jose, Costa Rica
Photographed last week on a trip to San Jose.

The Morazan Park was built in 1887 and was the place where New Year’s Eve festivities were celebrated in the late XIX century. Also music recitals were held in this place and still are nowadays.

This is why in 1920 an investment was made for the construction of the Temple of Music, which has an almost perfect acoustic.

The temple was used for political speeches and also for the exchange of the Power of the Republic. Nowadays, several concerts are presented, from the National Symphonic Orchestra to contemporary music groups.

The Temple of Music is a duplicate of the Temple of Love and Music of Versailles. Its Neoclassical design was made by the architect and painter Jose Francisco Salazar, who also designed the Club Union, the Law School of the University of Costa Rica and the Drugstore of the former University.

The above copied from:
http://www.costaricaexplorerguide.com/php/atracciones2.php?idm=2&atract=65

See the glass building behind the band shelter? It’s Holiday Inn Aurora.
The last night of my 2010 Caravan.com tour of Costa Rica was there and
I’m spending two nights there this week on a “Concrete Jungle” photo trip.
This photo copied from the web.

My trip this week will be to photograph old churches and other interesting or historic old buildings in central San Jose on my walking tour. I discovered a great app for my phone to guide me on many walking tours of San Jose from GPSmyCity.com   with my personal guide, maps, and voice directions each step of the way. Wow! Travel has gotten easier!

I hope to be adding a lot more photos to my already existing photo gallery on San Jose and also to the gallery of Costa Rica Churches

The rainforests and cloud forests are my favorite parts of Costa Rica, but sometimes it is exciting to plan on a city visit too! And there is a lot in San Jose for my short Thursday-Saturday trip. Getting there by bus of course!  🙂  Then some taxis though mostly walking. 

More Birds on My Tree & Little Theater Experience

See also my other posts of tree birds:  Animales Fantasticos,  Arbolitos de Pajaros and still one more coming!

LITTLE THEATER EXPERIENCE
For you guys back in the states who think I just live with the birds and have no social outlets, you couldn’t be more wrong! Sometimes I have too much going on to live the slow, simple life I’m here for. One group I belong to is expats that take charter bus trips to San Jose for cultural activities plus some local recreational activities. Last week we went to the San Jose Little Theatre Group for a very interesting little play titled The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. It was about a teen boy with Asperger’s syndrome that was a little emotional to me since that was one of Juli’s problems. But I enjoyed it and our group of 40 filled the theater which we had to ourselves. It was a late afternoon private performance and then we went to an Argentina Steak House for a very good dinner before returning to Atenas. Thanks to Tony Phillips who puts these trips together!

The Stewart’s in Costa Rica

Lucinda, Emily & Tim Stewart
At Veritas University in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica

It was a fun privilege to have lunch with these three Stewart’s today in San Jose. They were here partly because Emily is in a 3-month International Studies program at Veritas University. Plus they had a vacation weekend together at Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast and Tim & Lucinda a little getaway at Arenal Volcano. Wow! I’ve had 6 different visitors from Tennessee in less than two years! Maybe they haven’t forgotten me in Tennessee yet.  🙂

La Bohéme Opera Sunday Night

Teatro Nacional Stage seen from Balcony
They asked us to not take photos during the performance.
Note the screen for subtitles. Opera was in Italian and subtitles in Spanish!
(What did you expect in a Spanish-language country?) I understood maybe 30%.
Thanks to Amazon Kindle I had read it in English before the performance
AND watched it on YouTube with English Subtitles, so I was ready!  🙂
Our Atenas Group in the Balcony of Teatro Nacional

Atenas Expat Retirees on Bus to San Jose

Opera Program Book
And oh yeah, it was a fabulous performance! Perfect in every way!
The arts are very important here and done well in every medium.
And I’m interested in something other than just birds!  🙂

Outside Teatro Nacional
(Photo made earlier than today’s visit.)

Inside Lobby of Teatro Nacional
(Earlier shot. It was packed full tonight!)
There is a great little restaurant off the lobby but packed tonight,
so Anthony and I ate burgers at McDonald’s across the street. Shameful!

We went to a 5:00 PM performance and our bus was back in Atenas by 8:30 PM. Nice!

Another Expat Trip to San Jose

Yeh! It is kind of like the senior adult trips we had at both First Baptist & McKendree Village when in Nashville. And a lot of fun! Focus this time was indigenous people art work that we were not suppose to photograph. I honored their rule (though some did not). Bought nothing!:

NAMU is the Bri Bri indigenous language for Jaguar and name of shop.
Not allowed to make photos inside. Lots of masks, baskets, carvings, etc.

Afterwards we stop at “Porky’s”
for a choice of 50+ hamburgers & 100’s of beers.

This was my second trip with this group, the other being a Central American Art show I shared about in one blog post. July 31 I’m going with the music lovers of this group of expats to San Jose for a performance of the opera La Boheme. That should be interesting since I have not generally cared for most operas, but think I will like this one. I’m reading the English translation of the script now thanks to Kindle! The men get together for dart tournaments but that has not interested me yet.

San Jose Hospitals Today

Entering Hospital Mexico, the largest in Costa Rica
and a public hospital
MRI at Public Hospital Mexico

Hospital room at small boutique private hospital, Clinica Unibe.
We saw another similar one called Hospital Metropolintano.

In and out of the van at about 5 hospitals

Clinica Biblica, one of the two largest private hospitals along with CIMA.
We also visited Hospital Catolica, just a little smaller.

An absolutely wonderful Senior Adult Apartments with all levels of care,
great views, and near the second largest mall in Costa Rica.
Verdeza Apartamentos
I would love for this to be my final home before death! Great program!

More tomorrow as we head for San Ramon, a town a little larger than Atenas to visit more of the local healthcare facilities and hear more from Paul and Gloria Yeatman and eat lunch at their house.

Healthcare Tour of Costa Rica

Wednesday & Thursday nights at Adventure Inn in San Jose
A small family-owned, non-chain hotel with good prices!
Adventure Inn San Jose

Because the tour starts at 7:30 in the morning from this hotel, I came the night before like probably most of the participants. Walter’s Tours and Taxis in Atenas takes me for visa renewals usually and so I used his services to get to this hotel today. Door to door friendly and efficient service at a reasonable price and I did not have to fight the San Jose traffic! Saturday morning they will pick me up in San Ramon where the tour finishes. To save money I may use the public bus in future but it seemed more of a hassle with a suitcase and changing buses in San Jose. Kind of nice to be chauffeured!

The tour that starts in the morning (I’m writing Wednesday night) is sponsored by Paul & Gloria Yeatman who do the blog/website/newsletter titled Retire for Less in Costa Rica. One of their posts tells about Healthcare in Costa Rica and this tour description.

Tomorrow night I will report on the first day of the tour, all in San Jose. So keep reading. I expect most of the participants to be people from the States and Canada who are considering retirement here. The Yeatman’s do this in conjunction with another guy who does a relocation tour of Costa Rica, different from the one I took. More about it later too. Tonight I rest, eat in hotel restaurant, do some computer work and play and read. It is fun to be away from home even when you live in a paradise! 🙂

A quote from the founder of my former clinic in Nashville
where caring people still struggle with the
broken American system.
It is good to now live in a country where healthcare and education are
more important than wealth and military. It makes a difference!

Why “No Me Gusta San Jose Driving”

Why I don’t like driving in San Jose? It is a big, busy, congested traffic city! Especially on Friday afternoon when I had my last doctor appointment and these photos were shot through bus window on Route 1. Downtown was actually more bumper to bumper but I didn’t think to snap a shot there. It took an hour and a half to get to Atenas at 4:30 where during the day it is sometimes just 45 minutes to drive the 38 miles. 🙂   In addition to people leaving work early on Friday, many in the city go to the beach for the whole weekend making it nearly bumper to bumper all the way to Jaco. To facilitate this, the main highway/freeway, Ruta 27, has all lanes going west for a couple of hours Friday afternoon and all lanes going east for a couple of hours Sunday afternoon as they return. Interesting!

Just one more reason I do not have the high expense of a car and get around by bus, taxi or walking: healthier, cheaper, and less stress! And I can get the occasional rent car for a trip or when I have guests.

AND Costa Rica is STILL One of the Best Places in the World to Retire as now reported by U.S. News & World Report with above link to a Live in Costa Rica Blog article. Or go directly to the U.S. News & World Report Ranking of Costa Rica for Retirement. 

¡Ciudad, Pueblo, Bosque, Montana o Playa
Costa Rica es Pura Vida!

¡Me Gusta Mucho!