San Jose: Cosmopolitan City -- At Least for Two Days
San Jose is the capital of Costa Rica with a current population of about 1.7 million. This represents ~35% of the total population of the country's 5.2 million residents, though the city and surrounding area represent less than 5% of the land. This relative urbanization was very clear during the last two days of our trip where we walked through bustling markets, haggled with street vendors, re-directed wayward taxi drivers and toured world-class contemporary art and history museums.
Wesley in particular was enamored with the city life, as he was given a camera to take pictures of exhibits in the museum and he eagerly went from shop-to-shop looking for souvenirs to take home from the trip. I suspect his joy was also enhanced by the fact that the kids had their own room at the hotel and we tasted ice cream and dessert as often as we had regular meals.
All-in, we managed to visit four museums, two major markets, ump-teen shops, the National Theater and seven unique restaurants with varied cuisine (including a Quiznos) and we never got mugged or hustled. The kids (and I) learned quite a bit about Pre-Columbian Costa Rican history and a smidge about Costa Rican history after its independence in 1824 (see separate posting for that).
The National Theater (Teatro Nacional Costa Rica) tour, in particular, was interesting because the tour was given by actors playing the part of the theater's original architect and the first First Lady of Costa Rica. They pointed out a mural on the ceiling of the Theater that was commissioned by the Costa Rican government to be painted by a famous Italian artist Aleardo Villa in 1897 and titled "An Allegory of Coffee and Bananas" (in English). The Costa Rican government was eager to show that it had real culture like France and Italy, but the artist had never been to Costa Rica and he painted the mural based only on letters describing "bananas" and coffee plantations. The resulting painting is hilarious as a result, including Italian-looking women picking coffee beans off of what look like raspberry bushes and a man holding a bushel of bananas upside down on a busy dock with an electric lamp-post (at a time when Costa Rica did not have electricity). Take that, Europe!
The mural was reproduced on the 5 colon bill for many years before finally being retired in the ~1990s.
The pictures below show the kids doing some actual learning on summer vacation and Wesley taking pictures of pretty much everything.
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How awesome! That ice cream looks tasty. :)
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