Day 8 and 9 - December 23, 24 - San Jose, and travel home
While most of the group (other than Pat and Greg) left on the 23rd for
home, we stayed an extra day, mostly to unwind. We transferred back to
the Courtyard Marriott in the morning.
After checking in, we walked around the small mall next to the hotel.
We ate lunch at an Argentine restaurant called Terruno, an excellent
lunch. Then in the afternoon, Marina and Don took a taxi over to the Multi Plaza, the
largest mall in Costa Rica. This mall could be seen from the Marriott,
but because of a river canyon and a super highway with no sidewalk,
there is no way to walk to the mall. Many stores in the mall were the
same that we have in the states. In the end, we did not buy anything at
the mall. It took awhile to get a taxi back to the hotel.
The next day, December 24, Christmas Eve, we took the 6am shuttle to
the airport. At the airport we did get a small surprise. Before we
could get in line to get our boarding passes, we had to go through
another line to pay an exit tax. So we split up as the line for
boarding passes was quite long. Marina went with our passports to pay
the tax, and then rejoined us.
The flight to Dallas was uneventful. At Dallas, we all turned on our
cell phones and cleared our voice mails and text messages. Then we
found a sports bar to watch the late NFL games. We caught a flight to
Denver an hour earlier than the flight we were booked on. At Denver,
Michael and Don shuttled back to the hotel to start to dig out the car
(remember it was outside in the blizzard). Then back to the airport
where Marina and David were at baggage claim. Baggage claim was still a
mess from the blizzard with unclaimed luggage stored everywhere. One
piece of our luggage was on the plane that we took from Dallas, the
rest was on our original flight. By the time we got back to the airport
with the car, we only had about a 20 minute wait for the rest of the
luggage.
Roads back up to the mountains were clear and we had no problems
getting back home.
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This page last updated December 29, 2006