An artsy hole...

Les amis, je suis trop fatiguée pour traduire. Il y a cette traduction automatique qui est mieux que rien... Désolée!

So we are here... after a long day as only first days in a new country can be... When I was finally sitting in a touristy restaurant at 8 pm tonight with overtired little girls (and trying to hide how overwhelmed I was feeling too), I was reminded of my first day in Italy, at 17... and to this day, I still think it was the longest day of my life...

The flight went well, but arriving in San José was a bit stressful. After a 30 minute taxi ride, we arrived at the hotel and we were greeted by the owner, who was described by the Lonely Planet guide as a bit of an excentric. Wait a minute! This woman has a full blown bordeline personality disorder!! The place is popular for its in-town jungle/ecosystem that is visited by many birds. When she opened the door to our room, a strong smell of closed-for-the-winter-chalet jumped to my nose (a mix of dust and mold) and we soon found out that the smell was not to be overpowered by essential oils... There was a train going by every 15 minutes or so and dogs barking, of course... The room is plain dirty, there is not even a pillow case on the pillows and the sheets are so worn out, you can see through them... There was a dirty bowl soaking in our sink (??)...



Let's be clear here: I am not a princess and I have camped and traveled and slept in many uncomfortable places, but this is plain gross. Even the girls are grossed out and bothered by the smell... We are still weighting our options here... We are here 4 nights. We can bite the bullet and try to enjoy ourselves or we can try to negociate with the hysterical artist...



So, since we needed to get out of here, we went for a walk to find a restaurant, refusing to follow the advice of the hotel's owner to go to the restaurant accross the street (it was expensive and full of tourists... we knew better!). I had the address of restaurant that was not too far, so we went and try to find it, in San José, at night, with 3 hungry and tired little girls... Yep! Soon, we were in small deserted streets with no restaurants in sight. I really felt like we were wearing red neons tourist signs on our backs... So we walked and walked, and walked east, and walked north... there was a brothel, a casino with topless women, many honking cars, but no freaking restaurant. There was no kids to be seen in the streets and my stress level was going up. The kids were worried and hungry and tired and I was out of my comfort zone... Finally, we walked back to the touristy restaurant in front of the hotel... and paid 40$ for 3 small awful pizzas (that tired girls barely munched at... and I could not swallow a thing since my stomach was so twisted... anyways, I have learnt not to eat when stressed out, especially if there is no raw option), a pizza was put too quickly on our table, fell off and pushed a glass of water on Aisha, who started wailing... And that was it.

They are finally asleep. And after finishing my grapes, I will go put my nose in Mara's hair to try to fall asleep and forget about the smell of the room...

Tomorrow is another day...