Completing the Circuit

I'm not a fan of San Jose.

When DW and I first arrived in Costa Rica, we landed in darkness. The only thing I could discern from the port side of our craft, from the window seat, was that we were landing on high ground, with some small valleys and more hills surrounding the Juan Santamaría International Airport.

We were met outside the arrivals area by the owner of our hotel, who drove us through darkened streets. Once in our room, looking off the balcony, we could see only darkness, as there was only jungle before us. It was only after looking at Google Maps, to find our location, that I knew which direction we had headed from the airport.

Basically, it was north, just northwest of the town of Alajuela, which itself is to the northwest of the greater San Jose area.

Leaving Alajuela, we got onto a highway and headed north, and then west, to La Fortuna. On the route, we saw no urban buildup and, as soon as we reached the mountains, we were immersed in jungle.

Our first taste of a sizable city was on our last full day, having left the Quetzal National Park, winding our way down the mountains to the city of Cartago, Costa Rica's first capital city. Almost immediately, we were caught in traffic and construction. Even on a Saturday morning, we moved at a snail's pace.

Every once and a while, Highway 2 would pick up and we'd move at a decent speed. But as soon as we entered San Jose, our GPS mapping system took us off the highway and through congested roads. And we were back to a crawl.

Looking around the city, while stopped in traffic, I was initially reminded of some South Korean cities that I had driven through in the late 90s. Buildings of all sorts, surrounded by mountains, with really crappy drivers who were more interested in getting ahead of you than in following the rules of the road.

I was never happier than I was at pulling in to our hotel and parking the RAV4. We had arrived at noon and couldn't check in until 2:00, but the hotel let us park the car and keep our luggage in safe keeping. Though the vehicle had served us well in the country, I was happy to know that I'd never drive it again.

To kill time before check-in, DW and I hailed an Uber cab and went into the heart of San Jose. It was great to let a native driver worry about traffic but the car had no air conditioning and we had to keep the windows down, which meant that we had to endure smoke and exhaust from other vehicles. Throughout our time in the country, we had seen so many vehicles that seemed desperate for oil changes.

In San Jose, a haze of black smoke seemed to hang in the air (again, reminding me of South Korea in the late 1990s).

We were dropped off outside the Pre-Columbian Gold Museum. This is a highly recommended stop in the heart of San Jose. It was interesting to see life in Central America before the conquistadors: I was surprised to see so many gold and clay artifacts that were in pristine condition. One can only wonder what this fascinating civilization could have grown to be if not for the Spanish and Portuguese invaders.

The museum took about an hour to go through, and by the time we were done, we realized how hungry we were. We hadn't eaten since we had sat with our friends, for breakfast, at our lodge, nearly six hours earlier.

We walked westward along Avenida Central, looking for the San Jose Central Market, a tight, crowded, labyrinth of a market that offered just about everything you can think of. Again, I was reminded of the Namdaemun Market of Seoul or the Nambu Market of Jeonju, South Korea.

DW was looking for a plush toy of a quetzal bird: something that she had seen in the gift shop of the Cafetería Don Cayito, the day before, and had wanted to buy as a souvenir but decided to hold out. Walking almost every corridor in the market and visiting several gift shops, we saw lots of toy parrots, toucans, monkeys, and sloths, but no quetzals.

The plushy, it seems, is elusive as the real bird (she finally found one in the Duty-Free section of the airport, the next morning).

We found the market just a bit too claustrophobic for lunch so we made a Google search for the best non-chain restaurant in the area, and found Café Rojo as the highest-rated. And it was only a seven-minute walk from the market.

As we left the core of Avenida Central, DW became nervous. There were fewer people on the streets and the buildings became less commercial. When we were walking along Avenida Central, which is a pedestrian street, closed to vehicles, I was hounded by someone who was begging for money. When I told him that I didn't have any money (which was true: DW and I tapped with our phones at almost every place we had visited on our vacation), he became more animated more desperate, and kept trying to touch me (he was also speaking in English).

DW was worried that he would try to grab my camera, which was hanging off my shoulder, and when she spied a shop with a security guard at the entrance, she grabbed me and led me inside. The security guard, seeing what was happening, shooed the man away. When the coast was clear, the security guy nodded to us and we continued on our way, but still had others begging for change or trying to sell us trinkets (but not as aggressively as the other guy).

DW was about to suggest heading back toward the busier streets when we spotted Café Rojo. It was tucked away but had a nice, gardened patio, which hid patrons from the traffic. The staff was friendly and greeted us immediately, in perfect English, and had us sit on a picnic table.

The food was exactly what I needed. They even had local craft beer and I had an excellent saison with my pork meatball báhn mí sandwich. DW had a chicken salad and a tasty red gin cocktail. For a short time, it made us forget about the bustle of the downtown core.

We didn't have a lot of time left to get back to the hotel, where our car-rental agent was to meet us to retrieve the RAV4. We wanted to leave a buffer because we knew that the traffic was bad and that estimates of travel time were incorrect, based on how long our GPS told us it would take to drive to our hotel, and how long Uber said our ride into town would take.

We arrived at our hotel around 4 and immediately checked in. DW carried our luggage to our room while I went to the RAV4 and started emptying it of our non-valuables and garbage. When I thought I had retrieved everything, I had DW come down to the vehicle for one last look, to make sure I hadn't missed anything.

On this trip to the Toyota, we saw a man in a blue t-shirt near the car, watching us approach. Though his shirt had a logo from some other company, he was holding papers from our rental agency, with my name on them. He didn't speak English but we were able to communicate with our limited Spanish and Google Translate.

He already noticed the small scrape on the front-passenger side of the vehicle. When DW and I took the ferry across the Gulf of Nicoya, one of the attendants in the car port kept guiding me closer and closer to the side wall. I trusted that he was watching closely, even though I thought I was getting too close to the wall, and when I felt the RAV4 make contact with the wall, I knew that I should have trusted my own judgement.

I explained this to the rental agent, and he seemed sympathetic. He thought that it could be buffed out, but I doubted the plastic could handle any buffing. He didn't seem to care.

We signed off on the vehicle and he told me that his manager would assess the damage and contact me. We shook hands and he drove away.

"Did you check the compartment between the front seats?" DW asked as we headed to our room.

"The only thing I placed in it was the USB cable to connect my phone to Android Auto," I said, "and I removed that cable with my phone when I first parked the car."

"I kept snacks in it," she said, "and I had a cable for charging my phone."

"I asked you to double-check for me," I replied. "That's why we returned to the vehicle. I thought you would have checked while you were making a video."

DW and I always take a detailed video of a rental vehicle, both when we take possession and when we return the vehicle. It's our proof of the condition before and after. I saw that she was taking video but because I was trying to communicate with the agent, I never noticed if she had looked inside the Toyota.

"I was so focused on recording that I didn't look inside anything. Plus, I was listening to you."

The snacks were no great loss and the cable was purchased in La Fortuna when DW discovered she had left hers at home.

We headed to the pool area of the hotel in time for sunset. As the light waned, we felt a coolness settle in. I snapped the very last photo of our trip before we headed to our room.

Our flight to Toronto was for 8:50 the next morning, which meant that we had to be at the airport by around 6:30 or so. Because neither of us wanted to go to bed too early—we were always waking up between 4 and 5—we found a TV station that was playing old episodes of the original CSI, back-to-back, and we forced ourselves to stay awake until about 10:30.

We still woke up before 5.

With our shuttle to the airport, our circuit of Costa Rica was complete. We had made a good-sized ring route of the country and we decided that there were areas that we hadn't yet seen but would like to see, as well as wanting to return to some of our favourite spots.

Screen capture of Google Maps.

We'll have to return some day but who knows when? We're already in the process of planning our next vacation.

Where to? I'll let you know when we've made concrete plans but we're aiming for September.

And I've already started work on upcoming YouTube videos from this trip. Stay tuned.

A Week in a Day

It's hard to believe that one month ago, today, DW and I had arrived in Portugal and headed up to Porto.

For me, the trip is still so fresh in my mind that it seems like it was only last week that we were walking across the Luis I Bridge, from Porto to Gaia, to capture the sunset over the Douro River. That we were stomping on grapes at a quinta in port wine country. That we were kayaking off the Algarve coastline. That we were riding on old trams and eating some amazing food in the second-oldest European city.

All that and more are still fresh in my head, and yet we've been home for more than two weeks.

Today, I'm going to share some of the highlights from our time in Lisbon that made memories that we will hang onto for years. I'm not going to talk about the day trips that we took: first, I've already shared one of them while I was in Portugal. There's not much more to add.

I'll share our other day trip tomorrow, and then that just might wrap up our trip. I'll move on to something new on Wednesday.

When DW and I planned our trip, we had planned to purchase a 48-hour Lisboa Card, which gave us either free or reduced admission to several museums in the city, plus unlimited access to the metro system (subways, trains, buses, trams) during that period. We checked the schedule of several museums to make sure that they weren't closed on the days that we'd have these passes and decided that we'd use the passes on the Wednesday and Thursday.

But on Sunday, we had learned that one of the museums was free after 2:00, so we used our Viva cards (think Presto cards for transit in Ottawa and Toronto) to head to the northern end of the town, outside the historic part of Lisbon, to visit the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian. The museum houses about 6,000 pieces of objects that were collected by Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, and Armenian oil baron and philanthropist who made Lisbon his home and amassed art as far back as the early Egyptian age to Chinese vases, Middle-Eastern rugs, Renaissance paintings, and more.

The museum is surrounded by a beautiful garden that is always open to the public. It's well worth a visit.

I've already shared Belém and can't stress how important it is to make it out there for the monastery, the tower, the Monument of the Discoveries, the famous Pastéis de Belém, and the National Coach Museum. Free entry to the Torre de Belém, the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, and the museum are worth the price of the Lisboa Card, alone, including the unlimited transit rides.

You can't visit Lisbon without visiting the castle that sits atop the hill in the Alfama neighbourhood and I recommend that you go there for sunset. Most of the visitors have left by then and you have a great view of the city as the sun drops below the horizon and the lights come on across the other hills and valleys. Pick up some take-away food, bring a bottle of wine (it's legal to drink in public), and enjoy the beauty of the city.

On Saturday, November 1, 1755, the Christian families started their morning celebrating All Saints Day. They lit candles for each deceased member of their family, to honour them. They then headed to church for mass. Many gathered in the massive Carmo Convent, the cathedral in Bairro Alto. It is said that just as mass was beginning, the earthquake struck.

The roof of the cathedral collapsed. Most of the city was levelled. In the houses where candles burned, fires broke out. To escape the blazes, many people ran to the Tagus River, whose water had receded, unexpectedly.

A sign from God? No. A giant, 20-metre tsunami slammed into the city, taking more victims. It is said that as much as 80 percent of Lisbon was destroyed and as many as 50,000 people (60 percent of the population) perished as a result of the devastation.

As a reminder of the earthquake, the Carmo Convent has remained in ruins. It is now a museum that is a must-see.

If you're a wine lover, you must check out the Vinhos de Portugal centre, located in the western building off of Praça do Comércio. Here, you can sample wines from all regions of the country and have a private tasting with one of the knowledgeable staff. You can purchase a card, like the Viva card, and top it up with as much money as you'd like. There are machines that dispense wine into your glass.

DW and I signed up for a private port tasting. Our "guide" talked about the Douro Valley and let us sample four distinct styles of wine. We had a white table wine (better than the one we had from Taylor's, in Gaia), a 2016 Late Bottled Vintage, and two tawneys: a 10-year-old and one from 1980 that was incredible.

When I told our guide that the 1980 tawney was my favourite, she topped up my glass. She then made the mistake of leaving us to finish our glasses, on our own, and she left the bottles with us.

I poured myself a third glass.

Of course, much of our time in Lisbon was spent just wandering the city, checking out the neighbourhoods, trying so many dishes of food that were new to us (I recommend visiting the Time Out Market, in Cais do Sodré, at least twice), meeting the locals and other tourists, and taking lots of photos.

I'm still trying to get through all of my photos and will likely be doing so for weeks to come. But I'll leave you with a few, here.

DW and I have unfinished business with Portugal. We will return. The memories are still fresh in our heads, one month after arriving and more than two weeks after returning. I'm sure these memories will stay with us forever.

Tomorrow, for my final post about our trip (I use "final" loosely, as I'm sure I'll continue to share photos), I'll share our trip to the western coast and the town of Cascais.

Stay tuned.

Centretown at 50mm

Nightscape

In January of 2020, before everything went to shit, DW, our then-16-year-old daughter, and I went to Toronto because of a music workshop that our kid was attending, and she was also considering the big T-O as a candidate for post-secondary education. It was also a good time to visit with some friends who live in the GTA: one, who was soon to be celebrating a birthday and had offered to put us up in her Airbnb unit, just off the Danforth.

For her birthday, our friend wanted us all to go out for an evening at an axe-throwing game bar. We have one in Ottawa's east end, which I had visited two years earlier, and I was looking forward to burning off some aggression, as January of 2020 was the month in which I had participated in Dry January.

BATL Axe Throwing is located in the old port district of Toronto, Port Lands, just south of where the Don Valley Parkway ends at the Gardiner Expressway. At night, this part of the city looks downright dodgy; in the day, it seems to be an area of transformation and growth. Lots of businesses, nightclubs, and even a drive-in theatre seem to occupy the dockyards.

We had a great time with our friends, throwing axes, sipping drinks (they even served the non-alcoholic beer that I reviewed for Dry January), and catching up. When game night wrapped up, we returned to our friend's house where we drank and chatted some more.

But as we pulled out from Port Lands, I was met with a great cityscape of Toronto and I wanted to return with my camera equipment to capture the city at night. Only, I was loathe to leave my friends and I was feeling a bit nervous about being in a dodgy neighbourhood with which I was unfamiliar, on my own.

Another time, I told myself.

Twenty-one months later, DW and I were back in T-O to visit our kids, who had decided to stay in their respective campus residences, rather than come home for the Thanksgiving weekend. But because DW and I wanted to see them, and because my parents wanted to see my younger sister, who also lives in Toronto, we all decided to make the long weekend a family gathering. Our elder daughter caught a GO train from near her campus and stayed with us in a hotel in the Old Toronto neighbourhood.

We had a great weekend and the weather, though rainy on our first night, was great on the second day, Sunday. And though the number-one purpose of our trip was to be with family, I told DW and the others that I wanted to take some time, one evening, to drive back to Port Lands to capture an image of the skyline. I was still nervous about going alone, so I was hopeful that somebody would join me.

In the days leading up to the Thanksgiving weekend, I went onto Google Maps to find the best place to park my car and stand to get my shot, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there was a small park and boardwalk along the end of the pier. It would be easy to pull over, hop out of the car with my gear, get to the boardwalk, set up and take my shots, and jump back in the car. I still wanted to have someone join me, because I didn't know what this park would be like or if it would be safe at night, but at least I had a definite spot.

I needn't have worried. There are a couple of nightclubs at the end of Polson Street, which is well-lit. Lots of young people were coming and going, as this cul-de-sac seemed to be alive, particularly at Jennifer Kateryna Koval's'kyj Park.

Both DW and our elder daughter came with me, as we had just finished having a wonderful Italian dinner at a restaurant with my girls, parents, and sister, and had also just dropped our younger kid at her residence, as she had plans for later that evening.

At first, DW and our elder kid just wanted to wait in the car, rather than explore the park and pier. The pier isn't lit very much, but that suited me for my purposes. Around me, young couples and friends strolled the boardwalk or found spots upon which to sit and take in the city lights.

I quickly mounted my Nikon D750 on the tripod and opened the legs, but didn't extend the height. The shot would be as close to the ground as possible, without simply setting the camera on the ground. I had a 50mm fixed lens, which took in the skyline nicely, and roughly at the same magnification as the human eye. I set the camera into a manual mode, and shot.

I experimented with a few different exposure times and aperture settings, and moved the camera angle a couple of times. During some long exposures, I also fired off a few quick shots from my smartphone's camera. In only a few minutes, I had about 10 shots and decided that was enough.

Back at the car, I showed DW some of the captured images from my phone. "Oh, I want to see that," she said. Our daughter, who was listening to music through her headphones was content to staying put, so we locked her in the car and gave her a fob, just in case she needed to move the car. DW and I returned to where I had taken my shots, and she captured some of her own with her own smartphone.

My best shot? Here you go:

I have also rendered this shot with a Prisma filter, and I'm even considering enlarging it on a canvas print.

Now that I've been to this spot at night, I'm no longer fearful of returning, and I'd like to do so to capture Toronto's skyline at different times of day. Perhaps a sunset shot? Sunrise? On a foggy day? I'd also like to change lenses and get some zoomed-in closeups.

With our kids in the GTA, there will be plenty of opportunities to return to Port Lands and capture the city.

Happy Friday!

Looking Up

Wordless Wednesday: Random Moncton