After staying at Hotel Colinas del Sol for just over 2 months, it was time to move. The house we were renting was previously booked from January to March of 2011. We arranged to stay at our friend Barbara’s home for about 2 1/2 weeks and then go to Nicaragua for our "90 day visa run"…will share more about this later. Barbara had to go back to the states so it worked out well for us to stay in her home and look after her 4 cats while she was gone. Here is a picture of her 4 precious ‘furballs’.
Barbara also has a dog, Morgan who she arranged to leave with her gardener since he was having some health challenges and we were not comfortable taking care of him. Here’s Morgan.
Barbara lives in a beautiful 2 bedroom home with a pool and an amazing view. We were grateful to have the opportunity to stay here since our next rental would not be available until February 1st.
Randie cooked a great meal for all of us the day we moved in and it was such a beautiful night, we ate outside. Barbara’s friend, Karen joined us for dinner. (Karen is on the left and Barbara on the right.)
Our friend Grace went back to Canada on the 28th so she was not able to join us for New Year’s Eve. We enjoyed our time together and we’re glad she enjoyed her first trip to Costa Rica. Here she is ready to be taken to the airport.
We were invited to a Pot Luck, New Year’s Eve dinner by Vera, the woman originally from Brazil who we met while looking at her rental property. We only spent about 15 minutes with her about a week ago and we really connected. Here’s Vera with her dog.
Vera also knows our friends Margaret and Steve and they were also invited. I just love the picture of Margaret as she almost knocked down the wine glass. The cake she made was delicious!
When we got to Vera’s home we saw Cynthia who we met a while ago. She ended up renting one of the units at Vera’s and was also part of the New Year’s celebration. The other woman who was invited, Marianna (on the right) is originally from Italy and she doesn’t speak much English. Somehow, everyone was able to communicate with one another.
We even managed to get a picture of the two of us. Happy New Year!
At the end of the evening, Marianna was kind enough to drive us home.
Grecia is a city about a 30 minutes drive from Atenas where we are staying (about the same distance north/west of San Jose). There is no direct bus to Grecia from Atenas and since we do not have a car we negotiated with Jurgen, the owner of Hotel Colinas del Sol, to drive us there and back. Grecia is mostly known for it’s unique metal church that was imported in pieces from Belgium in the 1890′s. The church is called, Cathedral de la Mercedes. Randie took some great pictures of it.
Since it was during the Christmas season when we visited, there was a beautiful Manger display.
This is the view looking outside from the church entrance.
After visiting the church, Grace told us she wanted to have an authentic Costa Rican lunch so we took her to a "Soda" (small Tico restaurant) in the market…you can’t get more authentic than that.
Across from the Soda there was an artist painting a 3D mural on the wall.
On the way back to Atenas, Jurgen stopped so we could take photos of a small waterfall and a bridge that is built upside down compared to the structures in Canada.
Our last stop before heading home was a souvenir shop called Molas & Coffee located on the main street that passes through Atenas (about 10 minutes from the center of town).
We went for a walk today to show Grace our neighbourhood. There are so many beautiful flowering bushes around here.
Grace took us out for dinner at La Trocha, the outdoor restaurant where Randie took me for my birthday…Great food! We asked the waiter to take a photo since Randie takes most of the photos and is not in many of them. As you can see from what we are wearing, it can get chilly at night here.
Our friends Penny and Craig invited us to their home for dinner on Christmas Eve. We had turkey and lots of other great food. We really enjoyed our time with them and look forward to spending more time with them over the next few months.
Grace brought a very tasty Christmas cake for dessert.
Penny and Craig have 4 cats. Here’s Penny holding one of her "babies."
We were invited by our friends Margaret and Steve to join them and some of their other friends for a pot-luck lunch on Christmas Day. We had another great Turkey with many side dishes. Margaret is very creative and even made name card holders. Take a look at the beautiful table display!
Steve is in the blue T-shirt and his wife Margaret is in the photo on the right in the white dress. We had a wonderful time and feel so blessed to have so many great friends here in Costa Rica.
I was delighted when my friend Grace decided to come and visit us during her Christmas break. This was her first trip to Costa Rica and she was the first person to take us up on our offer to come for a visit and to stay with us. Another person we met recently while in Toronto also arrived in Costa Rica the same day as Grace and since he was on the same flight, I went to the airport with Jurgen (the owner of
Here is Grace walking out of the airport in San Jose.
Since we only had room for one guest and since I’ve known Grace for about 30 years, she was given our extra room and Bill didn’t mind booking another room at the same hotel. He was only planning on staying for one night since he wanted to tour around the country.
Once Grace and Bill got settled in, they decided to come with us to see a potential rental. We were still looking for a place to stay from January until May. Although it turned out that the place we looked at wasn’t available for the entire time we needed it, we took photos for future reference. There were two rental units, one was a one-bedroom unit and the other one below it was a studio apartment. It was next to the owner Vera’s beautiful house and if we rented it, we would have access to her pool. The views from this place were spectacular!
This is Vera’s house and the rental units next to it.
Photos of the inside of the upper one-bedroom unit are below:
Here are photos of the lower studio apartment:
From Vera’s home we all went for dinner at La Trilla restaurant. Cynthia, someone we met recently in Atenas joined us.
The children’s Christmas Party was organized by a group of volunteers. This was the day all the children who were part of the Angel Tree program came together to not only receive their gifts, but to be entertained and to receive some treats. Here are a few of the volunteers getting all the gifts organized on the stage.
Here is a picture showing the hundreds of children and their parents waiting to get inside.
When the children first arrived, they received half a banana, an apple, a juice box and a slice of pizza. Penny and I helped serve the pizza.
The kids were absolutely adorable, not to mention incredibly well behaved!
Although the clown was there to entertain the kids, Penny and I got a picture with him.
Everyone had lots of fun, especially the children!
Today we took our friend Barbara out for lunch for her birthday at a place called Ristorante Antano. Cynthia, someone we met recently, also joined us. After we told the waiter that it was Barbara’s birthday, he surprised her by serving her a complimentary piece of cake.
We were surprised to find out that Atenas, being such a small town of about 7000 people, was having a Christmas Parade. We were so glad that we went to see it. We watched from a side street where the parade was starting and then walked to the center of town so we could see more. There were several marching bands, young people walking and dancing on stilts and decorated floats. Here is a short video of parts of the parade.
; “>Here are a few photos we took as well.
At first we thought almost everyone in town was in the parade, including so many children and then we saw the crowds downtown watching. This photo shows just one group gathered on the stairs and sitting at tables at our favourite breakfast place across from the park.
Randie took a photo of a lit up nativity scene in front of someone’s lawn and the decorated tree downtown.
After going to the Feria we decided to try out a different restaurant for breakfast called, La Carreta. This restaurant is across from the central park. The breakfast was delicious and we will definitely come back again.
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