Losing Our Car and Eating at McDonald’s

Recently, we went to City Mall in Alajuela to pick up a few needed items at Office Depot. City Mall opened about three years or so ago, if memory serves me. It’s huge. Three levels of underground parking and I think maybe four levels of shops, services and a food court. Lots of North American style stores and brand names.

We parked in stall number 135 and went into the mall, wandered around looking for Office Depot, finally asking for directional assistance from people stationed around the mall just for that purpose. I needed bubble wrap and had forgot to translate it into Spanish. This is a fun part of living in a foreign country that uses a different language and your Spanish speaking skills are, well, lacking somewhat for some things - trying to describe what you want using gestures and facial expressions. The poor clerk went on the hunt for someone who could speak English. The fellow with English skills knew exactly what I wanted - he said the Spanish words for bubble wrap are “plástico de burbujas”.

Mission accomplished and, since it was near to lunch time, and because I had a craving for a McDonald’s cheese burger, we went to the food court and ordered cheese burgers, Cokes and fries. I made a pequeño ordering error in Spanish and we ended up with two cheese burgers each. Those cheese burgers are the best - small, not too much filling inside (beef patty, cheese slice, pickle and special sauce). I couldn’t eat both burgers so took one with me for a snack later in the day. Here’s one item on the Costa Rican McDonald’s menu, which I imagine isn’t available in Canada:

Then off we went to retrieve our vehicle and head for home. We went to the level where we thought we had parked our car - and stall number 135 was empty! We walked all over that level - no Subaru Forester. A word to the wise: remember your stall number, BUT also remember what level you are on. When you enter the underground parking, you are issued a ticket. When you leave and before you go to your car, you run the ticket through ticket machines located on each parking level and the amount you owe is displayed and you feed in your colones to pay for the parking. Then you feed that same ticket through another machine at the exit. But, each ticket has a time limit.

So we had done all that before looking for our vehicle but time was running out. We wandered through several levels. Have you ever seen that Seinfeld episode where Kramer can’t locate his car in an underground parking lot, Elaine has bought a live goldfish and, as time goes by, she fears for the life of the goldfish in the plastic bag? Well, that’s how I felt about my hamburger - what if it is getting too warm and I eat it at home and then get really sick?

Finally, we found our vehicle and headed home. Remember your stall number and your level!!!!