Eating Out - Grecia and Atenas, Costa Rica

Recently, we have been enjoying having lunch with friends at restaurants here in Grecia and also in Atenas, where we used to live.

We met our Canadian friends, Diane and John, at Casa Nostra in Grecia. We couldn’t find this restaurant the first time we tried to go there. It has two spellings of its name: Casa Nostra and Casa Nosstra - why, I do not know. We were trying to find the “Nosstra” version on Waze but it only showed “Nostra” and so we gave up trying. Yes, I know - why didn’t we go to “Nostra” and see if it was the right place? It was raining and the traffic that day, for some reason, was really bad. Tried again another day using the “Nostra” name and were successful.

The menu uses “Nosstra”.

Like many homes/buildings in Costa Rica, you can’t judge a place by looking at the outside.The restaurant is east of a public pool and a special needs school in Grecia, down a very narrow road that dead ends at an ICE works yard. ICE stands for Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad - the country’s government run electricity and telecom services provider. When the gate is closed, it looks like nothing special at all. However, once the gate is opened and you drive in to park, the view is lovely.

The restaurant is open sided, like many in Costa Rica, so you get the nice breezes. Service is excellent and so was the food we ordered. 

Margaritas!

My order - shrimp, rice and a beet salad.


Lance had shrimp in rice with the beet salad and fries. The fries were so good - coated in a batter of some kind.


John ordered this and I can’t remember what it was - hearts of palm? Diane had a pasta dish that she said was very tasty.

We returned a second time with our other Canadian friends, Jean and Mike, and everything was as good as we remembered.

Then our next food foray was to El Fogon Campesino in Atenas. We used to have breakfast here and the omelettes were terrific. We were there for a reason and that was to meet with our friend Tom who lived in Atenas for a number of years but then moved to Georgia. He was here on business. John and Diane and Tony and Rosemary (our former neighbours) also joined us.

Everything is cooked over wood fire, in the old campesino way that food is prepared. 

Our friend Tom.



Here is what I ordered - a seafood soup or sopa de mariscos. Whenever I see this on a menu I always get it. 

Lance and John both ordered the Caribbean chicken (pollo caribeño). Those are plantains on the left, chicken and salad in the middle, and patacones on the right. I like how everything is served on banana leaves.


Tom’s dish - rice with chicken? Not sure.




There are so many places to eat out in Costa Rica. 

Sold #2!!

In a previous post, I had mentioned that one of my paintings had sold to a Costa Rican and his wife, who reside in Atlanta, Georgia. Here is that painting - “Colores de Costa Rica”:

While browsing through my art web page, they saw “Vanilla the Cow” and decided to buy this also:

Raul and Angela flew down here to pick up their paintings. We had them over for lunch and it was so nice meeting the both of them. They were able to look at the paintings I have in my inventory and decided to buy “Blast Off”!

Here are “Colores” and “Vanilla” framed and hanging in their new home in Atlanta, Georgia:

Wait! There’s more! Raul may be having a print made of “Colores” to hang in the Costa Rican Consulate in Atlanta. He said the painting represented his home country so well.

It’s an honour to have people like my work enough that they purchase them and then display them in their homes.

Photo references: “Colores” and “Blast Off” are from my own photographs. “Vanilla the Cow” courtesy of Andy May.

Eyes on Costa Rica and Weather Records - November 2019

During November, visits to this blog were received from the following 16 countries:

The following is a summary of weather for the month in the area where we live:

Compared to October, the amount of rain and the number of days with measurable rain in November was significantly less. This was one signal that the rainy or "green" season in Costa Rica was coming to an end.  Another was the occurrence of several days in succession where the weather was more characteristic of the upcoming dry season: relatively clear skies, low humidity, and breezy winds providing a cooling effect.

In my post regarding the weather in October, I mentioned that high and low temperatures are measured in a fully shaded area of our property. I also mentioned that the temperatures on our partially shaded patio where we spend much of our time tend to be 5 to 10 degrees (°F) higher. I did not say anything about temperatures inside our house and this raised some questions.

We do not record temperatures inside our house. However, I can say that daytime highs inside are normally cooler than outside highs (whether measured in the shade or on our patio) and overnight lows inside are normally higher than outside lows. This normality is achieved by leaving doors and windows open during the day and closed during the night. We have been obliged to turn on a cooling fan only on rare occasions.

At the Dentist

As I have previously mentioned, we have an excellent dentist here in Grecia - Dr. Marco Vega Quesada. Again, here is his card:

His modern office is located near POPS on the second floor and across from the central park and cathedral. A plus is that he is bilingual, although his office staff is not. He also works at our Grecia Caja hospital, San Francisco de Asis. He and all his staff are so personable, kind and caring. Great view of the park from the treatment rooms.

I had my third visit with him this Wednesday for gum surgery. All my appointments so far have been late afternoon (4:30 pm). This means that quite often it is dark when I leave his office (this being the tropics after all). We don’t drive in the dark so Lance drops me off and I taxi home. Reasons for not wanting to drive in the dark: narrow, winding roads; few if any sidewalks and lack of shoulders; people, dogs, chickens walking on the roads, lack of street lights and so on. Obviously not all of Costa Rica is like this, but it is in our area and we prefer to leave the driving to the taxis. 

This particular appointment was over an hour long and I left with a mouthful of stitches and cotton batting on one frozen side, instructions to rest, avoid the sun, don’t drink hot beverages and take the prescribed medications. It was dark out by now.

So here’s the funny part. There’s a large farmacia (pharmacy) near his office and the taxi stand. In I went, handed over my script and was handed back a pack of pain killers, mouth spray and a large needle with vial! I thought ... am I supposed to inject myself? That’s for sure not going to happen. Then I remembered - in Costa Rica pharmacies provide a lot more services then just dispensing pills and selling shampoos. They will also give injections.

So I was motioned into the back of the farmacia, had my blood pressure and heart rate recorded, then into another room - up on the table and the deed was done. I’m assuming the shot was antibiotics - the doctor explained everything to me but I think I missed that part so I was kind of shocked when I saw the “giant” needle. Poor Lance - I had phoned him to say I was not yet in a taxi but in a farmacia waiting to have a shot of some kind, but I couldn’t talk very well with the freezing and batting or even explain why this was going to happen to me. I was a bit addled!

Anyway, taxi home and I got to see all the wonderful Christmas light displays on the houses in our neighbourhood.