Rise and Shine!

I woke up this morning at 3:30 to catch our 6 AM flight out of Missoula, Montana. My dad was kind enough to stay the night in Missoula and wake up around 4:30 to take my friend Shawn and me to the airport. We got to the airport just before 5 AM for a long day of flying. We had a quick turnaround in Salt Lake and about a five-hour layover in Atlanta. I couldn't wait to get to Costa Rica again. It has been six years since I spent a month there for school, and I was eager to see if I felt the same love for the country that I had that first time. After three airplanes and the long layover in Atlanta, we finally arrived to San Jose around 10 PM. We waited in line to go through immigration and then got our luggage and sped right through customs. Walking through the first set of doors we didn't see our driver right away. After a couple minutes we finally just went outside. (It was so warm!!) A taxi driver wanted to give us a ride, but I knew that our driver was there somewhere. He was kind enough to help us find our driver, who was in the middle of the huge crowd of drivers and families waiting to pick up fellow travelers. We waited for a couple other passengers before heading off to the city. Once we got into the heart of San Jose, I started recognizing the landmarks I was so familiar with six years ago. We dropped off the other passengers at their hotel, and then headed for Hotel Le Bergerac. It turns out that Le Bergerac was just a few blocks from the school I attended when I was in San Jose before, so the neighborhood was familiar to me. We got checked into our hotel, met the wonderful reception staff, practiced a bit of my Spanish, and were taken to our beautiful room upstairs. The room was large, had hardwood floors, and our own private garden (small, but beautiful). There was a bottle of wine in the room, which, after a long day of traveling, was a welcomed sight. We sat in our garden and enjoyed a couple glasses of wine. The hotel was very quiet, especially considering we were in the middle of San Jose!