Description
San Jose is often just a stopover between the airport and the beaches, yet those who linger discover a capital with soul: tree-lined plazas, republican-era buildings, neighborhood cafes and a singular history, that of a nation that abolished its army in 1948. This private half-day tour reveals that city at an unhurried pace, with a local guide who knows every corner.
We begin where the city's popular heart beats, the Central Market, a covered labyrinth trading since the late nineteenth century. Among stalls of spices, medicinal herbs, flowers and traditional lunch counters, we'll taste local bites such as homemade breads, tropical fruits or a shaved-ice treat. Nearby stand Central Park and the Metropolitan Cathedral, and a little farther, the National Monument, a sculpture honoring the Central American defense of 1856.
We stroll to the Plaza de la Cultura to admire the facade of the National Theater, a neoclassical jewel opened in 1897 and funded by the coffee barons; beneath the plaza lies the Pre-Columbian Gold Museum. Then we step inside the National Museum, housed in the former Bellavista Fortress, whose walls still bear bullet marks; inside await a butterfly garden and collections of jade, ceramics and the enigmatic stone spheres of the country's south.
The journey continues through the Amon and Otoya neighborhoods, where Victorian mansions of wood and wrought iron recall the golden age of coffee, and through Morazan Park with its Temple of Music. We pass the Supreme Court and finish at La Sabana Metropolitan Park, a former airport turned into the city's great green lung, before sitting down to a traditional Costa Rican lunch.
