Do you have the courage to eat alone? in San Jose, Costa Rica

I love your posts but you should do them way more often!  It will help your rankings on google, too!  So my helpful correspondent informed me.  So here goes.

I’ve just spent a week in a rainforest retreat, honing my class facilitation skills.  I decided to spend the night in San Jose, which is far cheaper than the $400 Continental Airlines was going to charge me to fly home today.

So here’s little slice of my life, more travelogue than anything else.

I checked in to my favorite little nook in San Jose, the Hotel Santo Tomas.  I’ve heard the Marriott by the airport is nice, but last time I checked the tab was over $200.  This quaint little spot in what some travel book told me once used to be a hacienda house (believable once you’re inside but right in the middle of downtown San Jose?  A bit surprising) costs me all of $60 including booking fees and tax.  And, most important, it’s an easy walk from all the sights I like to visit.  That would be the Jade Musuem, a treasure trove of pre-columbian art incongruously housed in a bank sky scraper with matching bankers’ hours, the folk art gallery that hosts the best folk art I’ve seen yet in Costa Rica (Gallery Numa), the main plaza in front of the National Theater, a great place to sit and have a drink or dessert and watch the people and street vendors go by, and now, the Art & Gusto (Art and Flavor) restaurant.

Wow!  Excuse me while I rave.  I had a margarita in a martini glass.  I have a thing about martini glasses.  I find them irresistibly classy and attractive, although I cannot handle the straight alcohol undiluted that they usually serve.  So when I get a drink I can handle in one, I am thrilled.  This one was long and tall, a bit on the top heavy side, as I soon discovered when I knocked it.  It rocked from side to side like a cruise ship in a hurricane, splashing my precious drink as it sloshed.  I caught it mid rock and managed to halt the bleeding.

As an appetizer, I had a vegetable millefeuille which means a thousand leaves for those of you rusty on your high school French.  Delicious!   Beautiful!  Decorated with star fruits, headlined by a peeled lychee still decoratively housed in its maroon prickly coat, garnished also with strawberries and grapes.  And on top of the millefeuille, a delicate crunchy delicious pastry as only the French can do it.  And then also a little vitrine, a baby glass, of delicious gaspacho, topped with fresh mint.  What a combo!

Followed by fish cooked in coconut sauce and paper (with some fancy French name that the margarita has already wiped from my memory).  And a vegetable mousse—actually they called it a vegetable crème brulee, I believe.  Lucious and light and green, vegetably and delicious. And so odd—a familiar green vegetable taste, but could I name the vegetable when its  shape was nowhere to be found to give away what I was eating?  Not on your life!  It turned out to be basil…..

And then there was dessert—tiramisu.  But none of those soggy lady fingers in this one—this one had crunch butter crunch biscuits and the addition of fresh strawberries, dollops of fresh cream.  Who said it’s not possible to have orgasm alone, sitting in a restaurant?

Location:  Costa Rican addresses need to be seen to be believed, but I can tell you this isclose to downtown (only a block or two from my hotel) on Avenue 9, on the corner of calle 2 I’m guessing.  It’s a black and white sign in the window.  And you can find their blog at arteygustocafe.blogspot.com or arte& gusto cafe on facebook.  How does it get even better?

Oh, yeah, this is supposed to be about relationships.  Well here’s a little truth provoking question. Could you allow yourself to enjoy a dinner this good without a thought of looking or feeling like a loser for not having the appropriate person attached to a penis or vagina on your arm?

Cause if you couldn’t,then you’re not actually free to enjoy having them when you do have them, because you don’t have the freedom to not have them.  Just some food for thought….

More news on relationships soon.  I’ve been studying up and collecting some juicy new stuff for my upcoming call, How to Find Mr. Wonderful and Keep Him.  The introductory free call is coming up this Thursday at noon California time, with the 4 week series starting September 7, Tuesday.  Check out the ecourses for downloads of free samples.  It’s going to rock…and it will definitely NOT be what you’re expecting…..