Fast Food Becomes Sophisticated and International (Part 2)
When you go into the food court at Nova Cinemas you might be surprised by the well-chosen arrange of establishments present. Yes you will still see the the classical fast food establishments offering your burgers, tacos and fried chicken but there is also the welcoming coffee shop, the Italian fast food which offers everything from pasta to pizza, Italian ice-creams and even sushi.
One of the newest addition to these fast food restaurants is a sushi place called Genki which in Japanese it means healthy or simply feeling fine. Long were the days when people would make a smirk and think that the seaweed that comes with the sushi is weird and yucky. Now sushi is as easy as ordering, packing and taking home, of course you can also enjoy it there. Car rental Costa Rica airport
The menu is very varied and there are lots of rolls to choose from besides from the plate of the day which cost around $7 and is a great choice for lunch. Also another specialty of this place is that they offer tempura ice-creams for a very affordable prize of $2 and special tea blends which are simply delicious. Although fast food sushi is not the type of food you think results well under a pressured environment Genki will definitely take you by surprise. Their orders are done promptly and the rolls come out really well done, compact, fresh and with great taste. They also offer a card for frequent visitors and with a purchase of $6 you will be accumulating stickers which you will be able to exchange for plates.
Another option if you are not into sushi are their rice bowls which include tempura vegetable rice bowls, teriyaki chicken rice bowl and also meat rice bowl. They are a great choice for those who are still not certain if they would like to try a roll with green seaweed and raw fish on it. Car rental Costa Rica airport
Genki is a franchise and it is a model which has worked for the United States, in Costa Rica it is still quite new but people are flooding towards Genki as a great option to the typical fast food.
Fast Food Becomes Sophisticated and International (Part 1)
Costa Rica is considered to be a country where in people did not normally wanted to eat “weird” things. As a kid I grew up in a Costa Rica which was not very open minded about specialty and “foreign” food, at that time there were absolutely no sushi restaurants anywhere and if you would see take a roll of sushi to school the kids would say something like: “Yew what is that green thing covering it?”
Luckily times have changed and in the last 10 years Costa Rica has opened its doors to many types of food and somehow it also indicates that Costa Ricans are more open to let their taste buds have an international experience. Car rental Costa Rica
How much has this affected the whole scene? Incredibly, let us not talk about gourmet restaurants at all, let us simply take as an example a simple food court. In this note I will mention the food court that is located at Nova Cinemas at Avenida Escazu.
Avenida Escazu is a total complex of apartments and also commerce, the most important point about the commerce is that it is very exclusive and you will certainly feel that you have amazing choices. It is also very near a very famous Hospital Hotel called Cima and just a few blocks away from Regus offices which are a couple of towers that host the most modern offices. To get here is pretty easy, once you land at the International Airport in Alajuela and rent your car, you will take the highway and drive towards San Jose, you will reach the Metropolitan Park La Sabana and you need to take the right to turn towards Escazu where you can take the highway towards Caldera.
Back to the food court, which you will appreciate once you go in it is the first thing you see practically besides a couple of specialty shops. The usual Costa Rican food court consisted of burgers, tacos, sandwiches, local ice-creams and of course typical Costa Rican food. But a glance at this comparatively small area of fast food you will see a trend, fast food has gone a bit more sophisticated.
Feel the Thrill of Paintball
As humans we have the tendency to have emotions that we cannot express and one of those emotions is anger and the thirst and the thrill of winning. In Costa Rica there is an activity called Paintball wherein you can unleash all of the anger that you have been trying to control for years. Costa Rica car rental
What could be more fun than to be out their in the woods amongst trees pretending that you are at war with a very menacing group up in the mountains of Costa Rica, each of you fully protected and with a menacing machine-gun ready to take down your enemy?
Normally this is not accepted in Costa Rica, for we are very peaceful beings and many of us do not want anything to do with guns. But for this practice it is different, the machine-gun device is loaded with balls of paint. Each team will be given a specific color so team A’s guns are green and team B’s guns are loaded with color yellow. The challenge begins and the aim is that you will take down as many of the other team with your gun and marking them with your color. These guns can fire at a good distance and you can “kill” by smashing the paint all over their bodies. The team that successfully paints more members of the other team wins.
This type of activity is great for small to medium groups and it is also a way to go out into nature, because of the messy nature of Paintball it is practically impossible to play in a confined space. So there you could practically kill two birds in a row, make a trip to somewhere out there in the woods of Costa Rica which and have some excitement with it.
There are quite a couple of companies that offer this experience in our country and if you have been following out tips, the discount website I have mentioned quite a few times has been running a promotion for a Paintball experience for less than $10. If you missed it don’t worry because there are still plenty of options out there which include transport and packages so you can actually gather a group of friends and leave everything else to the hands of experts.
A World Where You Are More and Have Less (Part 3)
The words spoken by Marina Silva who ran for presidency in Brasil about sustainability strikes very deep in the hearts of Costa Ricans. We are a country that started out as farmers and when you are here on your visit you will see many offices and shopping malls and commerce and much of this commerce does exactly what it does best – to boost consumption.
Now in Costa Rica we do also have cheap electronics which you will prefer to throw away after using it for one year, we do also have shops wherein you can buy everything dirt cheap only to pile up more stuff at home, clothes that look nice but that simply will not last. And we Ticos have also believed that having more defines us. Rent a car in Costa Rica
If there is one thing that really characterizes us Ticos are new cars, it seems that we have a fascination for shiny new cars and people even go to the extent to buying one they will lament later, we have also believed in all the ads and the idea that the one with the newest car is the man!
So why do specialist in environmental issues still see so much potential in Costa Rica? Maybe it is because of our roots. According to Marina Silva she believes that the challenge of developing countries is for citizens to have a better quality of life without going over the board with consumption. And in Costa Rica it is possible first because of our roots. People fifty years ago were happy and healthy in wooden houses out there in the country, amongst their sugar, rice, bean and coffee plantations.
Our grandfathers would honor hard work, honesty and also helping the neighbor, they believed in the goodness that this land would provide and they would never lose their hope for a better future. The forefathers of our country saw the potential and we are at the best time to make a change.
During the past 10 years small companies have been created with ecological consciousness in the field of construction, beauty, health, food and more. The small business is the identity of Costa Rica, we love buying bread from the artisan baker, we love buying hand-made aromatherapy perfumes created by a holistic therapist, we love organic coffee, we simply are blessed with what our earth produces and best of all some of us do not even care about labels to boost our confidence. We simply love being able to discover more of ourselves every day and that is priceless. Pura Vida!
A World Where You Are More and Have Less (Part 2)
When you think of Costa Rica there are a couple of words that might spring to your mind, you might relate this small country with the title of “The Happiest Country” or the most environment friendly country or green country. Surely Costa Rica has unlimited potential and we are blessed with our geographical location and amazing wonders of this land. But this does not mean that we are a country without our challenges either environmental, political and economical and that is why the Second Forum about Sustainability and Happiness which took place in San Jose last week was such an important event. Car rental Costa Rica
One of the speakers was the minister of the largest, most amazing rain forest of this world and the most potent lung of planet Earth, the Amazonia in Brasil.
Her words reflect her experience and knowledge and also her vision towards the solution and although she is from Brasil, every word she uttered actually applies to Costa Rica as well.
She knows that consuming is a normal practice by now, however there are patterns of consumption which are simply not sustainable: if each and every person on this planet would consume the same way as in the United States, Europe and Japan then we would need five planets like the Earth to satisfy all of those needs. That is why for Silva the sustainable development is more than a way to produce goods, it is a way of being. She pointed that the challenge of all developed countries is to find an equilibrium between consumption and the protection of natural resources which will in turn reduce the ecological imprint and consumption.
On the other hand for those countries in development, Silva pointed that the challenge is to improve the quality of live of their citizens without going down the same road of the more developed countries which will imply the rise of more economies with low carbon emission.
Silva knows well that we do not have a successful example a sustainable economy that we can follow but all countries are actually in a race and in a challenge to blend economy with ecology. She advises countries to finance and back-up projects with potential and go ahead and develop them although sometimes it seems that instead of being an investment it is more of a bet.
Marina Silva closed her speech saying: “Our ambition is to learn more and have less. That is what in turn will sustain the planet”.
A World Where You Are More and Have Less (Part 1)
This past week the second Forum of Sustainability and Happiness was held at the Hotel Real Intercontinental in Escazu. We received people that could raise eyebrows to talk about his concern which is more global but the way to tackle it is local.
One of the speakers definitely blew my mind and it will certainly inspire you today for her worlds were so filled with profound truth and knowledge. She was the minister of the Environment of Brasil and her name is Marina Silva. During a complete hour this woman who is famous for her struggle for the protection of the Amazon Rainforest in Brasil she gave insights and also very practically voiced the challenges of the planet today. And this battle has not left her without hope. In fact she does not consider herself and optimist or a pessimist about the future of the planet, she believes that we must be persistent. Costa Rica car rental
She also spoke about the ways that we could actually solve all of these environmental concerns. According to Silva, the great crisis that the world as a whole is living today is a whole concoction of a series of minor crises in areas such as economy, social, political but most importantly of values.
“This crisis will not be solved by a “savior”, it must be an joint effort of civilization as a whole”, she assured.
For this woman, the actual problem in the system is that it impulses people to do more and to have more instead of simply being more.
“The Romans wanted to be strong, the Greeks wanted for knowledge, in the medieval era in Europe people wanted to be saints, but with mercantilism we changed from a state of being for a state of doing”
These are wise words for in Costa Rica we are at the mercy of much of what has taken place around the world, we have also become trapped in the same maze and if you could see pictures of what Costa Rica used to be, somehow we have stopped being Costa Ricans we are doing more and buying more to and end that somehow we do not even question.
The Costa Rican Piano Man
Not everything in Costa Rica is only about volcanoes and beaches, Costa Ricans have also been conquering different areas in many different ways. And it is nice to start the week with outstanding Ticos for they give a glimpse of what we are and can become.
José Pablo Quesada is musician who is right now living in the United States where he is finishing masters degree in piano at Texas Christian University. And with only 25 years his dream is to tour around the world sharing his talent and melting the public with his piano. Renting a car in Costa Rica
Although he is in the midst of his studies he has been incredibly active and has developed a whole season of recitals with Korean, Chinese and Russian artists. His presentations opened on Saturday at the International Piano Festival in Bogotá, Colombia where he played with the Funza Symphony at the opening event.
According to the representatives of this festival, their aim is to connect young pianists in Bogotá with outstanding students from all over the world. In this festival José Pablo Quesada will interpret Rpasody in Blue by George Gershwin and will also offer three classes for piano students in Bogotá.
For the time being, in this month of May, this gifted pianist will give only one recital in Cartago as a part of the concerts offered as part of the program Sunday Recitals which is celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year.
For his presentations he prepared a wide range of pieces including work from Costa Ricans. His tour will then continue on the 25 June in Hungary, the 15th July in Heredia; the 23rd of November in Mexico and then the 27th November in San José. Although he is around the world giving presentations he always tries to give recitals here in his native country.
If you are a fan of the piano, and you are here during the month of May, then you are lucky for you will be able to let yourself be lured by a Tico piano man. We will keep you posted on further details on the exact time and place.
Two Gifted Costa Ricans Will Perform with Lang Lang (Part 1)
Who is Lang Lang, first of all you might ask? For many of us this might be the first time we hear this name however I will give a brief summary so you will see why this whole event of two very gifted Costa Rican children playing with him means so much.
Lang Lang is Chinese and he was born and raised in China although he now lives in New York, he is known as one of the most exciting keyboard talent around, he delivers with total mastery of the piano and amazing communicative power to the audience. Lang Lang personally loves to encourage young musicians maybe because of his own experience. His father is a musician too although he plays a classical Chinese instrument, Lang´s love for the piano started at an early age but not everything was a bed of roses. He did have some learning difficulties when he went to the Beijing Conservatory and was kicked out, back at his local state school his teacher noticed how sad he was so she asked him to play alongside a record of Mozart´s Piano Sonata No. 10 in C Major, K. 330. This reminded Lang of his love for this instrument and gave him hope again. After this he was accepted again at the conservatory and since the nineties he has been winning award after award and now he sells out concerts and recitals around the world . Last June he became the official ambassador of Telefónica also known as Movistar which is a Spanish telecommunications company to promote culture, technology, education and social commitment. He is in a quest of searching for young talents around the world.
This coming June 15 at the auditorium O2 in Berlin which holds 10,000 people two Costa Ricans will be there sharing this stage with the world´s best piano performer. This was all part of a contest by Telefónica which ran across all the countries where it is operating right now. Costa Rica Car hire
Cynthia Soto (11 years) and Pablo Esquivel (12 years) where the ones Lang selected himself from the participants.
Two Gifted Costa Ricans Will Perform with Lang Lang (Part 2)
Cynthia Soto and Pablo Esquivel both very talented pianists who have won the Movistar contest and have earned their ticket to perform in front of and audience of 10,000 people in Berlin. With such a short age they will be taking the world of classical music by the horns and this experience will definitely be a great step towards their future careers. Rent a car Costa Rica
Cynthia Soto, 11 cannot be happier for this opportunity to actually meet her hero, Lang. She admires Lang in every sense of the word and is more than psyched to be able to perform by his side. At such a short age she already has experience performing in front of different audiences in countries around the world such as Russia, Lithuania, United States, Ecuador, France and she is not shy of international contests either. What she loves about Lang is the way he thinks about music, the way he analyses and then performs the pieces. She says that Lang is an inspiration for her. Cynthia has not decided what to play yet and most probably she will play Franz Schubert which is the piece that earned her the ticket to Germany in this contest.
The other winner Pablo Esquivel, 12 was actually not interested in participating at first since he is very much immersed in a lot of preparation and lots of studies. Pablo and his family have moved to New York since 2010 so that he could study at Julliard School of Music. It was his grandfather who called him and motivated him to enter the contest. Although he was not interested in participating because he is completely focused in school he does know Cynthia and other Costa Rican pianists who participated and he was excited about performing with them.
Pablo is very motivated and very enthusiastic about his win, he knows that performing for 10,000 will be an amazing experience.
Unlike other kids however he does not think that Lang is the best pianist of the world nor does he have him as his personal hero. Pablo says that he has been watching Lang and has his music and considers him very, very good but the piano man that he admires is called Evgeny Kissin.
For the moment he needs to concentrate for his final exams but he did say that it makes him a bit nervous to perform at such a prestigious auditorium and that he might get a bit fidgety just before he is about to go on stage.
The Week of the Tico Pride
If you have been following our notes you might have noticed that we opened up the week reporting on a very special Tico, one who made the most expeditions to outer space and that somehow marked the way we all started out week.
As Ticos we have an identity that pulls both ways, it is actually funny because we know that we are no bigger, better or even smarter than other countries and our essence is that of being very relaxed and taking everything day by day but we have pride. We take pride in our country for every little thing that it achieves in the international arena. Costa Rica car rental 4×4
So besides the man who is now in the Hall of Fame of NASA the other star that is being followed by the whole country is the speed runner Nery Brenes. He will be parting today heading towards Puerto Rico to run for the Ponce Grand Prix this Saturday.
Brenes is running again after winning the World Championship in Turkey last 10th March. And this is also the first competition he is participating after the death of his mother just a couple of weeks ago on the 23rd of April. She died in Limón which is the birth city of Brenes too.
It is very humbling for any Tico to see that their heroes are people of flesh and blood, they are humans and they too have their loss and fall. Nery has acknowledged that his emotional state is better and he thanks God for having the strength to keep going. Physically he says that going to Ponce is to start anew to face the London Olympic games. He did not train for a whole week and he says that this trip will allow him to do what he knows best, which is to run fast with assurance and conviction.
Brenes will be leaving the country at 8 a.m with his coach Walter Salazar and will take on the track of the 400 meters on Saturday.
And no matter what happens, Costa Rica will be rooting for him for so many reasons beyond his talent for running fast. We will be rooting for him because we understand that losing his mother means a lot to him and we appreciate that he is giving the best of him, even if it is to make her smile from heavens.