San Jose: First Impressions

So, after my long night of sitting on airplanes failing at restful sleep, I arrived at San Jose Airport. The green hills are visible from the runway and on the entire walk through the airport and drive into the city proper. I had a great chat with my driver en espanol and had a great, pressure-free refresher. It didn't go as well at lunch when I tried to ask the waiter to repeat himself and mistakenly asked for more options.

The hostel is awesome. It's got a very homey, comfortable feeling, and that awesome mish-mash of buildings/rooms that bed and breakfasts usually have. There's a wonderful central outside area with a pool, hammocks, and awesome jungle-like vegetation. There are so many gorgeous flowers and I had fun just walking around getting to know my hostel. Then, I went out onto the streets in search of a store for bottled water, a bank, and some lunch.

I just started wandering a bit in the area around my hotel, making sure to be able to backtrack if I needed to. The only place I found for water was a Texaco gas station store. Then I had lunch at a little soda and ate the traditional combination for lunch meals: rice, beans, a meat dish (amazing fish this time), mashed potatoes, and fried plantains. The plantains were surprisingly delicious and one of my favorite parts of the meal. I wish I had a photo of the deliciousness, but I'll just have to discretely snap a picture of another meal. The strangest part was dessert, which was strawberry ice cream on top of jello.

the view of the hostel from my door

It began raining in perfect timing after I returned to the hostel and I enjoyed sitting outside my room smelling the rain. I love rain, and it's even better here with the warmth and the jungle plants surrounding me. This is a great start to the trip and I'm so so excited to see more of the city tomorrow.

Monumental

It's interesting that I had to come back home to realize what the monuments of Paris and London meant to me while I was in Europe for my week-long trip. I had my epiphany while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge for probably the fiftieth time in my life. I was thinking about why people come to see it and it suddenly hit me: tourists go to monuments in order to try and understand the city they are visiting, because the monuments of a place are some sort of expression of that place. They make sense to the people that live there, and as tourists, we want to be able to be close and connect with the place and the people. The Golden Gate to me as a Californian is practical, spectacular, historic, massive, impressive, and quirky; all aspects of the city in which it was born.As I walked around London and Paris, I was attempting to drink in the city through the possible meaning conveyed by the monuments, architecture, and layout. London spoke to me and told me it was a Very Important Place that should be Taken Seriously. It said that it was awesome, but in a dignified, practical way. It was not flowery, but traditional and proud. Paris on the other hand, shouted at me in lilting tones, "I am freaking amazing and you should gaze up and notice." It spoke in loud conspiratorial tones of its history and awesome feats of architecture, its emboldened statements of grandeur, its desire to be noticed and appreciated and "screw you if you think we're stuck up". Paris drops the "s" because it doesn't need it for you to know it's sexy and London keeps it proper and posh and clipped in two syllables because that's the way it's done. Paris language lives in the throat and breaths warm breath from high, ornate places, keeps spaces open for you to LOOK, LOOK AT ME, and London knows you're impressed, but won't let you know that it knows.
Anyway, that is what I read from my short time in both cities, and I absolutely loved listening to the cities, catching short clips of conversation and adding them to the milieu of a new place, of an attempt at a connection, trying to grasp at the meaning of cities that are centuries old and happy to have made friends with both.