Costa Rica and Paris

After a whirlwind few days at home, I am happy to be back on the road. I really enjoyed being home, sleeping in my own bed and seeing so many of you, but I was running around like a crazy person! I think I slept a total of about 12 hours the whole time I was home so I’ve spent lots of time in Paris catching up! There were all kinds of things I was going to do while I was in Denver, but I just never really got around to them, including writing about Costa Rica. I figured I have some time now, so why not combine it with Paris – they’re close enough, right? Sure, let’s go with that.

I really enjoyed my time in Costa Rica. There is so much to do there – it’s a mecca of outdoor activities with something cool waiting around the next corner. I wish I had more time to spend there, I can see why some people go for 2 weeks at a time. We spent 2 days in Monteverde, a city up in the cloud forest. It’s nice and cool up there which I really loved after weeks and weeks in the heat and humidity. We got to have lots of amazing food, but after a month in Central America, everything seemed so expensive. It’s partially because Costa Rica is much more developed than the other countries and they have many more tourists, so they are able to charge more for everything. It was quite the culture shock, but the sushi was amazing!

My favorite activity in Costa Rica was the ziplining. I had only been one time before on a short zipline but these ones put that experience to shame. In Selvetura Park, we got to do 15 different ziplines, some of them were 1 km long. It was so much fun! Some of them you do on your own and some you go with another person, which was what I loved the best. I always ended up with the daredevils who wanted to go super fast and never braked! At the end there was what they called a Tarzan Swing - it was a big tower that you had to jump off of and then got to do a pendulum swing. It was lots of fun but man jumping off the tower by yourself is such a hard thing to do! 

The other city we went to in Costa Rica was La Fortuna. The first night there we went to these amazing hot springs. There were probably 30 pools of different temperatures and some that had slides attached to them. It was so relaxing to just lounge in the springs after the active days and long days on the bus. The next day we spent white water rafting! I absolutely love rafting – I really should look at doing it more at home, especially when runoff is happening. I would like to understand the mechanics of it and be able to do some Class 5 rapids. We were able to do some Class 3 & 4 rapids and had a great day! The other fun thing about La Fortuna is that they have an active volcano. It hadn’t produced any lava for about 6 months but it started smoking the day we were there. I hoped the lava would start flowing (don’t worry, it goes down the other side of the volcano so we were totally safe!), but all it did was smoke. If you look hard, you can see it below!

Paris
As most of you know, I visited Paris when I came to Europe in 2009, but I really loved it and felt like I didn’t get to have enough time here. I was able to book a few days here this time, to just come back and enjoy the city. I have spent most of my time just puttering around – I didn’t spend a ton of money and see all the big sights, since I did that last time. This time I just went lots of little cafes, had afternoon coffee and chatted with other travelers. I lit a candle for a special baby named Lucy at both Sacre Coeur and Notre Dame. Sacre Coeur is a lovely church built on top of a hill and I just feel in love with it. I sat there for hours, both in the church and outside of it, listening to a local man play music and just enjoying the feel of it.

I was also lucky enough to be in Paris for Bastille Day, which is similar to the 4^th of July in America. Many of the Parisians had they day off work and there was a festive mood in the air. I went to a parade on the Champs Elysees in the morning. Their parade was similar to ours, but it was completely focused on the military! There were no beauty queens, politicians or marching bands – it was all about tanks, helicopters and fire trucks.

The thing to do at night is go to the Eiffel Tower and watch the fireworks. There is a huge concert with many bands and the feeling is just so relaxed. Everyone is having picnics and laughing and just enjoying the day off. You know I couldn’t do a post about Paris without the required picture of the Eiffel Tower or Jess doing something cheesy, so here you go!