Rain rain go away

Another rainy day in San Jose.  Actually, it started out looking almost sunny this morning, and it was fairly warm.  Richard and I, ever optimistic, walked to town sans rain jackets, umbrella, or even a hat.  So of course it rained.  And rained harder than it has yet while we were walking.  Plus thunder and lightning.  Yup, a major thunderstorm while we were trying to have a nice walking day in the city.  It figures, doesn't it?  The spirits of wayward travellers always seem to intervene and change plans.

We spent some time in the Mercado Central, the central market, where you can find anything from puppies to fresh flowers, buy coffee by the pound, as well as fish, fruit, meat, even dog food.  Really, dog food by the pound.  We just wandered around, looking, although I was keeping my eyes open for an umbrella with blue morphos on it, having seen one the other day.  Una sombrilla con mariposas azul.  But no luck.  So we dashed along sidewalks hugging buildings like espionage agents, on a secret mission, running from overhang to overhang, trying to not get soaked.

We had lunch at our friendly Q Cafe, and found a window-side table so that we could look down on the rainy day scene.  We agreed that there were more colorful umbrellas here per capita than anywhere else we'd ever seen.  Costa Rican umbrellas make everyone else's umbrellas look very drab and somber.  It really is a colorfest - although everyone seems to crash into everyone else's umbrellas, so it's a bit like umbrella bumper cars.

We went to pick up Richard's new glasses, which turned out very well - except that Richard pulled out the receipt, handed it over, and the lady looked at it and said, "But this is not our receipt, this is for sandals."  Which meant that yesterday, Richard handed the sandal repair man the eyeglass receipt - and no one, neither Richard nor the cobbler, noticed that this was not the correct receipt.  Fortunately, the eyeglass people were willing to accept some photo ID in order to hand over the glasses.  Ils sont tout rouge - they are very red.  (Yes, that was French - it's from a song I learned as a kid, about cherries.  And yes, the glasses are cherry red.  The lenses, anyway.)

I think I'm going to do a series of paintings of umbrellas.  I just really like the way they look from above, all the patterns moving around and barely showing the people underneath.

A taxi ride back in the rain, and we're ready to organize our things for tomorrow, when we leave and head north for a visit to Las Pumas, the wild cat refuge - in the town of Las Cañas (which I think means the dogs?  - I find this very ironic).