Costa Rica, Here We Come

Well, after a couple of weeks of extra hard work and long nights, our vacation was finally here. About 2 or 3 days before leaving for any trip, I always question whether vacations are worth it because of all the preparation and planning, not to mention the extra work, but in the end, they always are.

I pulled an all nighter on Friday night to finish packing and complete some last projects for work. Since we had a 6:00am flight out of Dulles on Saturday morning, I didn't have to stay up too late before it would have been time to get up and get ready anyway. Ugh. We left the house at 4:00am.

American Airlines Sucks

American Airlines was a nightmare. When we got to the airport, the check-in line snaked past 3 other airlines. We waited patiently for about 10 minutes, but the line wasn't moving. I knew we weren't going to make it if things continued that way. So I walked over to the front of the line to check things out. I quickly realized that there was no line for self check-in, so I called Maki on his cell phone, asked him to come quickly and were checked in within 5 minutes. It made no sense to me that American was not encouraging people to use self check-in. As we walked to the gate, I shouted to our former line-mates that self check-in was available. Oh yeah, did I mention the rude ticket agent who sarcastically showed me how to scan my passport when it looked like I was having trouble? Yeesh, no wonder the airlines are going down the tubes.

The flights to Miami and then to San Jose, Costa Rica were uneventfull. CJ was a star traveler. He slept most of the way to Miami, then played with his play doh and trains, and watched a short movie on the PSP during the flight to San Jose.

Welcome to Costa Rica

When we got to San Jose, we waited to Maki's parents, then met our driver from Avanti, the local travel group used by AAA to book our trip. Nancy at the AAA office in Alexandria did a magnificent planning and booking our trip. Our airfare was $399 round trip, and the rest of the trip was ridiculously low priced, especially considering that we are staying in fabulous hotels, and our trip includes breakfast, a bunch of excursions, one dinner, and transfers to the hotels and back to the airport. It's low season in Costa Rica because it's the rainy season, but as Nancy put it, "it always rains in Costa Rica, that's why they call it the rainforest."