For those who haven’t yet eaten at the Magnolia Restaurant, it may really be time to start.

The Magnolia has always served delicious food, but because of its recent renovations, it has just received a fine award from the Costa Rican Institute of Tourism (ICT). The restaurant-rating branch of the ICT has given the restaurant four out of five forks, in recognition of its fine dining atmosphere and delicious food.

Magnolia chef Adrián Vera says that the Magnolia specializes in mediterranean food, with French and Italian accents. Diners can enjoy “anything from carpaccio to lobster, shrimp and corvina.” The staff is wonderful and happy to make suggestions about the restaurant’s many different menu items.

The Magnolia is centrally located, in the heart of downtown San José, with a safe parking lot. The restaurant is open all day, every day; it serves an executive menu from Monday through Friday, between 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM.

On September 29, the Casino Club Colonial celebrates its 30th anniversary, and the Magnolia Restaurant will have a celebratory meal during the anniversary festivities.

But any meal is festive at the Magnolia!

Read more about the Magnolia Restaurant.

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Business visitors to Costa Rica often choose hotels based solely on the availability of group meeting spaces. Businesspeople seek meeting spaces that accommodate large groups comfortably, are accessible to the hotel, and have modern electronic conveniences. They often want to find spaces where food is available or where catering is an option. They might also hope that these meeting spaces are pleasant–and that they might, perhaps, even have a view. But pleasantness and views are usually not an option in most hotel meeting rooms.

The Sleep Inn is proud to announce that its new meeting room, the Magnolia, meets every requirement of the ideal business meeting space. Located on the same property as the Sleep Inn Hotel, the Magnolia Meeting Room can accommodate large groups, depending on the arrangement of its chairs and tables. The room is completely wired for electronic and computer equipment, making it ideal for conferences and presentations. The extensive Magnolia Restaurant menu is available for all business meetings. Best of all, the Magnolia Meeting Room has a view. The room is located on the first floor of the hotel and has french doors that open onto the lovely garden areas of the Sleep Inn complex.

The Sleep Inn believes its meeting room provides the most basic of business-meeting requirements while simultaneously offering the kind of attractiveness not usually found in most hotel meeting spaces. Call the Sleep Inn to inquire about holding your own meeting in the Magnolia.

See photographs of the new meeting room on Sleep Inn San José Downtown Facebook page.

Writing and editing by Beaumont Hardy Editing.

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Twenty or thirty years ago, Costa Rica was almost unknown as a tourist destination. All of that has changed, and about a million visitors flock to the country each year. Some people might think that these arriving hoardes would create chaos and unpleasantness at the airport. But as the Tico Times reports, Costa Rica’s main airport, Juan Santamaría, has been named the third best airport in Latin America for the second year in a row.

The airport has been completely remodeled, a project that finished in 2010. It is now sleek and very modern. Immigration lines, never very much fun for the arriving passenger, are almost pleasant at the Juan Santamaría airport, because arriving passengers gather in a light-filled space with lively murals. Departing passengers can do last-minute shopping at several well-stocked gift shops. And everyone can have a last-minute cup of Costa Rican coffee before boarding the airplane.

The Sleep Inn provides free shuttle service to and from the Juan Santamaría airport. The drivers are friendly and very professional, and the Sleep Inn van is speedy and very clean.

Who was Juan Santamaría?

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It’s romería time again, and the streets from San José to Cartago have been filled with pious pilgrims making their way to the Basílica in Cartago. Most have made a promise to La Negrita, the patron saint of Costa Rica, and they walk in honor of that promise. Some have come from countries outside Costa Rica, and many have completed the last hundred meters of the journey on their knees.

A Cartago resident and friend of the Sleep Inn told her own firsthand account of the pilgrimage and the important day after. She reported that she had spent the night of August 1 in San José, just so she could make it to work on time on August 2. She said that the thousands of devout pilgrims flowing into the city on August 2, the Virgin’s day, made the streets impassable for outgoing Cartago citizens but that the spiritual energy was palpable in the city. Most of the pilgrims, she said, arrived in time to attend the 9:00 AM mass in the park, where the Virgin, clothed in her festive garments, was presented to her followers.

But the festivities do not end on August 2, because the following day marks the start of another important time for worshipers of La Negrita. On August 3, Costa Ricans celebrate “La Pasada,” when the clothed Virgin is transported from the Basílica in Cartago to that city’s cathedral, where she will remain for a month. Our friend tells us that this journey mirrors the Virgin’s long-ago journey from San José to Cartago, when the country’s capital made the same shift. After her month at the cathedral, La Negrita returns again to the Basílica to await the next influx of pilgrims on August 2.

Costa Ricans describe La Pasada as a moment of incredible spiritual feeling. The streets of Cartago are carpeted in blossoms of yellow and white, the colors of the Virgin, and the clothed statue passes in front of her adoring masses. Schoolchildren are given the day off, and store owners decorate their windows in the Virgin’s yellow and white. A glow of spirituality infuses the city and those who witness the procession, whether or not they consider themselves devout followers of La Negrita.

This last August 2, 2011, an estimated two million pilgrims completed the romería to Cartago. This year marks the 375th anniversary of the Virgin’s first apparition.

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About thirty or forty years ago, all Costa Rican children read the same books in public elementary schools. They learned to read with Paco y Lola, and progressed to Costa Rican authors like Carlos Luis Fallas. And for storytime, they turned to the classic tales of Tía Panchita, the aunt of Carmen Lyra, one of Costa Rica’s most prolific authors.

Carmen Lyra describes her aunt as a short, small woman with two long braids and eyes that seemed to smile. When Carmen Lyra was small, her relatives told her educational stories with ponderous morals about good behavior and hard work. But her Tía Panchita told her stories about elves, witches, ghosts and other marvels. Carmen Lyra says that these were the stories that most influenced her literary career.

Born María Isabel Carvajal in 1888, Carmen Lyra is an important figure in Costa Rican literary circles. She wrote political essays, scholarly articles, a novel, and several other academic works, but she is best known for Cuentos de Mi Tía Panchita, the redacted stories that she once heard from her aunt.

Although Carmen Lyra first heard these fantastic stories as a child, many of them had been a part of Costa Rican oral history long before Tía Panchita’s time. Some say that the stories came from Europe and were disseminated in Costa Rica by the Spaniards who settled here. Carmen Lyra tells the stories in the popular slang of her time, providing an interesting linguistic study.

Some of Tía Panchita’s most popular stories feature the wily Tío Conejo, a rabbit whose constant victim is the foolish Tío Coyote. Other stories feature the well-known simpleton who somehow manages to marry a princess, terrible mothers-in-law and magical creatures. All are colorful and entertaining, and all provide a glimpse into the common lives of the Costa Ricans who told these stories to one another.

The first edition was published in 1920, and the book continues in publication today. For interested readers, Cuentos de Mi Tía Panchita is available on Amazon.

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Visitors to Costa Rica often wonder why the Costa Ricans are called “Ticos.” The name “Tico” comes from a charming peculiarity of Costa Rican speech–the frequent use of the diminutive. “Tico” is a word ending that suggests “littleness.”

Several suffixes indicate smallness when attached to the end of a Spanish word. These suffixes include “-ita,” “-ito.” For example, a dog (”perro”) that it small might be called a “perrito.” Or a girl (”niña) who is small might be called a “niñita.”

But Costa Ricans often take this notion of smallness one step further, doubling the suffix. When this doubling happens, a “t” often appears before the final suffix, rendering it “-tico,” the famous nickname for a Costa Rican. Interestingly, this phenomenon happens with the word “chico,” one of whose meanings is “small.” In the diminutive, the word is “chiquito.” To indicate something really small, someone might use the word “chiquitico,” with the “-tico” suffix.

“Poco” is the word for “a bit,” so “a little bit of water” would be “un poco de agua.” A Costa Rican would typically use “poco” in a diminutive form–”poquito”–”a little bit.” But most Costa Ricans would further miniaturize the concept to “poquitito” or “poquitico.” Thus, a Costa Rican who wants a drink would commonly ask for “un poquitico de agua,” using the “-tico” ending.

Costa Ricans all generally have very cheerful dispositions, and their use of the diminutive illustrates this national tendency to be cheerful and pleasant. Something small is generally considered something inoffensive or even attractive, and the smaller the better.

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Sleep Inn guests might encounter some unusual fruits as they walk around San José. A few vendors near the hotel sell jocotes, manzanas de agua, and nísperos, tropical delicacies that a foreigner might not recognize. For the intrepid fruit-eater, here is an introduction to each.

A jocote looks like a smooth-skinned, miniature potato. It can vary in color from green to red, and it has a large seed. Jocotes grow on trees. The fruit is dryish, rather than juicy, and the eater mostly gnaws at its flesh. In Central America, people often salt their jocotes as they eat them. For some, jocotes are eaten more as a pastime than for their delicious flavor.

A manzana de agua–or “water apple,”–looks like a pale and slightly elongated apple or, perhaps, like a pale red pear. This fruit grows on trees as well. True to its name, the manzana de agua mostly tastes watery, although its flesh does have a slight sweetness. The fruit is so aromatic that some people describe its flavor as more of a perfumed fragrance than an actual taste.

The níspero is a fragrant yellow fruit that is small, like a grape, and slightly fuzzy. It, too, grows on trees and has a few shiny, brown seeds. The flesh of the níspero is sweet and fragrant, once again seeming almost like an aroma, as well as a flavor. In other countries, nísperos are known as “loquats.”

Of the three, we tend to recommend nísperos, as their flavor coyly suggests the tropics.

Read more about unusual Costa Rican fruits and an interesting Costa Rican vegetable.

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