They use Colones currency in Costa Rica

After a Denny's breakfast we all had a bus tour of San Jose, and were depressed seeing quite a bit of garbage on the roadsides, and a large quantity of modest shack type houses with corrugated iron roofs. Near our hotel there were a number of businesses and quite nice homes, and we drove by local parks, and saw a stadium being built by the Chinese, for the Costa Ricans.
We were amazed by all the traffic and the industrial feel of the city.

First stop was an Emerald and Jewellry factory, where we learned about the lost wax method of casting metal jewelry, a bit of Costa Rican history, and toured their jewellry showroom.

On to the National Theatre/Opera House built in 1897. Very pretty building, lovely hardwood floors, marble details, and it was fashioned after the Paris Opera house. Good acoustics, too.
Stopped at some souvenir shops and Di found a thunder stick, it's a hollow tube with a membrane on one end, and a kind of coil of wire that when you shake it sounds like thunder or a volcano erupting.

That night we had Happy Hour in the bar, free drinks on the house for an hour for all hotel guests, and then we went out to Pueblo Antiguo, a collection of old buildings from the last century from all around the country, and a pretty bandshell, too. It was also a theme park during the day with lots of rides etc, but that part had closed.

We saw a folkloric dancing display with 3 couples dancing together, very energetic and pretty, flirty types of country dances, the girls with colorful tiered gathered skirts, the men in white.
After that there were a couple of stilt people, and some large headed people, young girl, devil, ghost that are typical of Costa Rica. That part of the show seemed to drag a bit, they tried to get us to dance with them but it didn't go off that well.

Then we walked up hill to a pretty restaurant white with heavy dark beams, and had a nicely done buffet style dinner. Our guide through the Pueblo Antiguo was Rosaria, a very vivacious young lady in a cute outfit.