beer at The Observer's Log

Posts Tagged ‘beer’

14 things I love about Costa Rica

23 Sep 2008

Well, I’ve been in Costa for nearly two straight months now — this is the longest continuous time I’ve ever spent outside of Canada — and I think it’s high time to answer the two most often-asked questions that I get: What do I like about Costa Rica, and what do I hate?

I’ll answer the latter in a separate post, but like all reviews, there’s reason to start with the positive stuff. Of course, these are not in any order whatsoever — they’re just as they come to mind.

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Cost of living in Costa Rica

7 Jul 2008

I’ve had a few people tell me about how great it is to be living in Costa Rica, and how much cheaper it is to live here. Some people know from a little bit of experience, but others are making the assumption — it’s not Calgary, it’s not Canada, so it must be cheaper.

Funny thing about foreign countries: if you live in the right places, if you know how to blend in, you’ll do well. But if you’re a gringo, you aren’t going to get the free ride that you want.

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South Park pub crawl

23 Apr 2008

Well, wasn’t much of a “crawl”, at least for me. Met up with Jim at the Expo hall, about 20 minutes before they closed the floor. (What’s with closing the Expo hall at 4, anyway?) Skipped the keynote.

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Searching for the Tianjin Antique Market

29 May 2005

Lonely Planet recommends going to Tianjin, especially to see the antique market there. It is said that a lot of the materials there were confiscated during the Cultural Revolution, and are now being sold to the dealers, who in turn sell it at the market. Theoretically, neat stuff, right?

This brought Amy and I to hop on the first Beijing – Tianjen express train this morning. A jaunty 90-minute trip on a fairly zippy (and comfy) train that deposited us at a rather chaotic train station. We walked from there roughly south-west (“roughly” because the street grid is slightly skewed, and got us turned around more than once) when we stumbled across a rather large and bustling pedestrian mall.

As Amy so aptly put it, this distracted us a while.

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Football and music

6 May 2005

Turns out that our excursion to Tinkoff to discuss politics turned into a football lesson. (That”s “football” as in how the rest of the world defines “soccer” for us North Americans.) Kat and Nick are huge fans. So large, as a matter of fact, that Kat is delaying her departure to Khazakstan so she can catch the cup game her favourite team will be playing.

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Hermitage, Railway Museums, and Palaces, oh my!

5 May 2005

Oy. The last 36-ish hours have been a whirlwind of activity.

Hit the Hermitage, as you already know, and then hit it up a second time to find the errant Picasso section (which wasn’t well-marked on the “map” we were given). This was over two days, I might add.

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