Sunday evening dinner with Mike and Lisa

We picked up our Wisconsin friends, Mike and Lisa, from the airport. So fun to see them! We had an interesting episode where we took the car back to the rental place by the airport while we were at it because we couldn't figure out how to work the dashboard lights. The guy shows us this little dial on the dashboard that is also the trip odometer dial, and apparently that was how you make the dash lights come on. The dial had a tiny little lightbulb on it. Come on, it's dark, how are you supposed to see that?! But at least Carlos can see how fast he's driving at night now.

We ate dinner at PuraVida, a vegetarian restaurant in a small boutique hotel. I figured we'd hit the two restaurants I knew of as being vegetarian friendly early on, and from now on we'll just be adventurous and see what we find. We liked PuraVida quite a lot. Neat looking restaurant. The food was really great, as was the sangria. Lisa had planned to order (but they were out) the Dulce de papaya hecho en casa for dessert. It was described in the menu as "Home made typical caramelized papaya slices." We thought it was amusing to see the word "typical" in a menu description, and it is now one of our catch phrases for the trip. So often, when something happens, we'll kind of shake our heads and say, "Typical."

The next catch phrase we acquired was, "I don't like to call it an upgrade." When we got back to the hotel so Mike and Lisa could check in, it turned out the hotel didn't have any more rooms left of the category they had reserved, so the hotel put them in a *different* room for one night, and then the next day Mike and Lisa would either switch back to their other room or asked about staying the in the other room for their *inconvenience.* The desk lady said, "I don't like to call it an upgrade," explaining that some people don't actually prefer the original rooms. But this other room was bigger and had a nicer balcony, better furniture, a full kitchen, an ocean view, and a jacuzzi. My and Carlos's room has none of these things. And we don't point this out in a complaining spirit: we're not going to be spending much time in these rooms, and really, this is just funny. It's funny because Mike and Lisa always have amazing luck when they travel with us (last time they were with us, their car rental place upgraded then from a compact to a convertible for hardly any extra cost). And most importantly, "I don't like to call it an upgrade" is absolutely absurd. So we have another fun catch phrase for the trip, whenever something is better."

As a sort of aside our room has a wonderful view of a roof, half a floor below us, and construction in the background. You can see it in our flicker page. http://www.flickr.com/photos/48817538@N04/