Where to shop, study, and eat in San Isidro, Costa Rica
This semester has been filled with lots of great experiences. We have visited many new places, tried new food we never even knew existed, made many new friends, and we now leave with a lot of new knowledge about language, culture and ourselves.
In this blog post, I will mention some of our favorite places to shop, study and eat out in San Isidro!
In San Isidro de El General there are many cheap secondhand stores where you can find everything you might be looking for.
They have jeans, tops, shoes, purses and so much more. Some stores worth mentioning are: Poca Loca, Mundo Camisetas, KE BARATO ropa americana, Tienda Americana Cleveland.
For food, you should look for sales as they often have campaigns and deals at the supermarkets.
The prices are very similar in all supermarkets; therefore we often chose to shop at the biggest ones, or the ones closest to our house.
Some big stores are BM Super Mercado, Walmart and Coopeagri. However, I do recommend you shop at the Costa Rican owned companies such as Coopeagri or the small local ones, often without a name. You will find them in almost every street.
When it comes to good study spots, I recommend you check out Trincheras, a bookstore with a small organic café and an adorable gift shop.
Trincheras also offers many activities you can participate in such as movie nights, yoga classes, cooking courses and a language café. This is a lovely place to study, just hang out with your friends, or even make new friends!
Some other cafés we recommend for studying are:
- El Amenecer – a very cute café with only a 2 minute walk away from the University.
- Latte lounge – located a bit closer to the city centre, and has a great atmosphere.
- Le Chalet Bleu – a French café located between the city centre and the school.
For lunch and dinner, we of course have some favorites as well.
- Bazookas – a restaurant located close to the city. Here you can get a good amount of food, and they always have room for big groups.
- Catacombe – a kind of fancy restaurant, which means that it is more expensive than others. However, they have the best pizza I have every had! Sometimes they also play live music here.
- Sodas – If you want traditional and cheap food, these restaurants are the place for you!
