Cheap Date

I’m not surprised to find that Costa Rica has plenty of Christmas events. We took advantage of this (and socialistic government which supports the arts) and thoroughly enjoyed going to the National Theater Sunday to see the Nutcracker Ballet.

I read about the performance in last weeks Tico Times and looked forward to seeing the ballet again since I just finished reading the original Nutcracker story by E.T.A. Hoffmann. After some persuasion, Patrick agreed to drive us to San Jose and attend the ballet. So, I logged onto the Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica’s website Thursday with Azure only to find our favorite seats already taken. No surprise there but I made Azure believe we weren’t going (I can be such a sneaky mom) and then logged back on Friday morning and purchased three tickets.

I am happy to report that the theater’s website works great and makes purchasing tickets easy. The site shows a seating chart and marks seats sold in one color and seats available in another. You can scroll over a seat to see the price of the ticket then click on the seat you want to purchase. Then you enter your info and the site gives you a receipt. Actually two receipts since one if for your purchase and one is from the theater.

When we arrived at the theater on Sunday before the performance, there was a separate table with two people checking id’s and receipts then passing out pre-paid tickets. The whole process was extremely simple and the best part of the deal was that they didn’t charge any service fees. The site doesn’t allow for any discounts which meant we paid full price for Azure’s ticket but since tickets are cheap in the first place and with no service fees it still beat driving down to San Jose to buy tickets in person!

So to wrap up, we enjoyed the Costa Rica children’s ballet company perform with the Cuban Ballet company for a total of 6000 colones (just over $12). Plus $2 parking and $5 for three slices of pizza and strawberry drinks means we had a great day on the town for under $20! I love Costa Rica!