The Drink

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After leaving the serenity of Ometepe, we moved north to the colonial gem of Granada, where romantic cobbled streets are filled with excellent restaurants, bars, hotels and the majority of the country´s tourists. The town´s main charms are the many beautiful churches and museums, all of which we completely ignored. I mean, who goes to them places these days.
Instead of these 'must see' attractions we decided to be original and head to the Nicaragua´s only (I think) Irish Bar for a tipple. I had been missing the Guinness since I left home so what better place to have an afternoon beverage. However, when I realised that a small can of Guinness was four times the price of the local beer I decided that I didn´t miss it anymore. Our plans that day were to have a drink or two followed by a spot of lunch. Unfortunately that drink or two soon turned into five or six and lunch plans were shelved. It wasn´t long before dinner plans were shelved aswell and by this stage we were both pretty tipsy (Clare was on her second beer, I probably was on my thirtieth!!) so we decided that we would stay out for the night.
Back at the hotel we bumped into four fellow Irishmen and women and decided we would drink with them. The rest of the night is a blur, I have vague recollections of an encounter with a Caribbean sailor called John Oliver who was trying too hard to sell us some weed. I assume he was winding me up with his name although at the time I thought it was amazing.
Memories of the rest of the night escape both myself and Clare. Whereas the rest of the crew we were drinking with stayed up until six in the morning, Clare and I, being the party animals that we are, stayed up until ten that night! I might have even been in bed by half nine. We had started drinking at noon and my eyes could not stay open any longer.
We awoke the next morning with whopping headaches and dodgy stomachs. Clare, still slighty drunk, got up first and went out for breakfast on her own. When she came back I managed to pull myself out of the bed and I too went for breakfast on my own. By this time breakfast was no longer being served so I ended up ordering a burrito from the lunch menu knowing well that I wouldn´t like ninety percent of the contents. You would never think that it was the first thing I had eaten in twenty four hours by the way I picked and prodded the food. When I left it just looked as if I had just opened the burrito, spread the food about the plate and left. Then again, that´s exactly what I did.

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