ST PADDY'S DAY ADVENTURE

We were all stoked to find out there was an Irish Pub located in the downtown region. That's right, Irish food and it was St. Patrick's Day! How could we be so fortunate? Every year, back home, Robin makes corn beef and cabbage (Logan & I pass on the cabbage part) for St. Patrick's Day dinner. She loves it! It is something she looks forward to once a year. And now being in a foreign country she will still get to keep that tradition going. Or so she thought. Allow me to explain. After a hectic day, and a 2 hour cab ride (I'll explain that in another post), our sites were on the dinner we would be having at the Irish Pub that evening. It was a hope that carried Robin through. We pick up our new friend Nancy and head to the pub. It's a little far from our hotel, but who cares, we're going to have Irish food. Yeah, right.
After the cab ride, we tell our driver we'll call him when we're finished with dinner. He leaves and we go in. First impressions, kind of looks like an Irish pub-brick walls, decorated like a castle, a little cold and dark. We get seated and presented a menu. It's in Russian and English, how fortunate is that. This should be easy. It's long, about 14 pages full of different things-several types of livers, mussels, schnitzel, etc, even some Mexican food. Ok, the menu's all over the place, but at least there's variety to choose from. But no where on this Irish menu do we see a list for corn beef and cabbage-an Irish staple. Did I mention it's cold in here? The longer we sit and look over this menu, the more uncomfortable we become. As we look around, the place is virtually empty. There are 2 other couples in there, and we are in the prime dinner hours. Hmmmm, that's not a good sign. Did I mention that it's cold in here? We all have our coats on and are still freezing cold. As we continue to look over the menu I get this sinking feeling we're in a foreign version of Chef Ramsey's show, "Kitchen Nightmares". I can almost hear him in the kitchen yelling at the staff about the poor quality of the food and that they're going to kill someone with this spoiled food. (for Logan's class-you see, when no one's in the restaurant, that usually means the food isn't being used and probably on the verge of being spoiled). Visions of spending the evening in my bathroom, pressing the half-moon button repeatedly are too much. We leave, call our taxi and head to a place called Sir Lancelot's. Did I mention that I think it's warmer outside than inside? Anyway, Lancelot's serves Italian food. We have pizza (very good pizza though) for St. Patrick's Day. It's not corn beef and cabbage, but we're also not all sick with food poisoning either so it's a win-win. That's all for today. Until our next adventure...