A place to chill

At the beginning of football season Jenny and I found our favorite post game spot. There happens to be a pretty decent sports bar in Ocotal that serves an awesome steak, beers at temperatures below freezing, and delicious fries. Finally, a retreat where we can eat some American style food and watch sports! They even have ESPN and ESPN2. Unfortunately, ESPN here runs different programming than the one in the states. Uncle Dan, you would love it, they seem to have a Yankees game on nearly every time we go there. Baseball is the big sport of Nica, everyone around here is always wearing MLB hats. Sometimes I wonder if some of them even know what it means. It’s just the cool thing to wear so many people just randomly have an Atlanta Braves hat or Marlins, but most commonly the Yankees. The bar owner is a Yankees fan too and he’s all about it. The great thing is that a little American culture can be found in a pinch when we really need it. The best part is ESPN2 runs the same program as the states, including college football highlights and everything is in English! Heck yeah! The agenda for every Saturday is hit up the internet café to catch the game on yahoo radio, then the good ‘ol Deportivo for a steak, chicken strips, and some Hokie highlights. I have to say, thank God for Tyrod Taylor. Hokie Nation can look forward to a bunch more offensive highlights this year.

Another place worth noting is that we found an Italian Pizzeria in Ocotal!! Yes, that’s right, after 2 months of no pizza we found a place that knows how to find cheese that melts. I don’t think I have mentioned the stuff they call cheese here. It’s awful. It is sooooo salty that you need a whole glass of water with every bite. It’s chunky and crumbly like feta but doesn’t really taste anything like it. It tastes like salt, funky moldy salt. It also doesn’t melt. I didn’t know it was possible, but there is such a thing a cheese that doesn’t melt. I would say that I miss cheese a lot, or should I say missed cheese a lot. Now we have our pizza place. Cos, if you ever have to make a tech service call to Ocotal, you are in luck, they have pizza with chicken. They also have Hawaiian style and salami and others that I haven’t tried yet. The only bad thing is that it’s not at those loveable dirt cheap Nica prices; it costs about 3 nights stay in a crappy dorm-like hotel for a pizza pie ($8).