We were at our friends' house (Michael and Tina and their toddler, Ida) a day or two after learning the news and were complaining about GPS when Michael and Tina offered to let us stay with them if we couldn't find a place to live. We had been planning to spend our entire weekend house hunting; thus, we were both relieved to know that if we couldn't find anything, we would not be left on the street. So, when Tina and Michael invited us to go to the beach instead of searching for place to live, we accepted.
We woke up on the morning of Saturday, August 2nd and jumped into Michael and Tina's car and headed to the beach. About an hour into the drive, my mom called. Patrick immediately started laughing after answering the phone, and then he said “thank you”. When I asked him why, he said, "It is our anniversary." We had both (good thing it was both of us) forgotten our fourth wedding anniversary. Luckily, we had decided to go do something fun rather than spend our entire weekend searching for places to live. It ended up being a great weekend.The first beach we went to left a bit to be desired. None of us had been there before; so, we didn't know what to expect. When we arrived, we found what looked like a ghost town. The only hotel in town was closed, yet we found a guy on the street who said he had a place for us to stay. We all went to check it out and found what was definitely one of the dirtiest places we had ever seen, with a shared urinal outside for the men and a hole in the ground for the women, all for the extremely reasonable price of $30. Ha! While we realize we will probably be staying in many places like this during the second part of our trip, we hadn't really prepared for such an experience that weekend. Also, we had just learned it was our anniversary, and neither one of us wanted to spend it wondering if we would wake up to a spider on our face or a mouse running around in the bed. Needless to say, we decided to move on.
So, we drove out of town and began the trip to another beach Michael and Tina had already visited. The drive was absolutely beautiful. Michael and Tina likened the rolling, lush, green hills to those found in the highlands in Ireland.
Unfortunately, shortly after arriving at the hotel, the sky opened up as it so often does here, and it didn't stop raining until almost sundown. Not the best beach weather . . . but we made the best of it and took advantage of the all-inclusiveness of the resort by drinking our way through the rest of the day and night and eating a big salt-cod dinner on the patio off of Michael and Tina's room.
It was a good anniversary with good friends and lots of laughs. The next day, after a little time on the beach, we made the drive back to Granada.
To top off a good experience, we debated about stopping off for a nice, healthy lunch at a restaurant overlooking a lake or heading back to Granada by way of Managua (the capitol city of Nicaragua). Each of us had been secretly craving McDonald's since Tina brought it up the day before; so, we all agreed that we needed to shop at
PriceSmart (the big economy-size grocery store here) in Managua in hopes that we may end up at Micky D's (which is also in Managua) afterwards. I know, I know, you have all probably heard me talk trash about McDonald's many a times, but sometimes the things that taste most like home are things that we never really eat at home. It is difficult to explain. But, we all enjoyed our greasy meal.About a week or so after this trip, we ended up moving in with Michael and Tina, as there really were no places to rent in the city in our price range. We had a great time staying there for 12 days before Tina's parents came to visit and we moved. It was probably a good thing her parents did come, because had they not, we would have stayed, and Patrick and Michael may have had to look into whether Granada has an AA chapter. In all seriousness, the past few weeks have reminded us how important great friends are. We miss you all very much and hope you have space for us on your couch when we return from our travels broke and jobless. :o)
Melissa
2 comments:
sounds like you guys had a great time with T and M. I don't think that Adam and I did much for our 4 year anniversary either..ha ha.
How much longer do you have? Where are you living now?
Congratulations on the anniversary! It sounds perfect to me. You know that our couch is always open to you whenever you come home. Maybe we'll actually live ina bigger place by then and be able to offer you a bed. =)
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