For the Love of the Game

As recent transplants from the land of vuvuzleas, aka World Cup host country South Africa, we have been getting super-pumped for the start of the tournament.  Unfortunately, we might have moved to the most inconvenient time zone possible for game watching- most games start at either 4:30 or 7:00 am.  Never ones to let a little thing like "time" slow us down, we jumped into the madness full force on Saturday morning. 


Jared did some serious research and picked out the perfect watch site for the 7:00 am game- El Farolito, a die hard Latin futbol club a few streets away.  Although we rose and shone in time to catch the early game, the patrons of El Farolito were not as ambitious- CLOSED.  Luckily, we found a nice little Nicaraguan restaurant to watch the game and try our very first Tona, the national beer of Nicaragua (which we hear always tastes better pre-8am). 

Having an inkling that the US- England game might be a bit popular, especially at the accessible hour of 11:30 am, we headed straight over to our favorite sports bar, the Phoenix.  We arrived a comfortable 2.5 hours early, feeling like we had a good chance to score a prime seat.  No go. All seats were already taken, save a single bar stool which we used to stake our claim on a small square of space.  Little did we know, this chair would prove instrumental in resisting the tide of people that flowed into the bar over the next few hours. Saying that the bar was "standing room only" is a gross understatement.  The amount of space we had was more akin to a moderately crowded bus in India.

If you haven't noticed by now, I have been filling this post with pictures stolen from the internet and friends in SA, rather than personal photos, which we were unfortunately not able to obtain.  We did get one photo that might not result in me being served a copyright lawsuit and sums up our 5 hours at the Phoenix perfectly: our bill.

Unable to stomach the bill and entirely too impatient to wait the 45 min it would have taken to close it at the bar after the game, we decided to collect it the next day.  The thoughtful bartenders filled in the tip for us, a conservative 19.4%.  Now those of you with jobs, families, and/or drinking problems might not think this tab is too out of this world, but let me remind you that it was just the two of us for the most of the time and no food is included on that tab. 

One week down, four more to go!
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!