Girl's Night Out

By my title you might think I had a girl's night out...but no, the island (and all of the Azores I believe) had a girls night out.  Let me back up to the previous Thursday...Guy's night out.  I did not really have an idea, but then over last weekend Ryan asked me about it.  I still had no idea, and I guess the idea was only guy's were allowed out.  This meant no females could dine in restaurants.  So, then he explained that the next Thursday (the one that just passed) would be Girl's night out.  He wouldn't be able to go out that night, and for me it was a Friday night.

So fast forward to this past Thursday night.  We noticed our dog may have a bladder infection, so we thought we should try to locate a vet or at least go to the pet store to see if they sold the Urinary S/O prescription dog food.  So on Thursday night we headed to Praia.  While the pet store did not have this, they gave us directions to the vet.

We did find the vet, but they only had Urinary S/O for cats, but whatever, we bought it anyway and figured we could come back to the vet if we needed to and have Ginger checked out.  Then we figured since we were out, we should get something to eat for dinner.  And that is when Ryan remember it was Girl's night out.  We wondered if we could find any place to serve us, and Ryan didn't know what to do because soon enough it was all girl's everywhere.  We even saw an older woman out wearing devil horns.  I guess with Guy's night out there were special women there to entertain and we heard on girl's night out there would be special men to entertain...not sure if that is true or what since we didn't go out for it.  But I did see a post, in Portuguese of course, on Facebook that I think said this was across all Azorean islands and it was like a day for girl friends, so basically a Girl's night out...but it is an actual holiday here.  Reminds me of when my Hawaiin friend told me about girl's day and boy's day.

So the packs of girl's were swarming around and we ducked into a cafe that looked like it might close soon.  The owner was more than happy to serve us, and we were glad to be off the street.  So here is how Ryan and I spent Girl's night out.

I had to take a picture of the cute looking condiments.  If you get salad it is always served with oil and vinegar.

My salad was around the outside of my actual dinner.  This was sorta like a casserole.  It was cod fish, potato and cheese.  She let me sample this special before I ordered.  Ryan really liked it too.  It was like chunks of potato with cheese and it had shredded cod fish in it, almost like a tuna noodle casserole, well except with cod and potato.  But it was nice, and not too creamy.

Ryan ordered a hamburger..actually I believe this was named Menu #2!

Couldn't resist dessert as this was a cafe, which specializes more in the sweets than meal type foods.  ryan ordered this.  It was like custardy and eggy, and had almonds. 

I ordered this ridiculously large pastry with chocolate inside.  I only ate 1/2 and I was stuffed.  But I wanted a little chocolate and this was all they had in the chocolate family...they were in the process of cleaning up for the day.

As always...the coffee.

So, I am thankful we were able to find something to eat on the island traditional day for only girl's.

On to some other pictures I have taken over the past week, since I was busy writing all about my trip to China.  Sophia of Burp and Slurp asked me a great question and I thought I would answer it here.  She wanted to know how I remembered so much from my trip since it was a few years ago.  Since I received something like 36 credits of continuing education for my RD portfolio, it almost became like a school project.  My boss gave me some of these days off for my trip as Education days which did not use my vacation time, so it was considered like being at work.  As a result I took a lot of notes and then presented when I returned to work.  So that helped a lot of it stay in my mind since I invested a lot of time in learning while I was there.  Also, I scrap booked when I cam home and although it is in storage, I am a visual learner, so that helped a lot of details stuick in my mind too.  I still have my itinerary here and the photos I do have were named really well to help jog my memory.  There is a lot I did forget and leave out from my 3 weeks there, but this was seriously an unforgettable experience.

Moving right along, so you everyone can get on with their busy busy weekends...My new favorite breakfast...oatmeal, almond butter and strawberries, so yummy!

I took this picture last night of some "exotic" beers we picked up here.  This is the real Budweiser from the Czech (did I spell that right?) Republic, or something along those lines, hmmm...
Oh and we also have a Lambic, but this is Timmerman's brand.  Also here is a Super bock, which is not exotic for here at all, but rather one of their main beers.

Last up is this animal cracker action we have going on at our house.  This is our tin of animal crackers, or shall I say, dog treats, and our dog's tin.  Yep, I may enjoy the animal crackers, but not more than the dog.  She actually things they are dog treats and gets angry when I eat them.  She tries to take them away from me.

So I share with her, since they used to be all hers, but I developed an extreme like for these again.

Oh, and if you are curious about her infection, yes I took her to Angra yesterday and I was pleased with the local vet there.  They gave her some antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory, and in 8 days we will ultrsound to make sure there are no blood clots in her bladder.  She has had that before, so we knew this was probably similar.  So we started treatment and she should be better in no time.

QUESTION:  What is your favorite, or the most unique holiday, you celebrate, either religious or cultural, or anything local to where you live? 

P.S. We have a major flavor undertaking for this weeks FROM SCRATCH meal.  Looks like Sunday will be the day for cooking since we have a work thing to go to tonight, which I have already this morning made a 6 layer bean dip for, and one for us at home of course.