Now Open

I can't even begin to explain how indecisive Ryan and I were last night in choosing what to do for dinner.  At 8:30 it was still light out, actually really light out, and we had no idea what we wanted to eat.  In fact, when we left the house, the only plan was head towards Praia.  We decided if the new bar had a restaurant, we would try that, and if not, we would go for Mexican.

The good news was the Garca, the new super busy bar, had a restaurant in the upstairs.  The "c" in Garca is the one with the little hook off it and is pronounced like a "z".  Here you can see that it is packed.  It is dark outside in this picture because I took it as we were leaving.  On the way in, my only concern was if there was actually a restaurant inside.  Garca is the place on the far left with all the people outside.  This place is in a strip of bars/cafes/restaurants, and overlooks the beach.

This is the decor on the inside.

Wine of course.  It was a Friday night.  My grandfather should recognize this.  I brought him a bottle when I visited last month.

The meal started off with the bread.

Goat cheese for the bread.  This is very common around here.

Ryan ordered the steak.  It comes with rice, fries and a fried egg.  It was not the best he has ever had, but with steak, it does seem to be hit or miss here.  Seafood and fish are usually perfect every time, except for the occasional overcooked cod.

I ordered the abrotea, which seems to be a fried white fish.  I have ordered this a few places and it always looks like this.  I was so happy to see the olives on the salad.

Dessert was from prepackaged ice cream products, but they were really good.  They have the standard ice cream dessert menu that some other places carry.  This is a popular way to serve dessert it seems, versus making it themselves.  I guess with all of the pastelerias around, this gives some different options. Oh, if you are curious, the Portuguese word for desert is sobremesas.

This is my dessert, still packaged up.  The Carte D'or brand is very popular here.

No complaints here!

So, that was our dinner at the new restaurant in Praia.  I enjoyed my meal and Ryan's was fair.  The menu was limited, but I think we will go back.

Wait!  Before I go, I have some more pictures from last Saturday night's bull fight in Porto Judeo.  I mentioned in past posts that there are 4 bulls each night in each village that has a fight.  This is how they transport the bulls and where they are kept when they are not loose.

A family spotted us looking around and invited us up onto their property.  This was very cool and it was nice to have a place with an actual bathroom.  The one lady spoke English, so that was very helpful.  This is the view form their front yard.  We had a great spot to look out onto the ocean.

Doesn't he look mean?

Since they have guys walking around selling ice cream, I thought I would FINALLY get a Magnum bar.  I have not had one of these delicious treats since I was in Israel about 14 years ago.  I splurged on the double caramel.  It was vanilla ice cream, coated in chocolate, filled with caramel and then another layer of chocolate.  This was heavenly!

No, no room for a donut here, but I still had to take a picture of these ladies selling donuts on the street.

I was however polite when the family of the house we were sitting at offered us some food.  Since it was mostly meat, I tried the rice which was made with tomato sauce.

Wow, look how mean this guy looks.  Ok, here is the story.  This guy jumped the 5 or 6 foot wall were sitting up on and wound up in the yard of the house were were watching from.  Everyone jumped off and ran the other direction.  The men holding his rope managed to get him down before he caused any damaged to the lawn or the people. 

Here he is after he jumped back down.

So the next bull tried the same thing, but with no luck.  He thought better and turned around and left.  At least you can get an idea of how high up the bull jumped.

QUESTION:  What is your favorite ice cream treat/dessert?