Friday, 15 February 2013

Valentine's Day in Nicaragua

Valentine's Day started with a walk down El Castillo's main path to Manuel's waiting boat, a 2 hour trip on the Rio San Juan to San Carlos, a short taxi ride from the dock to the airport, a 45 minute flight to Managua in a Cessna where Antonio, our driver, was waiting to take us to on the 2 hour drive to Leon. 

Unfortunately William, our guide, couldn't be with us, but he did send HJ a wonderful box of rum truffles and as Antonio passed them over, William rang on the phone to wish HJ a happy Valentine's Day.  RM meanwhile reached for the sick bag as he had failed to produce any romantic offerings.

HJ enjoying Williams's chocolates

On reaching our hotel, El Convento, a former convent, we found the beautiful courtyard garden being set up for a huge $35 a head VD dinner with live music.  We asked if we could just eat in the restaurant and after some negotiations were told we could. 

On arrival at the restaurant, we found we were the only two people in the 50 cover, air conditioned restaurant. 





Apart from a scrambled egg breakfast we hadn't eaten all day and HJ had the munchies and decided we would both have a starter and main course as to date, the portions have been so huge we have been sharing. 

The layered smoked salmon and cheese terrine was so big, M&S would have sold it as a main meal for two and the shrimp cerviche had 12 shrimps.  Then it was on to mains of a volcano of erupting lava (called four cheese risotto on the menu) and a dinner sized plate crepe stuffed with scallops in a cheese sauce.  With two bottles of wine (it was VD after all), our bill came to the bargain of $71.

"Cheesed" out we retired to our room so HJ could munch on her truffles and dream of William.

PR was equally spoilt as on logging on, he found an e-mail from his favourite admirer, appropriately named V.

Relaxing after dinner in El Convento

2 comments:

  1. That's more like food, wine and a sofa large enough to live in. I take it that wasn't your room.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear M,
    Of course this was our room. We were in an ex-convent and were allocated the Mother Superior suite complete with gilt alter!
    HJ

    ReplyDelete