Yesterday we went on a little excursion with fellow Americans Lisa and Carrie.
Destination: Gemmayze
Objective: happy hour
I’ll skip the play-by-play and get straight to the highlights. At Godot, the bartender was dumbstruck when we marched out upon learning that they had no happy hour specials. At Bar Louie, Carrie overheard some men talking about another bomb and it turned out that, not only were they fellow journalists, one of them was kind of one of her heroes. At Layla, Lisa convinced the bartender (in arabic) to give us the happy hour rates because we had technically arrived before 8pm. We had a very satisfying dinner at the Armenian restaurant Mayrig, where we learned that “mayrig” means “mommy” in Armenian. The girls enjoyed cocktails of beer, rum, and crushed mint and I enjoyed a fine–if expensive (20,000 LL~=$13)–Hoyo de Monterrey at Casa del Trova. We rounded out the night at Brooke’s, which is a nice little place on Rue Gouraud that Amy and I go to from time to time. We ended up meeting the British owner and his Lebanese wife. With the latter, I discussed finding software development work at Lebanese banks. With the former, I discussed beer…at length. I learned that the fat, green Almaza bottles have different contents than the tall, skinny, brown bottles. I learned that the reason why no bars have any draft beer other than Heineken and Almaza is that the prices on imported kegs are such that you’d have to sell 5000 pints every three days to turn a profit. I also learned that the owner was actually a stock broker by day and that Brooke’s was just kind of his “project.” Afterwards, Amy and I walked home, buoyant after a delightful night spent with our new friends.
And now I’ll leave you with this moment of Zen:
