Okay, I am going to attempt to break my habit of not finishing vacation stories in their entirety.

I was blessed to be in Nassau, Bahamas on my birthday. We booked no excursions and we did not go to the Atlantis Resort as we have seen it multiple times.

In the past, after we got on shore we always kind of hung on the main streets or shopped in the straw market. This time we mixed it up a bit.

We started off by stopping in the Hard Rock Cafe. We needed to expand our collection of beer glasses, so we ordered two beers with souvenir glasses. Nice place but it was early so we decided to move on after settling our tab of $33 for glasses and 2 beers. It felt like at I was at a ball game but only worse. Note to self, tourist trap, avoid in future.  It was like any other Hard Rock Cafe though, nothing special if you have been to one.

So we walked a little bit and discovered there were alleys between the main streets. We decided to explore these.

The first place we stopped at was a nice little Mediterranean sidewalk cafe, called Olive’s.

Nice atmosphere as the alley bisected the restaurant, which made for some interesting people watching.  The kitchen and some tables were on opposite side of walkway from our table and the bar. It had been way too long since I had a decent Gyro so we ordered a platter with fries to split.

It was awesome as well as the fries. We spoke at length with our waitress about the Gyro and the difficulty of finding a good one. She let us know how difficult it was to get the ingredients because they had to have everything shipped in from Miami. We enjoyed a local brew, Sands, and we were on our way.

We next stopped at a little place Coconuts for a drink. Click on the link to get an idea of what it looked like.

This was were we discovered the one difficulty of alley hopping. No one had a rest room on premises. They would hand you a key and direct you up two flights of stairs and tell you to unlock the second gate on the left and proceed to the third door on right. It was quite a maze and left me feeling a little uneasy and not completely safe. Upon the return of my Don Quixote like quest for a urinal, I found some young lady (term used loosely) sprawled out in my chair next to the bar. I can honestly say she was too drunk to sit down. So we settled up and left that sad sight behind.

We then found a place on the second level called Lum’s Iguana Bar. We tried a different local brew there called Kalik’s. Restaurant was nice and was air conditioned, big positive. We ended up speaking with the owner for a little bit about doing business in Nassau. In the US most of your expense is labor but in Nassau, your expense is the real estate. I think he said the minimum wage for workers was $130 a week. It was also interesting that they were only open until 6 PM daily due to the business being so dependent on the cruise ships. Not too many stay late.

We then headed over to the straw market to shop for a minute. we were looking for this Rastafarian hat with fake dreadlocks we had bought the boys the last time we were there. I don’t know what they made them out of, but it drives cats loco! Unfortunately they had none.

That’s the straw market pictured above, follow the link for a pretty accurate description of what to expect. They are in process of building a permanent structure next door. Though that link paints a pretty bleak picture, I have never felt unsafe in the area. You do need to be able to say no and keep walking, if you don’t have that skill, enter at your own peril.

We then headed next door to Senor Frog’s for dinner and to finish off the celebration. The best part of Senor Frog’s is it is located right on the bay and you have a great view of the ships docked in the port, and as they leave.

While there we enjoyed some nachos and beverages. Somehow the missus mentioned to the staff that it was my birthday. That is how I ended up on the bar with the nice gentleman in the first picture from this post. I got a free birthday shot and then we performed a rousing duet of Garth Brook’s friends in low places. I always swore there was not enough liquor in Georgia to make me karaoke. But hey, I wasn’t in Georgia. It couldn’t have been that good as there were no calls for an encore.

When we left we spoke for a while with the people trying to sell us every thing legal and illegal. We only ended up purchasing a conch for $15. I highly recommend not doing so. This thing stunk to high heaven,  as I think whatever was in the shell, died in it. I have a very graphic description for what it smelled like, but I am going to keep this family friendly. I will also never eat another conch fritter.

We finished the night at the Schooner Bar with our new best friend Ned Gray performing.  He really had the place rocking!

We made many new friends that night.

I woke up the next day feeling every bit of my age and a few other people’s. I was also missing my camera, which had me quite worried. We found at dinner the next day that Joseph had picked it up for us.

So we had a nice day the next day at Coco Cay, but have no pictures to show for it.

I know why Charliepalozza is only held every 4 years now. Its for health and safety reasons I suppose.