Nov 19/18 A Pirate and His Ale
The only reason that we chose to spend two nights in Nassau was so that we could tour the one and only craft beer brewery in the Bahamas (now that is beer dedication), Pirate Republic Brewery. We booked a tour for 2pm and after a morning of doing laundry (do NOT get me started on what happened there! Okay, I’ll tell you but you have to read the website article “RANT – Laundry Sins”), more boat maintenance and even a workout in the fabulous marina gym, we were walking back to the downtown area that we visited last night. Today the streets were bustling. The back street was busy with Bahamians going about their day and the tourist street was buzzing with a swarm of mildly sunburned, shopping bag carrying cruise ship people going in and out of stores and bars and trying to do and see as much as they could in the time they were allotted. There, shining like a beacon of cold thirst quenching familiarity, we could see the sign for the brewery. Big smiles on our faces (Tom’s was the biggest) we walk into the brewery/bar/restaurant/store to find that we are not the only ones to discover how good this beer is because this place is BUSY. Let the day-drinking begin! (do not judge, this is a recognized sport amongst boaters) We belly up to the bar and order a couple of flights before the tour starts. There are so many different types and flavours of beer available here. It really felt a lot like visiting our favourite Canadian brewery, Anderson’s in London ON. We had just finished our flights (my favourite was the coconut chocolate coffee) when The Pirate came to get us for the tour. This had to be one of, if not the, best tours that we have ever been on. For fourty-five minutes The Pirate gave us a Bahamian history lesson, a Pirate lore lesson, educated us on what is used in the brewing process, why, and how it all works and he managed to do this while making us laugh and learn and thoroughly enjoy ourselves. At the end of the tour we were each given a flight and a delicious hot pretzel. What made it even better was the super fun cruise ship group that we joined on the tour. “Hope that the wedding is everything that you dreamed of.”
Feeling a little tipsy, and having nothing more in our tummies that day than the pretzel, we set off to once again give that frog the chance to feed us. The frog was much more welcoming today. We were seated at a water-side table and politely told that the kitchen was closing in 15 minutes. What? It was only 3:30 in the afternoon. Wait, the people on our tour did say that the boat left at 4 (it appears that the local business schedule is directly tied to the cruise ship schedule). Nachos and two waters please. The food was out in five minutes and we finished eating in ten. A slow walk back to the marina before we prepared the boat to leave the next morning for our winter home-away-from-home, the Exumas.
