Happy St. Patrick's Day, Czech Republic style.

E called me yesterday afternoon and told me, excitedly, that not only were we getting corned beef and cabbage for dinner, we were getting it at the beer garden. The beer garden, dear friends, is a magical place about a block from our apartment. It's essentially a gravel yard full of picnic tables, with hundred-year-old trees offering shade and high stone walls shielding you from the neighborhood around you. And they serve beer. Lots of beer, and lots of Eastern European food, and occasionally they also have live entertainment.

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There it is! We've been anxiously awaiting the return of beer-garden weather since our last visit in early November, when we brought a couple of visitors there just to witness its magic, willing ourselves to finish our pitcher in the cold. Worth it.

So, we get to the beer garden and settle in, enjoying the last few rays of sunshine for the evening. Turns out, they weren't actually serving corned beef and cabbage like the person E talked to on the phone said, so we ordered off their regular menu. Kielbasa, potato pancakes, pierogi, sauerkraut and these amazing things that were like gnocchi -- but obviously weren't since they weren't Italian -- smothered in cheesy sauce. Mmmmm, everything was so delicious, and we'll just have to find an Irish pub sometime soon to get our boiled cabbage fix (though we did have some pickled red cabbage last night that was delicious). Unfortunately, I don't know my limits anymore in my old age, so I powered through slightly more than one pitcher of beer by myself in little more than 2 hours, and I had an interesting night after that, to say the least. This was my Facebook status when I got home:

Translation:  I'm drunk.  It's St. Patrick's Day, which we celebrated at a Czech restaurant with kielbasa. It's 8:46 pm and I feel like I'm dying because I'm drunk. Oh my god, Oh my god, this Bon Jovi song was on at the bar and I not only sang it there, but I left my friend a voicemail of me singing it and I am still singing it now that I am home.

It wasn't pretty.