With our coughs almost completely gone., we’re both feeling great and grateful at the same time. We had an excellent night’s sleep, and after a few cups of coffee, we are ready to tackle the day.

Today, I won’t be chopping and dicing for dinner since we’re heading out to a restaurant in The Village, down the one flight of stairs to the lovely area. We were heading to The Pub at the bottom of the steps when we found their menu appealing to both of us. We’re hoping it’s good since their prices are reasonable, and we may decide to dine there more often than once a week.

Tomorrow, we’ll report what we’ve discovered with photos and comments about the environment and the food. It appears to be somewhat of a sports bar, which we don’t mind at all. Hopefully, it will be a friendly place where we can chat with a few other locals and visitors to the area. But, our expectations regarding socializing in a restaurant in the US are in check. In all the years we lived in Minnesota (Tom, all of his life), we seldom chatted with other patrons in any public venue.

An occasional “hello” in passing while walking was all we could ever expect. On occasion, someone would talk to me at the supermarket, but never at the health club or any other public environment. I will always remember the time I met a lovely woman at a CVS pharmacy, and we chatted for 30 minutes.

And yet, we can recall during our world travels when we conversed with other patrons, and there were few countries where this transpired. You may say, “Do we make an effort to converse with others?”

And yes, we do. We are both friendly and approachable when we say hello and smile at other patrons, encouraging conversation. But our friendly approach is often ignored when the person turns away. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but they are few and far between.

The number one most friendly environment we’ve experienced in our world travels has been on most cruises, with only three cruises we’ve found to be less so….the Mekong River cruise in 2016, the Antarctica cruise in 2018, and, again, most recently, on The Galapagos Islands cruise. In each case, the passenger count was low: 60 passengers, 160 passengers, and 14 passengers, respectively. (No offense intended for any of the few passengers on those three cruises with whom we may have interacted occasionally and thoroughly enjoyed).

Cruises with larger passenger counts seem the most friendly, perhaps mainly based on the numbers. However, we have had exceptional social experiences on cruises, making many friends with whom we remain close.

Then, of course, the most friendly of all has been at Jabula Lodge and Restaurant in Marloth Park. South Africa. I know we’ve mentioned this repeatedly, but there is nowhere like it in the world that we have seen during our over 11 years of travel or…even in our old lives. Is it any wonder that we are looking forward to our return?

The food, the ambiance, Dawn and Leon, the owners, and all of the locals whom we’ve come to know over the years we spent sitting at the most fun bar in the world. We often equate it to the same kind of bar many of us watched on the old TV show, Cheers, “Where everyone knows your name!”

So, we don’t expect the restaurant and pub where we’ll dine tonight to be anything like Jabula, but as we have in the past, we will thoroughly enjoy each other’s companionship, lively chatter, and hopefully good food.

Be well.

Photo from ten years ago today, January 20, 2014: