Venezuela Gastronómica

Yesterday I had a great day exploring a part of the city called Chacao with a few friends. Our main destination was a Venezuelan food festival. It was held at an activity space where there is a produce market on the weekends, but additionally this weekend there was the food festival.

The bottom two floors are the normal produce market, but the top floor was the food festival.

There were a lot of different stands selling so much good looking food. Unfortunately everything had meat in it, even the salads. So I didn't actually eat at the food festival, I just drank beer instead. Which by the way, they don't call the beer Solera and Solera light, it's Solera verde and azul (based on the color of the can). Even though I didn't eat, it was interesting just to see all the foods and it was a beautiful day so I enjoyed myself. And in the market I found some coffee (which hasn't been at the grocery store for a few weeks) and strawberries so that alone was worth it.

 At one point during the festival, all of the sudden this gas line broke and the air shooting out made a really loud and strange sound. No one knew what it was; so everyone downstairs started running and everyone upstairs started dropping to the ground. For about fifteen seconds it was really scary because we didn't know what was going on. Then the pressure was shut off and quickly everything was back to normal. But for a second there I was afraid.

On the way out of the market, there were multiple fresh cut flower stands and I couldn't resist. I bought myself this beautiful bouquet for $2:

After the festival, we decided to go to a restaurant so I could get actual food. I wrote about a Lebanese place a few weeks back that we unsuccessfully tried to find for over an hour… Well we decided to give it another try since we were in walking distance and with someone who knew where it is located. When we got there, there was a line out the door and the wait was going to be an hour. So yet again, we were not successful in trying this restaurant. We ended up driving to another Lebanese restaurant called Fenicia in a different part of town. The food was delicious and they even had a live belly dancer. I will definitely go back there sometime.

After the day out exploring and the big meal, we were all tired. So it worked out perfectly that we skipped happy hour and I got to come back home and watch my Buckeyes beat Michigan State :)