See Roatan

 While we were wandering around West End the other day we came across this cute gift shop.  What caught my attention was the chairs out front made from old tires.  I left Greg in one while I shopped, found some earrings, buy 2 get a pair free - couldn't resist at $6 a pair.  Loved the paint brushes!  

 We try to stick to lunches (less expensive) and not dinners because they tend to be more expensive.  This time we decided to splurge and went to Gio's.  It's located on the edge of the water in French Harbor.  It opens at 5pm for dinner and we were the only customers there until about 6pm.  We sat outside without any fans and the wind stopped blowing so it got a little warm and humid.  The menu is one page in spanish and one page in English.  The options don't say what they come with, I ordered the Breaded Fish and Greg ordered the breaded shrimp plate.  We had no idea if we just get a plate with meat, or what it came with.  Surprisingly we ended up with a ton of food.  It came with salad and garlic bread which was really good and fresh, the main dish came with a steamed potato with butter on it and steamed veggies that included green beans, carrots and a local veggie that looks similar to a squash.  The fish was really good and a very large portion.  Greg got about 10 shr

 Living at Pineapple Villas, is a little unique in that part of it is owned and operated by Clarion Hotels.  This means that they have a shuttle that takes you to the dock to catch a boat to French Key.  It's about a mile from the Villas, you wait on the dock until a boat comes and picks you up and takes you to this little island, it's actually two little islands joined by some coral.  The bigger island is French Key, the little island is Little French Key (original!).  It's built to be similar to an all inclusive type resort with bars, restaurant, lounge chairs, hammocks and more.  The little gap between French Key and Little French Key you can swim across easily.  On the Little side they even have a mini zoo with chickens, pigs, rabbits, peacocks, tigers and an old lion and a couple of cheetahs I wanted to take home an make into house cats.  They were beautiful.  Unfortunately I don't have a water proof case for my phone so I couldn't bring it across and take pict

 By far the best place we have stopped at yet.  I didn't even have to twist Greg's arm to get him to eat Indian Food.   The West End has a ton of little restaurants along the waterfront road.  One of them is the Roatan Chocolate Factory.  Yes, they make the chocolate from the cocoa pod to the finished products, you even get a little tour.  They sell their chocolate bars and cocoa powder right there along with some other chocolate products.  Plus they serve breakfast and lunch.  We ordered the Egg Rolls as apetizer and then split the Chicken Tika Masala plate.  Dessert was their Peanutbutter Brownie.  We were going to try their potato fritters made with potato and chickpea flour with dipping sauces, but they didn't have that available today.  The Egg rolls were great, pork, carrots and cabbage.  The have a few Indian dishes plus a few other specials of the day.  The food was delicious.  The price was $6.99 for the lunch and $4.99 for the Egg rolls.  The Brownie was $4 and it

 One thing I remembered from my old Spanish lessons in High School is the word Helado means Ice Cream.  So today we stopped by after our lunch to try out the ice cream at the local shop.  They had about 16 flavors, ice cream bars and a few other treats.  A single scoop cone was $1.60 and a double scoop was $2.  A lot less than Baskin & Robins.  I ordered the cherry chocolate chip and Greg thought he ordered the Chocolate chip mint - turned out it was pistachio.  Both were good, a little on the sweeter side than I'm used to with ice cream.  It melted really fast so we had to eat some of it before I took a picture. lol  I loved all the chocolate chips in the Cherry ice cream.  

 We went to West Bay on Sunday.  Infinity Bay is one of the larger resorts in the area.  La Palapa is at the beach in front of the resort, we sat in the shade.  The menu was typical "American" Fare.  Greg ordered the shrimp alfredo with bacon and I tried the grilled chicken breast with two sides - baked potato and onion rings.  Both were very tasty, the pasta with the bacon was delicious.  My grilled chicken breast came with grilled onions and green peppers on top - almost fajita like.  Both plates were close to $15 - not too bad at a resort.  Once again I forgot to take pictures before we started eating. lol

 No I do not drink beer!  Greg went there with a guy we met for lunch yesterday.  I understand they make their own beer and sell it across the island.  Greg had the ceviche and his friend had the hot dog.  They have a make your own hotdog and hamburger plate, where they serve you the meal and then you go to the bar and add your toppings.  The hotdog and ceviche were $7 each, the hamburgers are over $10.

 Ok, Ok, I promise no more Chinese food places for awhile, this will be the last of them.  lol We were hoping to try a different restaurant for lunch, but when you charge $30 and $66 for steaks, we tend to pass.  So we kept driving and ended stopping at Chopsticks and Forks, we had seen it before and the name is interesting.  Turns out it's located inside Pirate's Den Motel.  The menu wasn't very big, but I was happy to see that they offered 6 combo plates.  They all included an egg roll, fried rice and then a different 3rd option.  Greg had the chicken wings and I had the sweet and sour pork.  The egg rolls and fried rice were very good, the sweet and sour pork was good, but needed a little more flavoring, it had pork, green peppers and onions.  Greg loved the chicken wings.  The view was nice - not too far away from the ocean.  We could see the reef.

 The view was fantastic.  The food was great!  We will definitely go back. We had driven past last week and they were closed.  Turns out they are closed on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.   We were the first guests there for lunch and was greeted by the owner, who told us to we could sit wherever we wanted, she has seating all around the inside and outside of this large house.  There are seats on the roof (little too hot today), seats inside, seats outside by the pool, seats in the grass, seats everywhere.   According to Bella, she has 100 items on her menu which she rotates around.  We chose two specials, the beef enchilada and the chicken alfredo.  I had heard that her lemonade was great, so Greg had one of those too.  The beef enchilada came with chips and salsa, the alfredo had chicken and diced tomatoes.  She is trying to create a Farm - to - table restaurant.  She currently grows most of the fresh fruit and herbs right now and is hoping to expand.  She also does some Mediterranean

 Ok, so this was the Chinese restaurant we wanted to try a few weeks ago and went to the other one in Coxen Hole.  I think they are a chain.  Menu was similar, but a little different.  We got there and the dining area was closed, so we had to order outside and sit outside and wait until they brought us our food in To-Go containers.  So we sit down on these chairs and look over to the side and they have these giant cages, turns out they have rabbits, the cats roam around outside and sleep on top of the rabbit cages (see bottom picture.)  I figured they didn't eat the cats since they weren't shy cats. lol   So we like to try the same dishes the first time so we have a baseline to compare, we ordered the smallest size of fried rice - family size - medium.  $10  - the serving is huge - it says it feeds 3-4 people.  Sorry, but we are going to be eating fried rice for the rest of the week and then some.  They did have a "personal" size of sweet and sour chicken - it was $4.

 I think this is a true definition of a whole in the wall.   Plaza Mar is the same location as the Chinese Restaurant from a couple of weeks ago.  It's a 3 story Plaza with a little grocery store, a couple of restaurants, dentist office and souvenir shop.  We saw a couple of people eating lunch so we decided to try the "Cafeteria".  Greg chose the pork chop and rice and I tried the Teriyaki chicken and rice.  The pork chop was delicious!  The chicken was ok, little oily.  The rice - very different.  It was a cross between Fried Rice and Spanish Rice.  There were little diced carrots and green onion, lots of black pepper and a little other pepper that added some heat to it.  The rice and pork chop were hot, the chicken was medium temperature.  Hopefully it hadn't been sitting out too long.  Best thing about this place - $6 for both plates of food and 2 sodas.  TOTAL!  That's $3 each.  

Barley's Cafe was in this really cool little market area built a few years ago.  The whole place (3 stories) was built out of used shipping containers.   The food here was delicious.  The special was 2 tacos - one regular and one made like a gyro with Tatziki sauce.  We had one plate with pork and one plate with chicken, the chicken had more flavor, they are roasted on a spit right there inside.  We also tried the gyro sandwich on pita bread.  They were all delicious.  The gyro sandwich was my favorite. The marketplace was actually having a grand reopening tonight.  We were there at 1pm so we missed it, but a lot of the little shops had been closed from Covid until now and were reopening.  There was a juice bar, another restaurant, a couple of touristy type shops and some other places that were still closed.  We will be back!