The Ultimate Adventure Itinerary? Top 10 bars of the world
Time to plan the ultimate itinerary: The Guardian has just declared the Top 10 bars of the world!
Could it be possible to make it to all 10 in one binge? Well let’s start here in the states with the #3 bar in the World, San Francisco’s Vesuvio, where we’ll hang out with the leftover remnants of the beat generation until Ken Kesey arrives in a vision and we hop into the Futhur van and embark on an amphetamine (or Jolt Cola, depending on your depravity level) fueled trip all the way to Rio and the #9 bar in the world, Rio Scenarium.
In Rio, we’ll dance the night way and pass out from exhaustion while standing up doing the evening’s 500th Samba. We’ll wake up on a strange boat, and although you’ve been kidnapped and sold to modern-day pirates running the seas between Brazil and Cuba, the good news is that they’re making a pit stop on Antigua, where we’ll sneak off to OJ’s Restaurant and Beach Bar on Crabb Hill Beach, St. John’s. What a coincidence! It’s #4 on our list. Those pirates stole all our belongings, but fortunately they force fed us plenty of pure cocaine in baggies (uh, or pixy stix for the G-rated version). Their smuggling scheme just turned into our plane ticket to London, where we knock off bar #10, Smoke , head north for #2, Mary McBride’s in Northern Ireland, then back to London and across the channel to #8, the No shoes club and #1 Chez Georges, both in Paris.
By now, we’re a bit distraught by both the fact that two of the world’s best bars are in Paris, of all places, and by our liquified livers. It’s times like these that Southeast Asia was created for. Before we fully sober up, we head to the nearest buddhist monastery, make some chit-chat about samsara and suffering before getting shipped off for a little “intensive spiritual cleansing” at a brother monastery in Bangkok.
When our plane lands, we ditch the bald guys and head for #6 Sirocco, in the city’s second-tallest tower. By this point we’re pretty sure we can fly, so we teach someone else how to do it and then charge him 400 bucks for the lesson and buy plane tickets to Vietnam and #5, the rooftop bar at the Rex Hotel. By this point we realize that we forgot #7, Puro on the island of Mallorca, but where the hell is that anyway? Time to find a ride to the Mediterranean. Fortunately, we’ve had a first-hand lesson in the art of open seas pirating… Unfortunately, sailing and Vietnamese rice whisky don’t mix… Who says you have to travel far for adventure?