You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

[Guest]

Someone expressed how much she would like a vacation “a real one, sitting on the beach and sipping a Gin and Tonic”

You don’t have Gin and Tonic on the beach, do you!? I never have it, but I still know that Gin and Tonic is a bar drink, if there ever was one.

A cold beer straight from the bottle, a Piña Colada, Red wine and soda water in a tall glass, that’s what you have on the beach.

At the beach, you have Frozen Marguerite, a pint of draft beer, a bottle of white wine or champagne.

In a restaurant you have a bottle wine, red or white, finishing with a cognac.

At the bar, that’s where you have your Gin and Tonic, or a Stout.

Gin and Tonic on the beach!? The things you hear!

[Sommer]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

I do.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach



Ah, Shirley Valentine.

"And do you know what? Now I'm finally here, now I've given everything up, now I've got my sunset, and my wine, and my table on the beach drinking my wine looking at the sodding sunset ... I feel like a stupid, bloody idiot!".

[Sommer]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Gin and tonics, with lime,are the best.

[matt j]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Surely gin and tonics are best suited to the colonial overseer watching over his his malaria infested fields being worked by the unpaid local peoples who will one day rise up in rebellion. Or am I wrong?

[Wyatt Earp]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Red wine and what?

(I mean, beer from the bottle's bad enough.)

[hobbes]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

I'm afraid that was said without enough force, WE.

RED WINE AND WHAT?!

The only thing you're allowed to mix red wine with, is more red wine from the same bottle, or at a push another bottle of the same vintage of the same wine.
Gin and Tonic is a perfectly acceptable beach tipple.

[Wyatt Earp]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Or stock, with chopped carrots, shallots and celery and a bouquet garni of thyme, bay and parsley.

[Bruno]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Sangria?

[Wyatt Earp]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Never cared for it, despite my extreme Hispanophilia. But it doesn't strike me as batshit insane, like putting fizzy water in red wine.

[Bruno]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Sangria has fizzy water in it.

[Guest]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Ishmael, born Matej wrote:

Surely gin and tonics are best suited to the colonial overseer watching over his his malaria infested fields being worked by the unpaid local peoples who will one day rise up in rebellion. Or am I wrong?

Sommer is the one guilty for bringing this whole thing up. She’s the one drinking Gin and Tonic on the beach.

Now I see where she got it from. Them colonialist genes can’t be hidden. I bet the family still has a banana plantation somewhere in the midst of the Amazonian forest, where they have enslaved a poor native tribe and have them fork for peanuts (which they get from another plantation which they’re running further up north in central America)

[Guest]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Wa ayat al Urbi wrote:

Red wine and what?

(I mean, beer from the bottle's bad enough.)

Wa ayat al Urbi wrote:
[quote]Red wine and what?

Almost what Sommer responded with, only she said “wine”, as in red or white.
OK, I am very much aware of that I’m oversimplifying it but I asked her why she loved champagne so much. She has about a crate a week.
I’m perfectly aware that champagne isn’t as simple as white wine mixed with soda water, but part of the reason people drink it is that soda-like sensation.

Back to red whine and soda water, you will find it quite popular in parts down by the Mediterranean. Having a, say Shiraz in the middle of the day, under the sun, in the dry heat, it’s a bit heavy. People mix it with soda water, which gives it a refreshing and cooling effect.

And what do you almost always get when you order red wine in a restaurant? Water, no? And sparkling water is as common as plain water, isn’t it?

And as for beer in a bottle, that's on the beach, not at the beach, by the pool or inside, at the bar.

[Guest]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

By the way, in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, red wine with a tad of soda water is called a Gemischt

[Wyatt Earp]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Bruno wrote:

Sangria has fizzy water in it.

Yes. Amongst other things.

[Eggchaser]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Anyone who sits on the beach drinking anything is suffering from a terminal loss of imagination.

You're in a foreign country, full of wondrous museums, castles, cultural sites, forests, whatever, and you choose to spend your time sat on sand baking your brains out and getting skin cancer? Leave the booze for back at the villa later on and go out and discover stuff!

[Wyatt Earp]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

I don't mind the odd trip to the beach, and the kids love playing in the sea. But yeah, having a drink there feels like we're staying longer than I want to. Splash about, buy an ice cream, move on.

[Reed John]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

I find that I like the ocean, but not the beach so much. When I go to the beach, I spend most of the time swimming in the waves and then maybe a little making sandcastles with my niece and nephew and then maybe we'll throw the football in the waves to see who can make a spectacular catch a split second before being swallowed by the sea, but I don't understand the appeal of just hanging out on the sand and slowly cooking like a roast beef sandwich under the heat lamp at a Hardees.

We never take alcohol to the beach. Maybe a few cold sodas to cool off with and to get the saltwater and sand out of my mouth after I come in from playing with the Boogie board. I agree with WE that bringing booze to the beach implies that you're planning to hang out there for a long time.

[matt j]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Personally, I enjoy going to the beach just to lay out under a shady palm tree reading a good book. Alcohol consumption is often a part of this.

[Spearmint Rhino]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Drink whatever you want on the beach. Jeez.

[Ginger Yellow]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

I'm not a beach person at all, although I might like it now more than I did when I had long hair. Most beaches I've been too are pretty windy and I always hated having my hair blow about. Makes it pretty hard to read too.

[Reed John]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

I don't know how it is where you are, SR, but here, anything one wants to have on the beach is going to have to be carried a few hundred yards from the parking lot, so bringing the whole bar worth of options isn't very practical. Indeed, bringing a bottle of gin, and tonic, and limes and the vessels to put it may not be desirable either.

This is why so many people at the beach I go to in Delaware have a permit to bring their truck/SUV onto the sand. Ostensibly, it's for surf fishing and thus, by law, if you have your vehicle on the beach, you must be actively fishing, i.e. have a line in the water with the rod stuck in the sand. But surffishing is actually a really poor way to catch fish and the real reason so many people do it is that it makes it much easier to bring a cooler full of beer onto the beach.

[Guest]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Spearmint Rhino wrote:

Drink whatever you want on the beach. Jeez.

But where's the fun in allowing people to do that? Everybody would mind their own business, get along great and never argue. What kind of freak world would that be?

[Spearmint Rhino]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

Admittedly I live literally a stone's throw from the water, yeah.

[ad hoc]

You don’t have a bloody Gin and Tonic on the beach

By the way, in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, red wine with a tad of soda water is called a Gemischt

Way back when there was only Yugoslavia I stayed at a campsite in what is now Slovenia (on the coast), and drank loads of rough Balkan sangria that went by the name mish-mash. The owner of the campsite was called Istarski Vodovod, which isn't really relevant to the story, but is, I believe, worth reporting anyway. There was every night a band who played who had learned their mostly English language repertoire phonetically, and at times made small errors ("When the going gets tough" was rendered as "Go and get stoned" for example, and I strongly suspect this wasn't a knowing version of the original, but just a genuine mistake)