Most Expensive Coke I ever drank!

I once heard a story from one of my readers talking about how he went to Switzerland on business trip. Eager to please his clients, he asked them to suggest the nicest restaurant for them to eat that evening. They went to a quaint dining room on the side of a mountain overlooking the Alps; they were the only people there as the restaurant only served one group per evening. The chef greeted the five men individually then the waiters (there were 5 of them) made conversation with the men in order to get a better understanding of what they wanted to eat and how they liked their meal prepared. There wasn’t a menu, these men could order anything under the sun and they did. One ordered venison another ordered salmon, someone else had beef all of course with truffles, caviar and wine. Each course came with some of the most incredible presentations of food the men had ever seen. They ate and drank for 7 hours having one of the best experiences of their lives, eventually as all good things, the evening came to an end. As the story goes, my reader received the bill for the night of drinking and dining to the sum of CHF 110,000 ! Roughly $95,000!! On the bill there was bank wiring instructions as well, and he had to make the phone call to his banker to make the deposit.

For the past 3 years since I heard this story I dismissed it as a hoax. I thought this guy was trying to show off a bit, but tonight I couldn’t help but think of this story. On this fine evening I was in fact at a fantastic restaurant in the fantastic Hotel Principe Leopoldo, on the side of the Swiss Alps, overlooking the town of Lugano eating venison and having a wonderful time.

After dinner my hosts retired while I decided to enjoy a cigar at the bar. It was at this bar, while smoking a cigar and sipping on a Diet Coke (yep, I love cola and a cigar) that I came to realize that I drank the most expensive diet coke of my life. Had I known that it would be so expensive I would have savoured it more than I did, as it was merely a compliment to a tasty Montecristo cigar. The price of the 250ml bottle Diet Coke was $11 equating to $44 a litre.

Oh, and there weren’t any free refills either…

Here's the website to the hotel that I was at: http://www.leopoldohotel.com/