Sunday, 8 February 2009
A lovely sleep-in and I was actually awake and up first – a miracle, but then I had been up a fair portion of the night reading. It is nice and sunny with a soft breeze, so breakfast on the hotel rooftop was lovely. As it is Sundays shops open a little bit later here so we had a relaxing start to the day before catching a tuk-tuk to New Gate of the old city and walked through the street stalls and shops making some purchases and having a wander getting prices.
We continued along stopping to have a snack at LMB which was so nice we made a booking for dinner tonight.
We continued up the street, turning onto Chandpol and visiting Jantar Mantar which is obviously undergoing some restoration work as can be seen by all the women sitting there beating the cement to make it smooth. India has a huge population which is involved in manual labour, so although it does make sense to see the women working, it must be absolutely back breaking work.
We went back to the City Palace to visit the museum to find the voucher for the museum was for a different museum not the one in the palace where the ticket was purchased – confused, we were. We left disappointed and also managed to avoid the men playing music to try and get their cobras to stand up – why anyone finds that fun, I have no idea, one of these days you hope the cobra’s turn around the bite the annoying music players.
We decided to walk back to buy Kathy a white top we saw earlier in the day and had not actually seen anything as nice since – miraculously we found the shop and got the top and even more miraciously I found the exact coloured bangles I wanted for Steph and Adelaide.
We caught a cycle-rickshaw to the ATM (it turned out to be quite a way) and I just never get comfortable with the tinniest thinnest man you know cycling me around, sometimes having to get off and push. So we caught a tuk-tuk back to the hotel where we changed and headed back into town to have dinner at LMB, which actually turned out to be a bit disappointing. The service however was fantastic, one of the meals we ordered was a bit hot and Kathy had a glass of water and a waiter from quite a way over the other side of the restaurant saw us and came over and took the dish away, having some yoghurt added and brought it back once it was milder. Kathy is enjoying the food as it is so different to any of the Indian she has had before – not a curry in sight.
Back at the hotel we packed up nearly everything ready for our move tomorrow.