The Train is a Pain

Yesterday Will and I left Goa on what claimed to be the "Express Train" to Mumbai. It was supposed to take 6 hours. 3 meals and 14 hours later we arrived at a train station 2 hours outside of Mumbai. At that point it was 1am which made it hard to find a taxi. But the lovely local rickshaw boys, who were quite tipsy by that time, assured us they had friends who could get us to Mumbai. The rickshaw boys were quite drunk by 1am, but bought us a water bottle and soda to befriend us, so we ended up chatting with them a bit to kill some time. They actually did produce a taxi, and a legitimate one at that, by 2am and we were off to Mumbai.
Once we were there we found that our hotel actually cost twice as much as advertised in our little travel book and Will, WONDERFUL Will, had the taxi driver and his "buddy" drive us around to multiple hotels to check out prices and rooms. We finally settled for a hotel that was a bit out of our price range, but on the low end of things out of the 5 hotels that we saw, plus they agreed to let us stay past check out time to catch our plane at midnight tonight. Will and I finally got to sleep at 4:30am after a long day of train rides and hotel hunting. We are currently sitting in our little hotel room, with AC thank goodness!, and trying to catch up with folks back home.
This is our last day in India!
Can you believe it?
Tonight we head off to Denmark for our last 2 weeks and then we are home on June 29th! We'll be blogging as much as we can for the rest of our trip, as we enjoy spending time with our Danish friends.

Goan, Goan, Gone!

I gotta tell ya, Will is just loving my play on words with this title;-)
2 nights ago was our last night in Goa. We had an absolutley amazing time, restful, fun...romantic!
On our last day it started to rain as we headed to the train station, assuring us that it was indeed time to get going. We really enjoyed this place though, and hope to return someday, maybe with friends.

Ewww....Eel!

We saw this big fella, or lady, on the beach. Its about 4 feet long with part of it's tail missing. Will thought it would be a good idea for me to hold it up to give you all a size reference. Sorry folks, no can do- gross!

Peace and Quiet

It just continues to amaze me how often we found ourselves almost completely alone on the beaches in Goa. The farther we headed north, the more empty the beaches became. We did see some guys fishing, which I thought was pretty cool, and came around to one beach with huge jagged rocks and watched as the sea crashed against them. The water is warm here, but not quite pretty. Our friend Weegie was here a few months ago and called the beaches a tropical Jersey shore. The water is brown here, and actually less clear than the waters in NJ. The sand is darker though, and the dirt is red inland, plus because of the Monsoon the waters are always churning, and the current actually makes it too hard to swim in some areas. Perfect for surfing I'm sure, which our friends Jeremy and Joshua might love, but we stay about waist deep in the waters to be safe, sticking to a little body surfing now and then.

Meeting Markos

Yesterday we met this nice guy from Finland. His name is Markos, and we spent most of our day hopping around to deserted beaches together. Dogs generally tended to fallow us around too, so we had multiple friends by the end of the day. It's funny to report that all that happened in one whole day is that we went beach hopping with a new friend, after doing so much work for the past few months. But we are truly resting up here, which is exactly what we came to do.

Going around Goa

Friday we headed out on our bike and toured a bit around Goa, checking out some beaches and old forts. The weather is balmy here, and Saturday it poured for 24 hours straight, keeping us at the Siolim house watching movies and playing video games for most of the day. At night we ate by candle light as the power had gone completely out by that time....very romantic;-) The rain also encouraged a few small frogs to visit us in our room. Will felt they made the place a bit crowded and promptly escorted them back to the great outdoors.
Yesterday we continued our tour around Goa, stopping when it rained at little cafes to pass the time playing card games. We headed into a major town close by called Panjim witch only made me more glad that we had chosen the lest developed village of Siolim to stay in, as the bigger touristy places offered only more crowded and dirty beaches.
Today we head out on the bike again to go explore northern Goa.

Glorious Goa

Little Siolim

Siolim House

Will and I decided to treat ourselves for the end of our trip and head down to the beaches of Goa. It’s low tourist season down here, as the Monsoon rains have just begun and the humidity is high. When I was hunting for a place to stay Will thought it would be really cool if we could find one of the old Portuguese estates to stay in, so I started looking for “Boutique Hotels” hoping I might find a nice match.

When I came across the Siolim House I thought it would be the perfect place to stay, until I saw the price tag for each night which was a bit out of our range. However, the Siolim House owners also ran a smaller place named Little Siolim…of course;-), which was closer to the price we were looking for. Siolim house is a 7 bedroom estate, where as Little Siolim is a 3 bedroom villa. Not quite as grand, but it looked cute, had a pool and we were hopeful that maybe we would have the place to ourselves since it is the low season for tourists.

After a quick 2 and half hour flight to Goa we were picked up by our taxi and whisked along the coast line to norhter Goa. As we drove our taxi driver got a call and handed me the phone. It was the receptionist from the Siolim House asking if we would mind moving to the larger house for the same price we would have payed for Little Siolim. We quickly sayed yes and were thrilled to pull up to the old estate along the quite country drive of the quante Siolim village. Will and I were handed 2 glasses of fresh squeezed mango juice upon arrival and were given the grand tour of the estate. It was then that Will and I began to realize that we were the only quests at the house! So, for about as much as we would pay for Motel 6 in the states we are currenlty staying in a fully staffed, 7 bedroom, historical, Portuguese estate house in Goa! Pretty awesome!!! Check out the links above to see some photos of where we are staying. If you have an extra 2 minutes check out the pictures of how they rehabbed the house we are staying in. It's pretty impressive.

Last night Will and I went out for our first walk, quickly discovering that we should always carry our umbrella in the Monsoon season. But it was fun to giggle under the trees as we got soaked by the rain. Later we headed back to our estate for a homemade shrimp curry which was AMAZING, and then settled into our four post, super comfy bed for a restful night.

This morning Will and I woke up and had breakfast, just the 2 of us of course, of fresh pineapple, french press coffee and poached eggs. At the table we were greeted by our host to arrange using their motorcycle for the day to zip around and see the sites. For those who care to know, like the boys in Will's family;-), Will is going to riding around on an Enfield Bullet which has a 350 cc engine. The fun thing is that all of the gears and brakes are on the opposite sides, and we will be driving on the opposite side of the road. Don't worry mom's, people ride pretty slow around here only getting up to about 35 miles an hour.

We are clearly already enjoying our lovely little vacation, and it helps that they have wireless internet here so we can keep you all posted on the remainder of our travels.

Love to all,

Lauren