Day 1 – Shop all night long in Goa

The day began early with the 6 AM Shatabdi which really makes me proud. The breakfast was ‘Wow’ - Paneer Cutlets, Parantha, Wada Sambhar, Boiled eggs, Omelets, corn flakes and baked vegetables. You don’t realize when you get to Delhi, in between the various courses.

We took the flight to Goa, but another day, I would love to take the train. Have heard great things about the scenery. The flight was uneventful, other than 4 babies aboard the flight, all of whom synced to produce the highest frequency baby cries I have ever heard.

I called the hotel to ask for a pickup earlier in the day and they asked for Rs 1800, which seemed high. We got the pre-paid taxi from the airport for Rs 900.

The drive to the hotel, Lazy Lagoon in Arpora (near the Baga beach), was delightful. Made me ecstatic, and brought that awesome happy feeling that comes when you see less traffic, lots of trees and beautiful roads. Rubal got the mapmyindia GPS working, and we confirmed the route suggested by it, with the route that the driver was taking us on. We plan to use this as we drive around to the extreme north and the extreme south.

The Hotel had a very inviting swimming pool , considering the 32 degrees temp outside, and we jumped in as soon as we dropped the luggage. We rested the rest of the evening, and debated going out vs. ordering room service at around 9 PM. We decided to go for a walk and the next 3 hours were outstanding!

The small road to Baga beach is surrounded by restaurants with innovative lights, shops that sell everything from books, to magic tricks and of course bags and clothes. There are kashmiris, Tibitians, Rajisthani .. I had read a lot about this being the off season but all the restaurants were full of people and there were quite a few restaurants.

We saw Britto’s while walking, and as was in our list to check out, we stepped into the sand to the beach side restaurant. Britto’s isn’t your extremely posh restaurant, but its worth checking out. We drank the watermelon juice, which was definitely the best we had every had (update : Over the next couple of days – we have concluded that all beach shacks have great fresh juices, the restaurants in the city, not so much). The Sea food platter was decent – the baked crab , and prawn cocktail delicious. The Chicken cafreal wasn’t anything to write about, other than the fact that it made a good dip for the chips.

We went down to the beach from Britto’s and saw about a hundred shacks and restaurants lining the beach. There were quite a few people, and it didn’t seem like it was 11.30 PM. There were many quiet spots on the beach though and Rubal had a good time playing with the waves – getting scared, and scaring it.

We walked for a long time, noticing the different beach shacks – one of them had lamps made of beautiful bottles, and was called Bottles Shack!

We browsed through a few shops, and Rubal pointed out how, retail therapy goes on so late in the late in Goa. You never have to worry about shops closing at 8 PM. We took a taxi back, at around mid night, and it felt strange going back, looking at people still moving around as if it was 7 PM in the evening. I felt I was going to sleep early, something which never happens when I am in Chandigarh.