Grace & Pills 'extended holiday' What we be mostly doin - innum

Ahhh, to our final stop in wonderful India... a little known (!!) place called Goa
 
We arrived in the fashion we'd grown accustomed - on a train but at a station we'd not intended.... we'd planned to go to Margao but we actually got off the train early on a whim to go to Palolem beach and it all worked out for the very best, phew!!
 
We bundled off at a station with a name I can't pronounce let alone spell and weren't sure it was the right one. No one sat around us knew where we were, including the old man I was sat next to who'd spent the 6 hour journey reading out loud from a book of religious scripture whilst continuously spinning his rosary beads round and round. Not sure if it was me & Pill or train journeys that made him nervous! Luckily, it was right station as the 4 million rickshaw drivers who descended 2 seconds later confirmed.
 
Pill had fun deciding which hotel we'd stay in, the hotel owners compete for custom as soon as you get to the beach front and it's easy to get a very good deal. We stayed a 2 second walk from the beach really near to all the restaurants and we even had a HOT shower. Great!
 
The beach front itself is about a 30 minute walk (Remember I walk slowly..) end to end and all the way along there's places to eat, drink and even play pool (if you're that way inclined) We basically had a mini-relaxing-holiday at Palolem, not doing the usual running around seeing sites thing. Pill enjoyed lazing on the beach but didn't so much enjoy the 3rd degree sunburn he got on his foot - bright red, blisters and swollen, the works... silly boy AGAIN! It was shade all the way for me - but interestingly I've got the better tan.. go figure! It's a really beautiful place, lovely people and really relaxing. Good food too.
 
After 3 days we caught the local bus to Margao to change to another local bus traveling up the coast to Panjim.
Spent a lovely 2 hours to Margao chatting to Paul (from London) and Benjamin (from Stuttgart, Germany) about India, traveling around the country and all the weird and wonderful things we'd seen and done. Everyone comes away with interesting stories!
We parted ways at Margao and got another bus for the 30 minutes to Panjim - an old Portuguese enclave with amazing colonial buildings and a completely different feel to everywhere else in the Country. We stayed in the oldest part of town at a fab place called Afonso - lucky it was open as it was May day and we quickly discovered everything else was shut! The town's main religion is Christian, so we assumed this was why but really I suspect that the it's because the Indians love any excuse to spend the day sleeping and eating!! Don't we all....
 
The town centre is great for just wandering, it's mainly tiny winding streets with enough room for us and a moped to pass and that's it. The waterfront is a bit weird, think they missed a trick there as it's much of nothing and some of the statues are interesting... especially the one of some old Magician randomly hypnotizing some poor unsuspecting female but lovely all the same. Amazing food as well (especially at Viva Panjim) and a tiny tiny little locals place where I had the best samosas in the world... ever!
 
We spent one of our days there at an fantastic place called old Goa - a half hour bus ride along the coast (the first aid box on the bus read fist-aid on the front... what if I hurt my foot?) We spent 5 hours walking around this huge Unesco site, it's full of old churches, convents and shrines - one of which has an embalmed saint on display, he wasn't looking his best. It didn't feel like we were in India because the architecture is so European (except when I had Samosas AGAIN for my lunch...)
We spent our last proper (i.e. not traveling on a train) evening at the 'best' restaurant in town. Pill's food was amazing but not sure about that myself, vegetarianism hadn't registered yet in this Portuguese/Indian hybrid.... but the bottle of wine was lovely!! Definitely had the end of holiday blues and really can't believe how quickly the 2 months had gone. Time really does go by quickly when you're having a blast.... India is wonderful.
 
So to our final sleeper train, no upgrade this time (how very dare they!) and off up the coast to Mumbai. We'd wanted to spend 1 more day there in all it's frantic glory but as the trains were fully booked we had to get the train that got us there with a few hours to spare before the flight. Please don't be late... and it wasn't!
 
What a lovely way to end our time here, a taxi ride through the early morning (5.30 am) traffic of north Mumbai in the half light, watching this mega city wake up with us waving goodbye. Arrived at the airport with plenty of time (phew) to sort ourselves out for the Jet Airways flight to Bangkok.
 
Goodbye India but Hello Thailand!