Vacation- Days 1 and 2

It’s been a bit of a challenge to decide exactly how much of my vacation to describe in my blog posts.

The easiest way to go about it is to describe my trip in blocks of days and hopefully manage to make it exciting rather than just a narration of events.

So, here I go.

Day 1

We had planned to catch a 1pm flight from Bangalore to Mumbai (formerly called Bombay). As per the plan, we would have reached Mumbai by 2:30, which would give us ample time to check in and maybe do a quick round of the city.

Unfortunately for all of us, our plane was delayed for 4 hours, leaving us stranded in the spanking new Bengalooru International Airport. We made the best of a bad situation by chilling out with our friends at Barista and the food courts. After generally stuffing our faces, we started looking around in the stores and generally doing some window-shopping and contemplating some purchases. The snubnose and her friend spent time running around from one side of the departure lounge to the other. Mr. K tried his best not to get stressed what with his runaway shopping-mad wife and his daughter who was running around getting under everyone’s feet. Thankfully, before any financial or physical damage was done, we were called for boarding 🙂 .

Oh, I think the new airport rocks! It’s a little on the small side, but nevertheless, it was really clean, and well-maintained.

We reached Mumbai past seven, got stuck in rush-hour traffic and basically reached our rooms too pooped to do anything. Our hotel was on Bandra Hill Road, and after check-in, we just rushed to the nearest restaurant to fill up our insides with large quantities of street food.

Mumbai is famous for its cheap and plentiful street food known as chaat. And throughout our stay in Mumbai, this was what we primarily indulged in. Mr. K never ate anything other than pav bhaajis, while the snubnose and I lagaoed the yummy bhel puris.

Day 2

The purpose of our trip to Mumbai was to attend a friend’s wedding. Because of this, we really did not do too much sight-seeing. Day 2 mostly went in random street-shopping in Bandra’s Hill Road. We came back with some awesome junk jewelery for the snubnose and myself. The stuff here was totally dirt-cheap. I normally don’t buy fake jewelery finding them to be too expensive for fakes, but here I could totally indulge. Also, the designs were very beautiful and intricate, very much more my style than the stuff you get in Bangalore.

After shopping, and again stuffing ourselves with chaat, we made our way back to the hotel to meet the groom and have a short photo session with him before making our way to the church for the ceremony.

After a little hesitation, I decided to wear the blue churidhar kurta because it was a slightly dressier option. We then took a lot of pictures and then made our way to the church.

Here, I must say that I was totally blown away by the ceremony. Our Hindu rituals are usually so loud, and filled with so much smoke and chatter that it is really difficult to focus on the couple. I loved that a church wedding demands a sense of discipline and quiet. We could actually listen to the very meaningful words uttered by the priest and feel completely involved in their wedding.

The bride’s wedding dress was really beautiful, it was a traditional white gown with a long veil…I was just sighing with satisfaction. The snubnose has also become really affected after seeing her. She started calling her “Princess aunty”, which I thought was really cute. After coming back, she has started wearing more frocks and draping dupattas around her neck so that she can also become Princess Jahnavi 🙂

The reception was total fun. There was an emcee, a DJ, and tons of dancing. We all had a whale of a time dancing the funky chicken and the Christmas polka, apart from the standard Bollywood dancing. The snubnose lost all her inhibitions and hit the dance floor and really let loose. She was the first to get on the floor and the last to come of it 🙂

I really need to find some really nice dance classes for her. She loves dancing so much!

Came back to our rooms completely exhausted. The snubnose continued to dance on the bed, until she dropped of exhaustion.

An eventful 2 days. After all this partying in Mumbai, we were all totally charged up for the second half of our trip – three days by the beach in Goa.