Miraculously, the bus has been fixed. We don’t know how, we don’t know when, we don’t know where, but we don’t care! It is back on level struts, and we are happy campers as we pile on, rubbing in the Purell Sanjay always supplies every time we re-board our tour transportation.
Heading towards the hotel, we get our first Taj sighting out the bus window! Cool! We will be there tomorrow, weather permitting, but it is so neat to see it right there, sitting across the river! (Ok, so it doesn’t really have the same impact without the photos on the blog…but…what can we say? This is what we have until OLW gets updated or we figure out a new blog interface.)
Traffic is building up as we approach the town of Agra, and it is easy to lose yourself in the sights and scenes passing us as we slowly slog through the town. The open air truck with what looks like a band of course grabs our attention,
…before we turn off the street and into our hotel, the Trident Agra.
Once again here, as in every hotel, but much more so in bigger cities, we need to walk through a metal detector and put our bags through a scanner. Security is relatively tight – and we are assuming it is because of the shooting a few years ago at the Taj hotel in Mumbai – but we aren’t sure –and of course, we totally forget to ask Bhanu.
Regardless, or maybe because off, the security, the hotel is lovely, with a nice bar (we’re headed there!) and what looks like a good restaurant, and very pretty courtyard. After we gather around Bhanu to hand in our passports and receive our room keys, we ask him where the nearest beer and wine store is located, figuring we have enough time to walk or Uber over and back before dinner. He looks at us aghast and says, “Tell me what you want, Sanjay can get it for you!” No, really? Yes, really. Sanjay now becomes not only an excellent assistant on the bus (making sure we Purell when we return to the bus, passing out water and checking baggage), but also our booze-runner! We are tipping big, let me tell you! Alcohol orders placed, we then trek (and it is a trek, because we went the wrong way to our room!) to our room where we wait for our luggage, freshen up, then head back to the bar to meet Maggi and Richard for drinks (our nightly ritual), before our group dinner. Tonight though, Maggi is in the mood for a martini and decides to go for it – which turns out to be in her words “the worst martini she has ever tasted.” I will take her word for it – and just the fact that it came with black olives…well, that sort of says it all, now doesn’t it?
The group dinner is nice, everyone is gelling together well, and we spend a nice hour or so eating (from a very well stocked buffet) and chatting away. After dinner, we head back to the bar, sitting outside in the chilly evening air sipping our drinks and snacking on the spicy chips provided with every round! Out in the courtyard there is a puppet show and a magic show (which I’ve nosed about, and then had to promise the magician we’d come see him). Inside the lobby is an astrologist, where Maggi gets her “fortune” told to here, and that she will return here in 4 years. Sounds like a plan! There is also a potter, throwing pots on a wheel, who invites me to join him, but no way Jose, I’m just not a wheel girl – and a jewelry lady who I think is just selling things, not making them. It’s quite a fun little atmosphere happening around!
We finally make our way out to the magician, who is cute and makes things disappear and does the rope trick. Then we are ushered over to the puppet show, even though we don’t want to go, and end up having a vey enjoyable time watching the puppets beat each other up and listening to one that is making frog or dog barking sounds? Don’t know, but it was cute, and a little girl who joined us thoroughly enjoyed it.
Afterward, we retired to our rooms, looking forward to a good night’s sleep and our tour tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment