Hey... Did you see that?? (Nov 8)

We slept in and it was most excellent!
Our room is on the front of the hotel, just above street level, so it's a bit noisy but atleast we weren't bumping around in a bus! The rooms here are quite comfortable and clean and the staff is very friendly.

Hunger got the best of us and we got up and went down to the restaurant in the hotel. Toast, tea, porridge, juice, eggs - how continental (and filling!!)
We were sitting next to a window in the restaurant, it's on the second floor, looking out over the mountains... when a monkey walked by on the window ledge! They also told us to keep our window shut in our room because the monkeys might trash the place - how crazy is that!



After breakfast we grabbed our guide books and set about trying to get a lay of the land. The books indicated that this is a popular destination and would have tons of souvenir shops. They weren't kidding. We'd seen more Caucasian tourists in and hour here than in 3 weeks of traveling... and every shop seems to be selling handmade Tibetan handicrafts. There is no end to the souvenirs you could buy.

We stopped at the Green Cyber cafe and checked emails and blogged a bit. This place had the fastest connection so far ... and the most reasonably priced!

More wandering about. There are several bookstores stocked with books on anything you can imagine. Of course, there is a large concentration of books by the Dalai Lama - some of which are only for sale on the Indian Subcontinent... so we bought 2. (We shouldn't really be allowed into bookstores unattended.)

There are Italian restaurants (Nick's Italian Kitchen is apparently a favourite of Richard Gere), Thai, Tibetan, Indian... so many choices! There are also movie theatres (we'll have to check them out at some point) and lots of yoga and massage.

We stopped in one restaurant and had hummus and falafel (and it was really good!) We had a 'strong beer' that said on the label that it was 5 - 8% alcohol. I guess they couldn't decide! (And I'm pretty sure that's not all that strong by Canadian standards).

We were feeling incredibly lazy so we went back to the hotel. We moved into a room on the back of the building looking over the mountains so it should be much quieter and we'll get the sun all day to warm up the room. We hung out and watched TV all night... yes... we got sucked into the TV void. Hey, when you don't have TV, it can be a treat just to sit and watch TV all night!