My Kingdom for a Blog (Nov 3)

A lazy morning. Today we try to get caught up on all the goings on. We ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant (since it was easy). The restaurant here has Italian Wood Oven pizza if you can imagine! We didn't have pizza for breakfast but we may try some later.

We wandered into town and started blogging. The first place we went to was really, really slow and I was having some problems saving, then the whole site went down... I was a tad frustrated so we left.

Onto another cafe, more typing, more problems, more frustration... it seems the Universe didn't want updates today.

Brad had gone exploring rather than watch me type so, when I gave up, I went outside and stood on the corner waiting for him to return. The flow of activity is constant and quite a spectacle to watch. It would be perfect for sitting on a patio and watching it all go by. Unlike other places we've been, I was entirely unharassed. One rickshaw asked me if I needed a ride and one guy asked if I needed a shoe shine. Granted my boots are a bit dusty but so is the rest of me!

Brad returned shortly and as we stepped off the curb we started to realize how easily we had acclimatized to the constant horns and traffic flow. It seemed like nothing to dodge between trucks and rickshaws and mules, amid horn blowing to get across the street. It's not unusual for cars to pass within inches of you but no one ever seems to get hit.. and the cars really never get going all that fast. Even the dogs and cows know how to dodge traffic!

We gave up on blogging and decided to get some lunch. The guide books recommended a place called Chopsticks at the south end of the Mall (the main street). It was small, like most of the restaurants here, they remind me of the restaurants in High Park. Long, narrow and max 10 tables. The menu had Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan food. Who knew that chow mien would taste so good sitting in a restaurant in India while listening to Bob Marley on the sound system.... check that .... where are we again??

After lunch we stopped to make one more try and get a bit of emailing done. More frustration so we decided to give up and check out a few hotel alternatives.

There are lots of dogs here that no one really seems to own. Every now and then one will just decide that you look like you're going somewhere interesting and start walking with you. We had that happen while we started scouting out hotels. This dog would even stop and wait for me if I was taking too long to climb the hills. It was very sweet.

We were looking for a hotel that was still nice but a bit less expensive than the Mayflower. Some of the ones we looked at were a bit dodgy and I just can't bring myself to stay somewhere that I could create a science experiment in the bathroom. We decided on a place called Sunshine Guest House.

Sunshine is an old Raj era building with separate dressing rooms, high ceilings, in room fireplaces and large verandas overlooking the gardens. We can only get hot water in the morning but the place has character.

We headed back to Chopsticks for dinner... we couldn't help it, the Hot and Sour and Wonton soups were just too good to pass up!

Back to our room at the Mayflower for one more night of luxury. It's quite cold at night so the space heater is nice (although too small for the room). A little BBC and off to bed.