Thursday in Pune - Sandwich's Blog Post

Thursday, Pune

The domestic airport terminal is just as nice as the international, only upstairs. The whole thing has been running in the red, according to the news. They are going to beginning levying a usage fee for every transit through the airport: arriving, departing and transit through. Just a little political news for you.

We had an uneventful flight to Pune, in which we both slept some more and ate a nice Indian breakfast (still not as good as on Emirates, even tho this was Air India. Collected bags and the hotel driver was waiting for us with a little sign.

It's only a short drive from the airport to our hotel. They didn't have our room ready, so they put us in a temporary room. We showered (ahhhhh!) and changed and I unpacked Roopa's things.

When we tried to connect to the Internet, we found it was disconnected due to non-payment of bill, or so the Airtel website said. Bummer.

We walked to the restaurant (and only got a little lost). Good thing I had looked it up on the map before we left home! I have been so laid back and unorganized about this trip! It literally was the one thing I did to prepare. I didn't even email brad my flight info until I was in Dallas!

We were there about 20 min early so we ordered Masala tea which came in huge cups (yay!). First to arrive was Sarah and her husband, who I didn't even know were coming! She is also a homeschooler I've met once or twice online. Roopa had mentioned she might invite her, but Sarah lives an hour away so she hadn't been sure she'd come.

Anyway, they were super nice. Her husband only stayed long enough to make sure we were nice people, and then he left for an appointment. Roopa arrived shortly and we had the nicest time! The restaurant was Italian owned by Westerners of some sort(we didn't see any employees but Indians) and had a cafe-type menu with sandwiches, wraps, crepes, croissants. Leslie and I had crepes that came with an amazing alfredo sauce! We hung out there for THREE hours, talking!

Roopa is Indian, raised in America, married to an American. Sarah is American, married to an Indian and living here for 12 years. We talked about homeschooling, our kids, adoption (Sarah has adopted 4 kids and Roopa has 3 adopted siblings), the red-light districts and that trade (more horrible than you thought you knew), the abuse of women here, shopping, Jesus, living in India, --your typical female conversation!

When we finally wrapped it up, we took two rickshaws and went shopping! They took us to a huge mall (for India!). We shopped together for about an hour, then they had to leave us. We might go to Sarah's on Saturday as she invited us and we might meet up again with Roopa in Delhi, as they are headed there Friday.

Leslie and I caught a rickshaw with the help of a sweet Indian girl. The first three we tried on our own refused to use the meter (which Roopa said they should) and wanted to charge us 140 Rs. to the next place. The first rickshaw the girl tried saw it was for us and also refused the meter, saying he wouldn't do it for an Indian either. The next one she tried didn't see us and so agreed to 40Rs. Luckily, Roopa had emailed me places to shop, AND directions, so I was able to give the driver a landmark. Which was a hospital. Which s where he took us. And dropped us off.

The store (FabIndia) was right across a very busy street and we were able to find it. We tagged along with an older man to cross the street. (he kept looking at us as we sidiled up to him and once he realized what we were doing, he said, "use caution!" meaning "I am not responsible if you are killed!"

We didn't find anything at FabIndia and were out of there in 10 min.

Next we rickshawed to Lifestyle, where Leslie found a few things. This was a 4-story department store like Pune Central. Finally, we gave up there and ended up back at Pune Central and she found the rest of what she needed. She was shopping a huge list of things people had asked her to buy.

By now we were ready to collapse and it was 5:00 pm. We walked back to the hotel, me dragging a drooping Leslie behind, but it was really too close to justify a rickshaw.

We went to our new, official room and found that we'd been issued a king bed! Leslie fell into a chair while I went to the desk and arranged (and previewed) a new room. We got moved and collapsed on our twin beds to wait for the luggage.

Still no Internet. "Tomorrow, Madam". Right.

We had thought about going out to Prem, the nice restaurant we ate at on our last night in feb. but they don't open until 7:30. Then we decided it was really important to find out how the room service food was, in case we need to order in when we have Naveen. We discovered a) it takes 45 min., b) it was really good!

And then we fell into bed and slept all night!

Comments

heather said…
I love FabIndia! Thanks for the Emirates tip, too.
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