Palace, Pool, Paneer

12^th October 2018

When selling the idea of three weeks in India to me, Rory pitched the second half as the relaxing half of the holiday. With that in mind we had a bit of a lazy morning before heading over to the city palace. Again, I knew very little about the palace but for a mere £3 we explored dozens of elaborate rooms and beautiful courtyards. I know so little about Indian history but they sure know how to build a palace!

On the way back to the haveli we spent some time exploring the smaller side streets and picked up a few more trinkets to bring home – after some stellar negotiating I managed to pay £6 rather than £7 for an elephant stamp and some ceramic door handles. Again, I was probably ripped off but I genuinely didn’t mind.

We spent the rest of the day lazing by the pool – I think I touched on it before but despite all our holidays, we have never really had a relaxing/pool side holiday so it was a nice novelty! Feeling very brave we ventured out in search of a travel bag – we only brought hand luggage on this trip (as it’s so much easier to travel with) but we have booked bags in to the hold on the way back. Our recent purchases are making our bags bulge so we went from shop to shop trying to get a decent price for a small duffel bag. The vast majority of people started at £15 and as soon as we went to leave they were dropping their prices to £8, then £4, then asking what we’d pay. Not in the mood to haggle, we headed back to a bag we saw earlier in the day and happily paid the extortionate price of £5 for what is a very pretty and very practical purchase!

A final meal by the lake was in order and now that we’ve taken the Indian cookery class, we were dab hands at ordering. Who knew that cottage cheese could be so delicious in a curry? (And no, I’m not joking. We haven’t eaten any meat on this trip so paneer, or cottage cheese, is a genuine treat – how times have changed!)