Our year in India

Monday 30 July 2012

Last day in India!

We are moving today!
We are leaving India and from now on are gonna be living in Stavanger, Norway!
It will be a huge change, but I think a good one.

This week we have visited all the nicest places that we can think of because we will miss it so much!
And last night we went to our favourite restaurant of all times - Varq.

We had a great evening and when we wanted to pay they said oh hold on we got something for you!
They came with a cake (made from Stephens favourite Gulab Jamun ) and champagne AND we got pressies!!!
A tea set for me and a nice leather bound calender for Stephen, how lovely!

This is the small touches that we obviously won't get in Norway and we will miss alot!

Us at "our" table.

Stephens starter, the Varqi Crab

Palette Cleanser, sorbet.

My fish

Cake!

So this will be the last post from India but in the coming weeks we will put up "best of"
And also we won't blog about Norway because to be honest I don't think it would be fun reading about it!

Sunday 29 July 2012

Dom Perignon 2003 Vintage Launch Evening

As we said before we wanted to leave India in style!
So when we got invited to a Dom Perignon evening in the Taj Mahal Hotel to celebrate the launch of the 2003 vintage champagne in India we thought why not!

And wow what a night it was!
It is normally about 50 people at these events, but this time we were only about 24 and it was held in the 'Chambers' an invite only area of the Hotel. We had the Hotel General Manager, President of Dom Perignon-Hennessy India, Diplomats, members of the top families in Delhi and us...! Funniest thing was all evening we were introduced to people and they all said what a pleasure it was to finally meet Mr and Mrs Wines as they had heard so much about us.

The champagne was flowing all night, we started with the 2002 vintage and moved on to the 2003 during the meal. We had a lovely 5 course dinner, me veggie and Stephen had salmon, scallops with beluga caviar, and lamb.

At the end of the evening we said could we please have the bill, as we normally have to pay for these events. They responded - Oh no Madam! You don't have to pay for tonight you are our special guests this evening!
Even better!

We had a great night and after a few bottles of great champagne we wobbled home!

The invitation

Pictures the photographer took.

Me in action.

Tuesday 24 July 2012

Jodhpur the blue city!

Last weekend we went to Jodhpur, the time has now come for us to leave and that was our last trip in India before moving to Norway!
So we decided on doing it in style- no other way really!

Jodhpur is called the blue city, and it really was blue !

We stayed in the fantastic palace called Umaid Bhawan. Wow it was amazing! It was truly the most beautiful place we have ever stayed in before! And the breakfast was enormous but gorgeous! We ordered pancakes, and got toast, orange juice, fresh fruit, croissants, muffins, cheese, eggs, bacon, ham, yoghurt's and tea! haha it just kept coming!
At breakfast you had many friends, there were the peacocks walking about, little birds eating from your table as soon as you turn your head and squirrels running around your feet waiting for some bread!

The first day we just took it easy, stayed by the pool and then had a massage for two in the spa with a rose bath and bottle of champagne to finish it of!
Then a lovely meal in the evening.
The second day we went to the Mehangarh Fort, Jaswant Thada and a local market and walked around, we bought some things that local ladies had made and also some new amazing bead spreads and sofa throws.
On the third and last day we just enjoyed our time at the palace, had a long breakfast and tried to eat as much as possible! and then just stayed around the pool. As no one else was there we got very good service, every 20 minutes we got a juice, cold, towel or cold water to drink.
There were only three more couples at the hotel as it is off season so everyone working at the hotel knew where we were at any given time!

Great town, cleaner, more quieter and very friendly! And the palace was amazing, 10 out of 10!

The blue city.

Our palace in the distance.

The Umaid Bhawn Palace from the garden

The lobby.

Our room.

Our amazing bathroom in the turret!

Peacocks at breakfast.

Our breakfast, notice the little bird in the right corner.

squirrel

Pigeon Master, his job was to chase the pigeon away whereever we went.

This man got payed to smoke Opium every day to show tourists.

One of the bars.

Sunbathing by the pool

The spa.

Mummy and baby monkey!

The market.

Wine (s) time!

At night.

Wednesday 18 July 2012

Honeymoon in Venice!

We went to Venice on the Monday morning after our wedding for our final honeymoon.
It was a magical place! So nice, clean, pretty but so busy! People everywhere!

We stayed in a beautiful hotel there called Hotel Danieli, which was a 14th century palace on the Grand Canal right next to St Marks Square. They where all so friendly and lovely. We did get an upgrade with Stephens platinum card, so we got a better room and free breakfast up on the terrace (the breakfast normally costs 39 Euros/per person per day!!)

On the first day when we arrived we went for a walk and got lost. Everything looks the same, bridges, water and no roads are straight so you think you are going one way and end up somewhere else! But it was so much fun! We saw more things then than we did the day after when we had a map and a route pointed out for us :)
On the second day we visited the museums and saw all the art and swords etc. Very interesting.
On the third day we went out to a factory that makes glass art the Muano glass art.
We saw how the made the different colours that would later go into the vases, sculptures, glasses etc. So cool! The oven they uses are over 1000 Degrees warm. We were then taken up to the showrooms where we could see all the collections, lucky we "only" came home with a beautiful lovers sculpture rather than with a boat, vase, glasses and what else Mr Stephen found that he liked! They are engraving it with our names and the date we got married and sending it to UK for us.
In the afternoon we went to an other island called Burano and it was so pretty! Colourful houses, water and cute restaurants everywhere! Loved it!

We also had time to eat in some pretty cool restaurants ! The first night we had dinner in the hotel on the top floor, a restaurant called Terrace Daneili. It had the best view of Venice!!!
The second night we went to a Michelin star restaurant on the Saint Marc's Square called Quadri. Great food and lovely waiters, but you always get little extra tasters that you don't order, and it is always things I don't like!! But it is so rude not to eat it! This time Stephen had two of everything!
The third night we first had an amazing gondala ride, I know it is cheesy but had to be done! Then went to a nice little place on a square that did the usual, pasta, pizza, fish and meat. And the food was great but the waiters were so rude and more like the Italy I remember! Won't recommend it to anyone! But you got lots and lots of food!! So we were super stuffed afterwards! Walking home to the hotel we could feel a storm coming, so we stopped at the square and took lots of pictures of the lightning, amazing pictures when we managed to time it right!!

On the forth day we flew back to Delhi! First to Istanbul, waited 5 hours and then to Delhi, we flew over thunder and lightning which was pretty cool as I have never seen it from above before!