Our first morning in Goa, we let ourselves sleep in a bit and grabbed breakfast around 9:30 in the lobby. The hotel had a huge buffet of local Indian foods so we loaded up (as much as I could, the food was starting to take a toll on me!). The highlight for sure was the homemade dosa and the chai.
We headed out via auto (with doors! the fear of falling out was long gone) to the Fontainhas neighborhood in Panaji. It’s from the old colonized time-period where the Portuguese settled in India and there is still a decree today where the houses stay in the colorful Portuguese colors and tiles. It was so fun and reminded me a bunch of my trip to Lisbon and Porto! We walked around, did some shopping and saw a beautiful, white church before deciding to head back to outrun the rain. Even tropical Goa wasn’t immune to the monsoon.
Portugal or India? It was hard to tell!
We grabbed a lunch of thali which is basically a huge platter of small dishes, aka dim sum/tapas for one! We watched the rainfall and hung out at the hotel for the afternoon. When the rain finally paused for a break, we headed to the rooftop pool for a little swim (during which, it proceeded to downpour again!) and then we treated ourselves to a spa afternoon - pedicure for Claire, facial for me, and (much needed) fancy shave for Dad! Plus, the tea we had was by far the tastiest we had tasted in India!
trying all the thali
We enjoyed a dinner of dim sum and sushi before heading to bed as the rain kept pouring.
Our last full day in Goa, we had another tasty breakfast in the hotel before heading to Velha Goa (Old Goa) to see the churches. We got caught in a monsoon downpour, lost an umbrella to the wind and rain, and took shelter in the church museum. Once the rain stopped, we headed to the actual church and looked around before the next wave of monsoon. Since all of the other places we wanted to visit were far away and/or outside, we had a change of plan and headed back to the hotel for tea and an early dinner.
[chai] never want to go back to drinking regular tea!
Goa sure was green and beautiful, unfortunately, the monsoon got the best of us. We did still have a blast and it was a nice, relaxing break before we head back north!
Feeling damp,
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