it just happened that anand was gonna b in goa on a weekend ... and my family has been going through a specially hard time recently and i thot of askin my mom to come along with me for a vacation to goa and she agreed !!! so there i was vacationing wit my mom and boy friend.. wat an european thot na?

the trip there was terrible, we had sleeper seats on the bus which didnt allow us to even sit up ... and thats how we spent 16 looooooong hours. but then we reached goa finally and i caught a view of the sea... we reached hotel delmon where anand was and freshened up and went in search of a new hotel ...why? cos delmon was in the heart of the city and all we cud see was lots of cashew and wine shops...

after a lot of searching and examining, we finally settled on hotel swimsea ... which had a beautiful view and was affordable too!! then came another round of searching ... this time for a place to eat... cos it was 3.30 and all goan restaurants close at 3 there!! so here we were in panjim - the seafood and malwan food capital and u know where we ate? Delhi Darbar!! we made sure this mistake was not repeated again however ... we feasted on amazing seafood every time after that!!

then we headed on to the following beaches: vagator - where we stood on the rocks and felt the waves on us !!

Anjuna - where bargaining is an art

calangute - which is horribly crowded and completely beautiful... it also has a janpath-like shopping stretch there!! after this we went to a hanuman mandir and then headed home.

A fresh sea food dinner later... we ended our first day here...

the second day we headed on to the chapel of francis xavier (where his body is) and saw the cathedral next to it too ... beautiful old churches .. wish someone wud restore them!! then we headed on to the next religious destinations namely the mangeshi and shantadurga temples (astonishing the number of temples in a place so dominantly catholic).

Then came the only so-called disappointment of the trip cos when we reached the state-owned spice gardens which were closed cos of the rains. but it was all ok cos v got more time to spend over our next seafood oriented meal!!

and then we headed to "ancestral goa" where they hav recreated old goa and the way they used to live in portuguese times.. thats all good but they hav put these amazing robotic women as guides who rattle off recorded gems like "in earlier times there were no newspapers so there used to be a khabri who wud go from village to village telling latest news" but to be fair, they had tried to recreate it as authentically as they cud!!

then v got on a sea cruise which was also s'posed to have folk dances but mostly there were horribly unfit people dancing vulgarly to latest himesh yuckiya songs... but we stayed on the lower deck where there was no one .. just us and the sea !! and we got our feet wet in the rain that was splashing in from the sides ... it was sooo amazing!!

then we headed to colva beach and watched 2 goa ppl fishing for fishies which had been caught in the sea current an brought into the shallow pools made along the beach.

we ended off our second day in goa by going shoppin for i love goa tees and found a beautiful flower market right in the middle of a dense marketplace!! and retired back amazed by all the discoveries of this day..

the last day was just caught up with getting ready to get to the airport on time and i got a huge reality check wit mrs.scatty's fone call!! but all's well ... i went to goa didnt i?????

and now i have a dream ... a dream to go back to beautiful, green, romantic, unapologetic and truly content Goa.

written by  ipshi on July 13, 2006 from Panaji, India
from the travel blog: My hop, skip, jump visit to Goa
tagged Temple, Beach, Goa and Church
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