It turned out that we really needed the sleep - we all slept for over twelve hours! We live in a relatively quiet area of Bangalore, but even so, because we have single-glazed windows we are usually woken by the sound of squawking birds, squeaking squirrels, the local mosque's call to prayer, or the little kid next door complaining at his parents. Being in a room with double-glazing makes such a difference!
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| The hotel provides several different sizes of bathrobes and slippers |
We staggered down for breakfast which was decent enough - with all the efficiency and polish of Disney in evidence pretty much everywhere here the service in the hotel restaurant was surprisingly slap-dash, but it was good enough for us. One thing we learned: if you ask for a glass of water it'll be warm; if you want cold water you have to ask for a bottle.
We had quite a bumper day at the park today. Unfortunately I forgot my camera so there will be no pics from today, but it was nice to enjoy without thinking about taking photos. In fact because our phones don't work here we've been very technology-free which is really refreshing. We started at Toy Story land, where Dara, Emma and I stood in line for about 45 minutes to ride the Slinky Dog ride, while Toby went off to do the daredevil rides - the soldier parachute drop and the RC car loop, both of which looked too crazy for either of his parents to go on. The staff were great - they let him get to the front of the line really quickly because he was on his own, so by the time we were about to get on our ride he was already done. However when we saw him he was walking along a path looking pretty distressed due to a combination of not being able to find us and not inconsiderable nausea from the rides. However once he saw us he chirped up a bit, and we were set to try more things. Highlights were the It's A Small World ride - a kind of canal boat ride with musical animatronic puppets showing scenes from all round the world; a fun car ride and the African boat river ride. It was a lot of queueing and to be honest although I'm not one for crazy fairground rides they were mostly pretty tame, but it was good fun just to be there with the family, and to enjoy people-watching.
As with yesterday we're really enjoying the food, and being in a place with decent standards of food hygiene. It was great to have safe cut fruit and breakfast, and we had delicious American-style hot dogs and corn dogs for lunch, with no fear of food poisoning (the hot dogs threatened to be less authentic when they were offered with either chili topping (somewhat authentic) or with mushroom sauce (um…) but we just had them plain with onions and relish. For dinner we went to a more Chinese place where we had great soup, rice, sweet and sour pork, and Toby and Dara shared a beef noodle dish - it looked not at all like what Dara would like as it had a lot of sauce but she was a big brave girl and tried it and loved it.
Speaking of Dara she once again got tons of attention from people here. Lots of people waving and saying hello to her and taking photos. She's not totally crazy about it although I think being in India prepared her for it and she's not too bad at ignoring the attention.
We decided to stay till closing time to see the firework show, which meant getting pretty chilly after the sun went down. It probably got down to about 10ºC which is the coldest any of us have been in ages, but it was worth it for the great fireworks over the castle - a fun way to end Christmas Eve. Of course it's all a bit saccharine and made up, but it was fun being in the big crowd oohing and aahing at the display, then all heading together for the exits. Now we're back in the hotel room the kids are pretty wiped out and my arms hurt from carrying Dara so much of the day, but I hope that it's been a pretty decent day for us all.
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