We had a fantastic holiday in Candolim, staying in an apartment on the Calangute side of the Football field, if anyone is looking for an apartment or a room, there are hundreds of houses down there letting, especially if you walk behind the new coffee shop that has opened and turn to your right ( I have forgotten the name of the coffee shop) but there are loads of beautiful houses, all with to let signs there, they are off the beaten track, but I find that it is far nicer staying in the actual places that the locals live, rather than staying in beach road. having an apartment was lovely, as we did not have to go out every night to eat, we could cook a snack for ourselves, there are also lots of little shops where you can buy fresh bread, butter, cheese and eggs, at far cheaper prices than the Newtons supermarket in the centre of Candolim. Behind the Coffee shop they have opened a bakery, and the boys used to come along with there pushbikes selling rolls that were still warm, they were beautiful. The samosas were 4 rps each, bread rolls 2 rps, onion bhajis 4rps, honestly if you use the same places as the locals you can live on next to nothing. We had many a great night in the Sea Gull, which is a local restuarant at the side of the football field, the food was beautiful, and they even cooked me omelette and chips because I hate spicy food, the prices we paid was the same as the locals, the only complaint was the toilets they had the hole in the floor, with the handles on the wall, to cling on to. It was OK for a quick P, but for anything else, we were near enough to the apartment for me to go home to use our own toilet.
The internal flight that we used was Kingfisher, I am very impressed with there service, when we used jet, deccan, and I have forgotten the name of the other airline that we have used, when we transferred from Mumbai to Goa, we obviously had excess baggage, as the main flight from the UK gave us 25 kilos, internal flights are only 15 kilos, so we were always charged the excess. Kingfisher charged us nothing, we even queried it with the desk, and they told us that they realised that the baggage difference was because we had travelled from the UK, so they did not charge. Considering we were only on the plane for 55 minutes we were given a 3 course meal plus a bag of goodies, taking off from Mumbai they were 30 minutes late, every one was given a docket that let us have a free drink, on the way back from Goa there was an hours delay because another aircraft (not kingfisher) had engine problems so we could not take off, so we were given further dockets that entitled us to a snack and a drink. They could not apologise enough for the delay. I only wish that they have started the service from the UK to Goa ( or Mumbai) because I would have booked with them.
On reaching Mumbai we stayed for four nights in the Hotel Suba Palace, it was a beautiful hotel, situated in Colaba, just behind the India Gate, by the Regal Cinema, the hotel was so clean, far better than what I expected, it cost about 32 pounds a night, (cheap as far as Mumbai prices are concerned) for a double room, including a brilliant breakfast. (eggs, boiled, fried,poached, or scrambled as much as you can eat, fresh fruit, and also the local curried dishes, my favorites were some sort of pastry that looked and tasted like yorkshire pudding. http://www.hotelsubapalace.com the room was cleaned every day, the staff were very attentative, (a room service of a pot of tea for two cost 50 pence the waiter would not accept a tip, so I gave him a bag of sweets he was in his eliment), but not smarmy waiting for a tip on every occassion, there is a lift in the hotel, and the lift attendant even refused a tip off us because he said "NO THIS IS MY JOB, I AM NOT ALLOWED TO ACCEPT TIPS, WHILST YOU ARE STAYING HERE, ONLY ON THE DAY THAT YOU LEAVE" mind you he did keep on asking us how many more days we had left. The Suba Palace was situated in the right place if you turned to your right when you left your hotel you reached the harbour, we had a trip over to Elephanta Island, the second time we had visited this Island but this time we explored in our own time, and spoke more to the Elephanta Island locals, and we found out more about the Island, and its history, than the first time we visited when we hired a guide. The guide seemed to want to hurry us up so that he could find another sucker to pay for a limited tour. It is an Island with a lot of history, and conflict, if you actually climb to the top of the Island you will find two British Cannons that are the biggest that I have ever seen, how the hell the British got them up there I will never know, we didn't find that out. On the tour of the Island there are monkeys every where they are so intelligent that the local bar and cafe owners have to watch there stock, we actually saw two monkeys causing a fight with each other, whilst the third as the owners attention was distracted nicked a couple of bottles of water and cans of coke, it was so funny to watch I laughed until my ribs started hurting. They know how to open the cns and bottles.
The caves on the Island are beyond, description, until you actually see them them for yourselves you cannot imagine them, they were carved centuries ago, before we had any power tools, and yet the craftsmanship, and detail is beyond belief. The caves have been carved deep into the mountains, by hand tools, there are pillars carved by hand supporting the roofs, and the detail on them is fantastic, there are the fresh spring water pools inside the caves, and it is like entering a Jurrasic park, they are still discovering remains, The Portugese used this island as a defence fort, and used many of the carvings as target practice, you can still see the cannon ball holes they left. Then the British tookover and installed two giagantic cannons, just to see these cannons, and the living accomodation below the cannons, is facinating. I have tried looking on google for further information on how they moved these cannons to the top of this island, but I can find nothing if any onbe else knows anything about this can you plese let me know.
We went to the markets in Mumbai, and they are an experience, they are not like our markets, where every thing is sold in one place. There in Mumbai, you can have a reclaimation market, which covers a couple of blocks where old cars, motor bikes, pedal bikes, are all taken apart, and every part is stripped down, from the tyres to the steering wheels, and even the nuts and bolts that keep them together, nothing goes to waste, every piece of every vehicle has a use.
Then you have the fruit markets where every fruit, veg, and type of rice that you can think of, there are vegetables that I have never seen or heard of, the fruit is so ugly to look at, that you would never dream of eating it, but it is truly delicious to taste. In our supermarkets every apple, pear, tomato, potato, has to look perfect, the apples and pears are all the same size and colouring, the potatoes and carrots, are all washed not a trace of earth on them, the tomatoes in our country have no taste,they are all uniform size, and colour. In india they are ugly, the last ones in the box, but to eat them they have far more flavour.
There is another market which just sells copies of every electrical gadget that you can imagine, to put the real thing side by side you can not tell the difference. The Apple itouch was the going thing whilst we were over there and it cost 40 pounds compared to the price we pay, I bought one and it works perfectly in this country, I can have all my email received by it. I have now been using it for 3 months and no problems.
The best market was the shoe market, I bought 25 pairs of shoes, none of them costing more than a pound ( and I was robbed) I have seen similar in this country costing between 15 - 40 pounds a pair, I have been stopped many times by people asking where I have bought my shoes from, they are dissapointed when I tell them Mumbai.
Mumbai is expensive for hotel rooms, but tuk tuks cost about 30rps to go from one side of the city to the other, alchohol is expensive because there are very few licensed bars it is almost treble the price of Goa to have a drink there, Leopolds Bar on Colaba Causeway is the most favorite, but it does get packed, and unless you are still drinking, they don't like you hanging around after you have finished your meal.
Mumbai is special, it has a lot to see, we have now stayed there 3 times, but it is not a place for sunbathing, it is frowned on just to wear a pair of tailored shorts, (for a woman) never mind walking around a shopping mall in a bikini top. You have to dress to suit the occassion. I love the city, but you are also brought back to reality because there is real poverty there, it is not the pimps bringing busloads from out side states, the poverty is there in the shop doorways, shacks built on the side of the streets, and also the railways. BUT!!!! the different religions seem to live in relative harmony, this is a multicultural city that harmonises, the east and west. JUST DON'T WEAR A BIKINI TOP IN THE SHOPPING MALLS!!!
they are a top class airline 
and i thoght my o/h was bad
. We were staying somewhere near India Gate can't remember the name of the hotel, if thats what you could call it. We went for a walk down to the harbour to find a coffee house and we came across The Taj Hotel.
