Udaipur - Mumbai - Goa

We were looking forward to the south of India, to beach, sea and relaxation. It wasn't difficult for us to get up at 5 a.m. to go to the airport. As we walked through the lobby, I saw the staff sleeping on the couch. It is really sad to see that. It seems like they don't have a home or they have to work so much that it wouldn't be worth going home.

The airport in Mumbai is really worth seeing. I have never seen such beautiful toilets in an airport before. I thought I was entering a spa area. The 4-hour layover in Mumbai flew by. Much to the delight of our children, we ate at Burger King there.

We landed in Goa around 5 pm. The search for a taxi is always an exciting thing. Unfortunately, we couldn't find out the best way to do it in Goa over the internet. There is also no app like in Thailand. So we watched how other tourists do it. They all went to a certain counter. We did the same. But the price seemed quite high to us. So we left the airport building to get an overview. Immediately, we were surrounded by a group of taxi drivers who wanted to snatch our luggage from us. I realized that at the beginning of the trip, it would have stressed me out completely, but now I didn't find it great either, but I didn't feel any stress at all and kept an overview. In such situations, it's difficult to communicate with Christian, so we walked away from the airport building. The drivers seemed very surprised, maybe they haven't experienced that before. We were even asked if we wanted to have tea, as at the end of the street the drivers sat together and had tea. We discussed what we should do. In the end, we took a taxi driver who cost just as much. Sometimes it's like that, but most of the time we're good at isolating ourselves.

This taxi driver was very funny. He often glanced in his mirror and combed his hair. Then he came up with the idea of asking us if we could hire him as a personal driver in Germany. Unfortunately, when we had to decline his request, he could hardly believe it. After a while, he realized that he didn't know where our resort was. We wandered around. Since we don't have a SIM card anymore, we could only give the address to the driver. One might think that would be enough. Based on our experience, you absolutely need Google Maps in the taxi. In Thailand, Christian had to show the taxi drivers the way. Not everyone can read either. But this taxi driver didn't even want to ask his fellow countrymen. And so it became difficult to find our accommodation. Fortunately, our driver finally took pity on us and asked the security guards from the hotels. The third one knew the resort. It was only about 300 meters away.

We booked a room for 4 people in advance on booking.com. Unfortunately, the hotel only received a reservation for a room with a double bed. The receptionist, a not very friendly lady, charged us twice the price, which exceeded our budget. But it was very late and we were hungry, so we stayed. But we were really annoyed about the lack of flexibility. When we saw the next morning that breakfast, which was included in the price, was more expensive than a la carte, we got really angry. Our situation was shamelessly exploited and that's why we were glad to leave the resort.

We booked an apartment on another beach, which is also much nicer. Although it was referred to as a party beach, it was important to us to have a choice of restaurants. And we should get that at Candolim Beach. Fortunately, the information claimed by some blogs did not turn out to be true. There are many, many restaurants here, but no party. Although we observe that Indians like to drink alcohol a lot. Since they start drinking in the morning, they are probably too tired in the evening to party.

Our apartment is spacious and reasonably clean, but far from something to feel comfortable in, and that's what we really wanted in Goa. We wanted to relax so much. So we started searching for a nice accommodation through the usual internet portals. We spent a lot of time on it, too much! But we couldn't find anything. That was new for us. So we decided to walk down the street the next day and inquire directly at the hotels.

One night is always doable. We just had to book an additional night to have time to find a new accommodation. So we made the best of it. We spent time with the children and had a nice dinner.

Since we finished reading the fourth volume of Harry Potter, we watched the movie adaptation in the evening. We've already done that with the previous parts. And it's always very funny for us parents to hear the children's comments on what was left out or invented in the film.