Good Bye Europe and Hello India!

After spending 3 months cruising through Europe, it was finally time to move on. While Europe was obviously a lot of fun, and we by no means saw it all, we still found ourselves ready for something new and eager to leave the summer time mobs of tourists behind....so we went to India, about as different as you can get.

Joining us for our 3 weeks in India is Kristen, Sue's long time friend from Seattle. We met up at the Delhi airport at about 4 AM and headed out to face the wilds of India...okay not quite, Kristen's Aunt graciously gifted us enough hotel points for 2 nights at a 5-star hotel, so the wilds of India had to wait.

We also managed to meet up with Nitin, a Delhi contact of Sue's from her days at Expeditors. Nitin and his friend were a great host and took us out to a fantastic dinner a locally legendary restaurant. Apparently the only reason we got seated so quick was because we're foreigners, otherwise there can be quite a wait. The food was outstanding and we ate until we were about to burst.

The view from our 17th floor suite (it had two bathrooms!)

Looking down at the lobby of our Hotel, Le Meridian. Yeah we might have looked just a little out of place with our backpacks.

Sue enjoying some creature comforts after our early arrival. While we didn't make it to the hotel until about 5AM, we still managed to get up at 10 AM to make the free breakfast, better believe we're not missing that at a 5-star!

India Gate.

One of the many, many, many methods of local transit. 

The Red Fort, built in 1638 by the Mughal Empire

The gates to the president's palace.

Presidential Palace, if you look close you can see a monkey scrambling across the grounds.

Sue and Kristen in front of the Prime-minister's office

A Sikh Temple

The view from an auto-rickshaw, our preferred method for crossing the city. These guys are magicians (or lunatics) at weaving through traffic, and boy do they love their horns.

Not quite sure what was happening here, but it appeared the traffic light was being manually operated by the guy sitting on top.

Mmmm Dosa and Thali. 

For our 3rd night we downgraded slightly from the luxuries of 5 star living to the quaint comforts of 1-star... this was the view down our "street" which was more like a dirt lined alley crammed with honking traffic, trash and street vendors, hello India.