What we did: Booked flight to Kochi, Baga beach, Britto’s seafood, gandered through streets
Budget: 3500R/$70; Spent: 5460R/$109
We set our alarm intending to catch the free 9:30am shuttle to Baga beach from our hotel, but decided to sleep in instead.
We got down for be breakfast buffet around 10am. This was included in our stay at the hotel. The buffet was a pretty standard continental breakfast as well as Indian choices, all were pretty tasty.
We caught the 12pm shuttle to the beach after breakfast and resting a little in our room. The shuttle dropped us off about a 5 minute walk through various clothing and food shops from the beach.
We perused through some stores, but more or less went straight to the beach, pretty nice beach, huge, immediately offered chairs on the beach for up to 400 rupees, we declined and kept wandering, the offers got less and less as we continued wandering until someone offered us 100 rupees for the rest of the day. We declined again and dipped our feet into the ocean. Chances are good that the towels offered don’t get washed every day.
We decided we just wanted to sit at a restaurant on the beach and found a nice one with a friendly server named Baba. We sat there for a couple hours drinking beer and people watching. We did a little researching on Lonely Planet and realized we need another book to read – we have one we've been carrying around with us the whole time called The 4-Hour Work Week. We've been waiting for a good place to read, but we both wanted to read it; decided we needed to find a book store.
When we were feeling hungry, we decided to check out a recommended restaurant, called Britto’s, that was steps away from where we were sitting and right on the beach. A minute walk and we were sitting at a table. We ended up ordering a sea food platter and it was quite tasty, we were scared of eating the seafood though! But Lonely Planet called this place a “Baga Institution” and it’s main tip was to stick to the seafood options on the menu so we followed the book’s advice.
We decided to walk to try to find a bookstore recommended by Lonely Planet. We walked in the direction and found the street, then wandered around the street for an hour or so looking for the store, finally we asked someone and it turned out the store was closed for some reason; really frustrating.
We stopped by a travel agency on the way back to the hotel to see if we could book a train to the state of Kerala, our next stop, but they only booked flights. Since taking another bus is no longer an option, we asked about flights, and it was pretty reasonable. We figured we’d get the best deal by booking on our own so even though the man was very kind and helpful, we didn't buy from him.
Accidentally, as we were walking down the street we caught our shuttle back to the hotel. The guy just happened to be driving by.
When we got back we almost immediately just jumped into the pool before we headed to our rooms. It was a little chilly by that time, but it’s a very nice pool.
We bought an hour of internet for $2 to book our flight to Kochi, a town on the coast near the north-south centre of the state. We ended up spending about $150 total on the flight, which is not bad, anything to avoid more overnight buses and trains! Even though they were very cheap, they were definitely wearing on our livelihood.
After booking our flight we decided to head to a restaurant called Le Poison Rouge, a French restaurant that apparently is fantastic at blending different flavour together to create unique dishes, obviously French-inspired cuisine. We ended up making the trek there in the dark walking on the side of the road over many rocks and gravel with a 2-way traffic road next to us. We decided we
wouldn't walk in the dark again.
We stopped at a Mexican and Italian restaurant along the way to check their menus, but decided they were too expensive, although when we got to Le Poisson Rouge, we realized it was just as expensive, perhaps more so, Lonely Planet was wrong again. They’re prices are NEVER right.
Dinner was fantastic though, very nice setting, few tables lit by candlelight in a very quiet location surrounded by palm trees and shrubbery and underneath the stars. It may have very well been the nicest atmosphere we have had on this trip. The food was exceptional also.
We ordered bread with oil, vinegar, and olives in garlic and onion…delicious. Patty ordered a Thai chicken salad and I got a Red Snapper with bok choy. Both were excellent. We also ordered a dessert – French toast with yogurt and fruit sauce – very tasty, though we wished we had ordered the strawberry trifle we had seen several other guests order and got our mouths watering. The restaurant would have been a nice place to really go all out with appetizers and wine but with our budget in mind we had to walk out of there craving more. It was a great meal none the less.
We walked home after eating, stressing a little about how much money we were spending, Goa is an expensive place and we are blowing our budget, hopefully we can turn it around on other days.
We got back to our hotel pretty late and just called it a night. Good first day on the beach!
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