HA left pretty early the next morning for the next leg of her journey, so ROR, JI, and I went for brunch at... you guessed it, Kashi Art Cafe! We walked around for a little while and found this store that sold spices and chocolate. But the cool thing was that they all came from this guy's family's own spice farm! Obviously, we had to buy some chocolate. I got milk chocolate because I always choose milk over dark, but the other two chose dark. This is probably the one time you'll ever hear me say this but... the fruit & nut dark chocolate was actually better than the milk. Which is actually probably true for all artisan chocolates.
After checking out that side of town, ROR had some more asinine flight things to take care of because, it's India and things are asinine here, so JI and I went exploring on the opposite side of the city. It was a Monday and still Onam, so the streets were pretty empty. We did find a few cool shops with ridiculous hand-made goods so I decided this was a good place to buy some gifts for the family. After some lively and successful haggling, I walked out of there with some beautifully hand-embroidered trinkets. I've had to keep the purchases to a minimum throughout my trip because I have to 1) fit everything into my backpack and 2) carry those things with me for the duration of my trip. But I'm in Kerala and on the off chance that my family is actually from here, it'll be nice to bring back a little bit of Kerala to home.
After that we kept walking and found Jewtown! It's exactly what it sounds like; it's the Jewish enclave of the city. ROR had told us he went to a place called Jewtown, but then I just made fun of him because obviously that's not a real place. Turns out it is. Sorry I'm not sorry, ROR. We were going to go into this super old synagogue we found there, but we would have had to check our bags and JI didn't want to part with hers, so we skipped it. Which is fine, I didn't really have my heart set on it.
On the walk back, we took a different route than on the way there. We passed by a sweets shop. JI saw what to me looked like... pretty normal cakes, but to her were a little mindblowing so I bought her some cake and picked up some plantain chips to bring back for ROR. He's been having kind of a rough day with his whole flight situation, and who doesn't like plantain chips?
It started raining on us while we were about 2/3 of the way home. And I'm proud to say I got up almost all the way back home without asking for directions or using a map (one guy volunteered his help on the last turn, and in fact, had we gone with my gut and not taken the guy's advice, we would have gotten home faster).
We got back later than expected, so ROR had already gone to dinner at a place close by. JI and I went to go meet up with him and about 10 seconds before we got there it started pouring hard on us. We arrived soaking wet and found ROR sitting with two new friends! A couple from South America who has been traveling for like... a year already. Crazy. They were awesome, really friendly and in such great spirits despite the fact that the guy was feeling pretty sick. I ate what was left of ROR's curry, but JI didn't seem so enthused with the menu so she barely ate.
It was still pouring when we left and we were too far from the street to find a cab so I braved the rain and stood by the street to hail a cab for about five minutes. We made it back to the hostel, but it was too early to call it a night and I was craving some more of that chocolate, so we went back out to find the shop. Earlier in the day, proprietor told us he was going to close at 11pm but we got there around 10:30pm and he had already closed up shop. Womp womp. We could see it was closed from afar, but just to make sure, I walked all the way up to the front door. ROR told me that he was telling JI that "[R] is probably the kind of guy who would break in, take some chocolate, and then pay for it and leave a note inside." How does he know that already?!
Remember how JI barely ate? Turns out she was still hungry so we went to another place to grab some food. I convinced her to try lamb for the first time and I think she liked it! She also told me that I was her first international friend! What an honor! We called it a night after that. A pretty good close to my time in Fort Kochi. Tomorrow I'm headed to Thekkady for elephants!
After checking out that side of town, ROR had some more asinine flight things to take care of because, it's India and things are asinine here, so JI and I went exploring on the opposite side of the city. It was a Monday and still Onam, so the streets were pretty empty. We did find a few cool shops with ridiculous hand-made goods so I decided this was a good place to buy some gifts for the family. After some lively and successful haggling, I walked out of there with some beautifully hand-embroidered trinkets. I've had to keep the purchases to a minimum throughout my trip because I have to 1) fit everything into my backpack and 2) carry those things with me for the duration of my trip. But I'm in Kerala and on the off chance that my family is actually from here, it'll be nice to bring back a little bit of Kerala to home.
After that we kept walking and found Jewtown! It's exactly what it sounds like; it's the Jewish enclave of the city. ROR had told us he went to a place called Jewtown, but then I just made fun of him because obviously that's not a real place. Turns out it is. Sorry I'm not sorry, ROR. We were going to go into this super old synagogue we found there, but we would have had to check our bags and JI didn't want to part with hers, so we skipped it. Which is fine, I didn't really have my heart set on it.
 |
| Not Jewtown, but close enough |
It started raining on us while we were about 2/3 of the way home. And I'm proud to say I got up almost all the way back home without asking for directions or using a map (one guy volunteered his help on the last turn, and in fact, had we gone with my gut and not taken the guy's advice, we would have gotten home faster).
We got back later than expected, so ROR had already gone to dinner at a place close by. JI and I went to go meet up with him and about 10 seconds before we got there it started pouring hard on us. We arrived soaking wet and found ROR sitting with two new friends! A couple from South America who has been traveling for like... a year already. Crazy. They were awesome, really friendly and in such great spirits despite the fact that the guy was feeling pretty sick. I ate what was left of ROR's curry, but JI didn't seem so enthused with the menu so she barely ate.
It was still pouring when we left and we were too far from the street to find a cab so I braved the rain and stood by the street to hail a cab for about five minutes. We made it back to the hostel, but it was too early to call it a night and I was craving some more of that chocolate, so we went back out to find the shop. Earlier in the day, proprietor told us he was going to close at 11pm but we got there around 10:30pm and he had already closed up shop. Womp womp. We could see it was closed from afar, but just to make sure, I walked all the way up to the front door. ROR told me that he was telling JI that "[R] is probably the kind of guy who would break in, take some chocolate, and then pay for it and leave a note inside." How does he know that already?!
Remember how JI barely ate? Turns out she was still hungry so we went to another place to grab some food. I convinced her to try lamb for the first time and I think she liked it! She also told me that I was her first international friend! What an honor! We called it a night after that. A pretty good close to my time in Fort Kochi. Tomorrow I'm headed to Thekkady for elephants!
No comments:
Post a Comment