Today is the birthday of our friend from Cyprus, Heather. She and her husband, Chris, have been to Patnem a couple of times before and this time they have come as part of a group of 9. A very fun group having a lovely time, I believe. A day of celebrations was planned, mostly secret from Heather, and we were invited to join later in the day.

But first….. the crows were at it again, cawing away outside the window. Still, we’d had our 8 hours by then, so no complaints. Bob and I headed off down to Sea Front at about 9am. Met Joseph on his way back from a walk. Janet was doing room yoga so we arrange to see them later. By the time we’d got to the loungers and arranged our stuff, they’d arrived so we all had breakfast together. The Cyprus Gang were having a late birthday breakfast at Casa Jaali. 

It was a lovely day today, not a breath of wind and about 31C. The sea was so calm, like a millpond really. We had a lot of long swims. It was so calm, I actually did swim rather than my usual, bobbing. Our usual daily pattern of swim, read, lunch, games, swim, read, followed.

We had arranged to be back at Eve’s for 4pm to join in a surprise birthday cake party for Heather but there was no sign of anything to do with that when we arrived, so we showered off. About 425 we heard people out on the landing and it was the gang but there had been a slipup and Heather had seen the cake, so the surprise party was cancelled and the cake re-scheduled to be after dinner. 

We all met up in the bar area of Eve’s at 630 for drinks and chat. Most people had very splendid Indian garb on – really looked super. We didn’t know about that so we didn’t have ours on and in fact didnt really have any of our best garb with us this trip. But no matter, Heather had bindi for the ladies and illuminated head dresses so that made up for our western dress. It was such a jovial crowd and after a couple of drinks we wandered down to Round Cube restaurant on the beach – the street traders were most taken with the getups and were most complimentary.

Round cube had set us up a horseshoe shaped table scattered with rose petal hearts and flowers, candles and a golden happy birthday. It looked absolutely lovely, right at the edge of the lights within a spit of the sea. They gave us two for one cocktails and we ordered the food we wanted – a lovely dinner. I had massive king prawns cooked in garlic butter – 12 for 600 INr served with grilled vegetables. Bob had prawn masala with an aloo gobi paratha. We both had 2 margaritas. We had a really great evening, everyone was such good company and there was much laughter and storytelling. They brought out the cake – a red velvet sponge – and we sang Happy Birthday as we ate it. Very nice. I was really impressed with Roundcube and the food. It’s been a few years since we ate there but we will definitely go back again soon. 

Chris had organised a most spectacular box of fireworks – 32 all lit from a single fuse to make a display. It was quite the best I’ve seen on the beach. I love fireworks.

We stayed down there till about 1115 at which point it was pretty much all shuttered. A lovely lovely night and we were so glad to be a part of it.