We packed our things this morning and had a final breakfast in our lovely apartment. Have so much enjoyed staying here. Plenty of space, clean and fresh, great wifi, comfortable bed, hi-tech purified water and the lovely swimming pool What’s not to like for a princely £18 per night? Just hope we can secure it for next year.
John and Susan, Joseph and Jane and Pamela all came up to say goodbye and we had a lovely group bob in the pool for a few hours. Our taxi came just before 2. It was odd to be the first to go. We generally are the ones waving people off .
Our flight to Muscat is at 0810 tomorrow morning so we decided to get near to the airport the night before. The airport is about 2.5 hours drive from Patnem so if we’d stayed another night we’d have had to set off at 0230 to get there for check in which would have been an all nighter really. By staying nearby we can get picked up at 0500 and get a decent night’s sleep.
I found a brilliant homestay on Airbnb. Aaicho Wado which mean’s Mother’s House in Konkani. It’s a lovely old Portuguese Goan style bungalow with a wrap around balcony and a lovely terrace garden. The rooms are spacious and airy and filled with artworks and quirky collections of artifacts. Our bed is a massive four post tester. There are two bedrooms for guests but we are the only ones in occupation tonight. Both of them have fans plus ac and ensuite bathrooms.
The housekeeper, Lalit, was extremely welcoming and gave us a complete tour. There is a large dine-in kitchen which we are free to use including a washing machine and fridge freezer. There is even a little shrine room for private prayer. It is costing us £15 to stay here tonight which is a fabulous bargain. The house is in a very quiet little sidestreet in Pernem village. There are 4 restaurants within 10 minutes walk but Lalit recommended getting a Zomato delivery from Bhumiputra restaurant.
We had a nice lie down in the cool and refreshed ourselves with a gin & tonic brought up from Patnem with us.
Behind the bed there is a wall hanging which is a sari belonging to the owner’s mother. Lovely.
Feel we’ve struck gold here for a night before or after the airport. Not enough things to do around here without a car.
We decided to order in for dinner so we used Zomato to order from a local restaurant. I had palak paneer (of course!) and Bob had mushroom biriani with a butter roti and we shared it all, eating in the dining kitchen. Just as we finished, a late guest arrived, a very nice young woman from Chennai. We chatted about travel and diving and she translated between us and Lalit. I’d been trying to chat to him via Google translate in Hindi . Not very successful. But it turns out he speaks Gujarati. Anyway, a lovely evening.