Saturday 4th June 2022 Matilda had decided that, after our New York deli breakfast, she would sample her cheesecakes, so when we returned to the hotel, she sliced them both in half so that she could compare. Even though she had carried them round New York for several hours the day before, she was not disappointed: both were light, fluffy and flavoursome: special cheesecake indeed. The plain perhaps won by a whisker. We had previously investigated getting Covid tests as we needed to provide proof of a negative test, taken within the last 48 hours, together with our vaccination status before we would be allowed onboard. The hotel receptionist suggested we went to a nearby surgery, but here the GP receptionist quoted $220 each for them to run the tests. A very helpful gentleman who was sitting in the waiting room said we would be able to get it done at one of the many pop-up testing stations we had passed. We found that here the cost would be just $50 each. So, before starting the day, we went to have swabs professionally rotated around our nasal passages. We then wanted to check out the transport to the embarkation point […]
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Saturday 6th April 2019 On Friday 5 April, our final train journey from Amritsar to New Delhi ran to schedule but as it was an eight hour trip and we were up at 04:30 we decided to award ourselves an afternoon of rest and recuperation, to cool down in the pool and plan our sight-seeing for the next few days. Robert felt that as we were now in a cosmopolitan capital, he could wear shorts so that he really knew he was on holiday. The air-conditioned metro is just a short walk from our hotel and as we were walking there a passer-by complimented Robert on his shoes and advised us to be careful on the metro as it would be crowded and therefore pick-pockets could take advantage. In fact the metro was not only cool but relatively quiet. Our first stop was the Jama Masjid mosque. We read the signs regarding rules of entry and one of the requirements was no shorts, so on one of the only days that Robert has indulged in this, his sartorial preference on holiday, the shorts proved to be a barrier to our plans to see certain sights. We did see coaches disgorging […]