A gorgeous, if not hazy (smoggy?) sunrise greets us for our last full day and night aboard the Millenium. 

Getting ourselves ready after our normal morning activities, we head out into the relatively comfortable day in Mumbai.  We don’t have any plans for today as we have a full day city tour included in our India Tour on Thursday – so we figure we’ll just wander around the old town area outside the port gate and have lunch.  First we have to go through Immigration (of course!), which was easy – just flash our QR code – then get the shuttle bus to the port gate – again, easy, shuttles are right there, ride takes 15 minutes, we’re deposited outside the Green gate in no time.

Queue the taxi/tour drivers!  No tuk tuks here, they aren’t allowed in the old city, but oh, there are taxi drivers.  Constant hawking, following, shoving tour placards in your face.  You get used to it after a while, and hopefully they all find people who are willing to go with them – it’s just not going to be us, we’re walking.

Meandering around a bit, looking at all the great old buildings, we scope our a couple of our lunch choices.  We had been reading about a thing called a “Frankie,” which is described as an Indian burrito, and of course, really wanted to try one.  A place a couple of blocks from the gate had them, but unfortunately it was just a food kiosk – a huge kiosk with every type of snack/lunch food you would ever want, but not a sit down, hang out place, which was what we wanted.  Eating on the street, literally, here is not on our agenda.  Another restaurant across the street sounded equally good, a “vintage” restaurant with all the traditional Indian dishes. But looking at the entrance, it was not inviting at all, so we decided to continue our wandering and find something else.

After a couple of missed places (it is REALLY hard to find things on the street, even though you have pictures from GoogleMaps), we finally ended up at the Canara Lunch Home & Bar (we were actually looking for the Dakshin Bar & Kitchen which ended up being right next door, but again, finding names for these places on the building is ridiculously difficult!). We thought it was Dakshin, and there was a guard out front who ushered us inside; how could we argue with that?  We were the first customers – who is surprised? – but were still allowed to order our drinks (Kingfisher and Sula, yay!) and hang out until the kitchen officially opened.  When our food did finally come, it was excellent.  An order of Tikka chicken, grilled, spiced to perfection, and Butter chicken with a side of garlic Naan – all excellent and a spot-on first meal in India. 

Debating our next move, we could have walked down to the Gateway of India, but we figured we’d be there soon enough with the tour on Thursday, so why bother?  And back to the ship we went, to pack and just hang out the rest of the afternoon.  As we were organizing, there is a knock on the door, and sweet Ratha surprises me with a bottle of Frontera!  The ship had run out of Frontera and I was left drinking Pinot Grigio, which wasn’t bad, but that Chilean Sauv Blanc is my favorite. Ratha knew it and kept her eye out for the bottles – she is so sweet. Chores handled, wine in the suitcase, we proceeded with our normal evening activities culminating in the last production show, On Broadway.  We specifically saved this show for this leg of the voyage for something to do and were glad we did. It was excellent, they have a really talented cast on this ship, and a nice way to spend our last evening aboard.