Day Thirty, Mumbai, India

2:29pm

          I've got a lot to talk about and not much time to do it so I'm going to show what I've been up to via pictures and captions. We went around the city again this weekend. There's not too much to show for the middle of the week now that I'm working full time.

 On the way into a part of Mumbai called Bandra

Entrance of the walkway to the Haji Ali Dargah mosque. This is a famous mosque located 500 yards off the shore in the middle of the Arabian Sea. When the tide is high, the walkway disappears

Goats, vendors, and beggars line both sides of the path to the Mosque 

At low tide you get a good view of some nice, clean mud with the city in the background

About halfway to the Mosque

View of inside the compound from the entrance 

The main tower with on-going construction

Another panorama from a professional iPhone photographer 

Another view from inside

From the mosque, we went to the Crawford market. This is a market that has been around since the late 1800's.

 Inside, there are rows and rows of vendors with anything you can imagine  

The other part of the market is a pet shopping area. We were surprised to see white lab, German shepard, and golden retriever puppies. 

The pet shops also have tons of exotic birds, rabbits, chickens, ducks, fish, etc. 

A butcher that turned around at the wrong time. He was pretty confused as to why I was photographing his meat 

 I know you're probably dying for more pictures of all the hanging meet, but I couldn't stand the smell long enough to walk any further into the meat market

The area around the market

Next we headed to the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. AKA an incredibly massive and ornate train station. This is a terrible picture taken from inside the taxi

The train station was built with a combination of Gothic and Italian architectural design 

 Inside near the entrance. This train station was a lot more crowded than the one in Chennai

Nice, blurry picture so you can truly grasp the little details. You're welcome 

 This is actually the building across the street from the train station. I'm not sure what it's used for but it looks pretty incredible.

Part of the front gate of the train station 

I wish I had more time to write about where we ate lunch. It was quite an experience. This man is the 91-year-old owner of a well-known Persian restaurant near the train station. His father started the restaurant in 1923, and he has been running it since he was a teenager. He might be the nicest person I've ever met, and he loves to talk to people about his passion for serving others. He showed us his personalized letters from people like the Queen of England and George W. Bush who have come to eat at his restaurant and loved it. Needless to say, this man has some serious contacts. For some reason, he loves Hillary Clinton and is doing whatever he can to get her to come eat at his restaurant before he dies. I'm going back to this restaurant when Chelce gets here just so I can here some more stories and words of wisdom from this man.

Another mosque on the way back to the apartments

 We did some street shopping after lunch, and I got myself an India cricket jersey for 5 bucks.

At night, us guys went to the Manchester United café to watch the match. That screen is much bigger in person

This is how I "hang dry" my laundry in my apartment

Phoenix City Market Mall. An even bigger, more impressive mall 

We had our first Indian McDonald's experience here. The menu only has one or two things in common with the American menu. The rest of the items are things like the "Chicken Maharaja Mac" and the "McSpicy Paneer"

 Some big, lego-type structures in the toy store. Why were we in a toy store? Still trying to figure that out myself.