The Lavasa Trip [UBC Post 28]

We decided to go to Lavasa [India’s planned hill city near Pune]for little one’s birthday. We wanted to go out-of-town but did not want to spend too much time on the road. Lavasa sounded perfect. After the whole birthday cake mishap and what with baking happening till the last moment; we finally started for Lavasa at 1 pm [as against 10 am].

Lavasa is at about 70 kms from my place. And it took us around 2 hours to reach the hotel. When we go for long trips, I and the sonny boy sit on the back seat because it provides ample space for him to play, sleep or just jump around. The space between the seats is packed with a mattress. We throw in a few cushions, some soft toys, a few books and we are good to go. Of course, he tries to go to the front seat but I manage to stop him somehow.

The moment we started for Lavasa, it was raining in Pune. It rained almost throughout our journey. We enjoyed the beautiful, romantic showers during our journey. The toddler slept for some time just when we were about to enter Lavasa, and would not lie down on the seat, so I carried him on one shoulder and clicked a few pictures from my left hand. I am a complete photo-person that way :-)

Image courtesy: tripadvisor.in

Somehow we managed to locate our hotel, amid fog and heavy rains. We stayed at Hotel The Waterfront Shaw. We had done some research before going, on Tripadvisor. And as suggested, we opted for a Promenade facing apartment suite, but as one of them pointed out, it didn’t matter. It was raining all the time, so we barely stepped out in the so-called balconies.

The apartment suite was very good, for a couple. There were a few things not suitable with a kid around. All electrical points were low. Turning switches on and off was my toddler’s idea of fun throughout our stay. We had to be on our toes all the time to switch them off. There were heavy, glass-top lamps. We removed the table lamp safely into the kitchen shelf, but we had to be extremely watchful for the floor lamp. It was dangerous.

Everything had glass. The centre table and dining table tops were glass. The cutlery was all glass. The lamps had glass. We eventually asked to remove the centre table.

The main door had no locking mechanism which a toddler could not open. He would keep opening the door and we had to be constantly around him. Many times he would wear our shoes and say bye-bye and walk out. It looked very cute, in retrospect.

I loved the suite. It had a microwave, tea-maker, induction plate, mini-fridge, hair drier and iron. There were quite a few options in restaurants / cuisines. We tried Chor Bizarre [North Indian] and All American Diner [American] at Waterfront Shaw. I tried Chor Bizarre only because of all the recommendations on the net but I liked All American Diner more, in terms of ambience and food [which depends on your personal taste]. We also tried lunch buffet in Zodiac [multi-cuisine] at Hotel Fortune Select, which was okay. 

Chor Bizarre
Image courtesy:waterfrontshaw.com

We ordered in our room a couple of times because sometimes the little one did not like anything at a restaurant, so we had to leave pretty quickly. They took last food order at 10.30 pm. Once we had to request to take order at 10.40 pm after we came back from Chor Bizarre. Nothing appealed to the toddler there. I feel that food must be available round the clock, atleast a few things like sandwiches.

All American Diner
Image courtesy: tripadvisor.in

The breakfast was included in our package, which was a buffet. I always look forward to the breakfasts in such trips. Most of the times there is a mix of Indian and European breakfast options. But I did not like the breakfast spread here - too few options. 

We could not try Water Sports or Nature Trail or even the Toy Train ride. But everything said and done, I think we had a good time. I would have loved to walk around this beautiful township but the rains never stopped. Lavasa is styled as a quaint European town but it will take a few years to reach there. A lot of construction work is going on. If you are looking for a quiet time, with or without your partner; go to Lavasa. It is beautiful.

Second Birthday Updates [UBC Post 24]

I don’t know if I ever wrote about the little one’s first birthday here, but it was quite chilled out. We had no plans except that we will bake cake for him, wear same colour T-shirts and just have a relaxed, funfilled day. And yeah, lots of balloons. We had exactly the same plans for this year too.

The only change was celebrating it out-of-town. We have not gone out-of-town for a while (say 8 months), so it provided a perfect opportunity to make a trip. We chose Lavasa [there will be a separate post for the trip] so that we wouldn’t waste too much time on the road.

Birthday Cake Disaster and Decking up the Place

I had a premonition about this. It was bound to happen. Once I make a lot of noise about something, it would anything but go smoothly. I had told everyone and their neighbor about how I was going to make a rainbow cake. And when I finally got down to making the much anticipated cake [mind you I already had a practice session. Read more about it here], at 2 am I realized that the cake was not baking properly at the centre while it was sort of burning around the sides. Initially, for some time, I kept on believing that the cake was not burning but that was the brown colour that I had added in the cake. When the cake finally came out, it was anything but satisfactory. I was a little disheartened. We were supposed to leave for Lavasa by 10 am [as 12 pm was the check-in time]. I did not have the patience or energy to make another cake at that time. I was getting numb with sleep. Moreover, since the little one was sleeping, I was doing all the mixing and beating in the balcony [yeah, mommies would know what I am talking about. You don’t mess around a sleeping kid.]

This is how the
Final Birthday Cake looked

I decided I will bake another one in the morning. Somehow. As I said I had the premonition of this happening, and therefore the good sense of getting 2 sets of 200 gm Maida [all purpose flour] and sugar for the cake.

I woke up at 8.15 am. I was waiting for my cook to prepare breakfast for us before leaving, while I also had to bake a cake. It is difficult to do too many things together in the space we have in kitchen [though my kitchen is really quite big. I think about 10 ft X 8ft]. But psychologically, I feel uneasy. I was anyways not feeling too energetic. But I still went about the business. Did the whole thing again. Read about the procedure of baking Rainbow cake here.

Let me also add that my stuff were yet to be packed. My husband is excellent in such situations. Anyways, he is always the one who does the packing. I just give my stuff to him. Since I was occupied with baking the cake, he packed his and little one’s clothes and other necessities. He also fed him his breakfast and kept him engaged in one thing or the other, as I had a lot of stuff on the kitchen floor as well.

After I put the cake in Microwave, I went about packing my stuff and getting ready. The cake baked till the last 10 minutes of us leaving for our trip. But it turned out well in the end. I was prepared to buy a cake if the second one had not worked out. I am not fixated about such things.

I was carrying the icing material with me to do the icing at night. As per plan, I did the icing after the little one slept [in Lavasa] at night. Hubby gave me company as he decorated the apartment suite we had with balloons. Our son, as other kids, just loves cakes and balloons.

The room decked up with balloons

We retired to sleep again at 2 am. When the sonny boy woke up in the morning, he was super-thrilled to find balloons all over the place. Orange is the first colour that he started identifying, and it is the colour he prefers.  Hubby had kept a few balloons for playing but unfortunately, none of those were orange. So, he had to pull out orange ones from the décor. Ha ha!

So how old are we? We are 2!

The Birthday boy also loved his cake, which he wanted to attack like the way he did on his first birthday. We had to stop him and get him to cut it. We also wore our White T-shirts; which had the number 2 and our names at the back, and a little number 2 on left handside in the front. We wore them the entire day. It looked cool, and felt special. And because of all this, our son also remembers now what is 2 and how old is he. 

Apart from these, we just strolled outside, played with blocks inside the room and just had a relaxed time, as intended.

My main task at hand is to make the birthday album as early as possible or it will remain pending like all the thousands of photos of last 2 years.