Country Roads

We have reached the end of July and we are about to start our last full month in our apartment.  We will be vacating the apartment sometime in mid September where we will be staying in a hotel until we go back home.

The week itself was uneventful, the highlight of the work week was that Teresa took Friday off and we could spend some time together.  We had lunch at Via Milano which was great and a treat as usual, it is truly one of our favorite places to have a meal at.  Alok, the manager there told us about the new menu items and plans for the near future they have.  He decided that we should try some of the new menu items and gave us a sample plate, it was delicious!

We had a late breakfast at Beyond Coffee on Saturday and had a guest for dinner over the evening.  I made my "signature" pasta dish with some garlic toast.  Our guest brought a bunch of delicious sides with from the Westin where she lives.  

Sunday was a lazy day where we only went out the afternoon for a couple of hours.  We had lots of left over food for lunch and dinner and asked Ahmed to take us on a scenic drive through the country side.  It was a fun drive and we were surprised to see all the farming going on outside the Hyderabad city limits.  

Our front door.

Crazy traffic on the way to Teresa's office.

ICICI Bank, this is where we bank.

Note all the buses parked to the left, they are all waiting for the GOOGLE employees.  We live next to the GOOGLE office in Hyderabad.

Our fantastic meal at Via Milano.

Beyond Coffee.

Beyond Coffee.

Saturday dinner.

Our first experience at a toll gate.

Heading out of Hyderabad.

A very old Tomb, Ahmed could not tell us who it belongs to.

Roasted peanuts anyone?

Colorful temple.

Our country side drive.

Rice fields.

Sheep and lots of them.

This person's only job is to operate the boom that stops traffic when a train comes by.

Ocean World, a water park outside Hyderabad.

Eat, eat, eat, eat.........

The heading says it all, the only news we have is about food!  I got the idea of making chicken skewers at the house after eating a couple of delicious chicken skewers at Beyond Coffee.  They had that great outdoor cooking flavor to them.  I also bought a chicken tikka masala marinate that I wanted to try out.  I got some chicken breasts at the SPAR, cubed and marinated them over night.  I placed a grid over the gas stove and grilled them using steel skewers.  We had them on fresh baked hamburger rolls that I got from Beyond Coffee.

It tasted so good that I decided to do them again, this time I made my own marinade by using olive oil, fresh garlic, finely chopped onion and some thyme and rosemary.  The cubed chicken breast was marinated over night and I cooked them the same way on a grid on the gas stove.  This time we had it with the burger rolls and a salad made with cucumber, tomato's and bell peppers.

We found out earlier the week that La Cantina, the Mexican restaurant at Novotel will be closing in August.  We wanted to go there one last time so we invited a couple of friends to join us there on Saturday evening.  It was a great meal and we will miss La Cantina.

We treated ourselves on Sunday at the ISTA Hotel for lunch, the lunch over there are still our favorite.  After a delicious lunch we went home and had a good old Sunday afternoon sleep.

My chicken skewers, if you want something badly enough you will make a plan to get it. 

The end product.

The Baobab tree in Hyderabad is nice and green after some nice rains.

Always meeting new Expats

Monday to Friday was pretty ordinary, just the usual weekly routine.  It does feel however if the long awaited monsoon season for us eventually came.  It rained nearly everyday and it did wonders for the heat with late evenings and early mornings feeling nearly chilly.  The rain has not been disruptive at all yet and there are days that it just rained during the evenings.

We went to Inorbit Mall on Friday to get some pictures printed at the Kodak store and went to Chili's afterwards for lunch.  It was a little disappointing since the service was not good at all, well basically none existing.  We did have some good company, a friend of ours that was on a three month European business trip returned earlier the week and joined us at Chili's.

Saturday started off with a thorough house cleaning and a lunch at Beyond Coffee where we met a short term expat from England.  He works for a company that has got a manufacturing plant in Hyderabad.  We started talking about live in hotels and that always staying in one hotel gets boring.  We offered him a lift since he got there by using an Auto Rickshaw.  We took him to have a look at a different hotel where they gave him a tour of the hotel after which we got treated with some really good tasting latte's.  We had more friends over for dinner on Saturday and I made Bunny Chows.  For those who don't know yet what that is, it is a Curry, I used a lamb curry, that you serve in a hollowed out piece of bread.  I will be posting a picture that should give you a good idea of what it looks like.

The company Teresa works for organized a Sunday lunch for all expats working for them.  It was at a restaurant/bar at the Taj Deccan.  We were surprised to see how many expats for the same company lives in Hyderabad that we have never met of have seen before.

This was brunch on Tuesday

A table full of Bunny Chows.

Teresa with a fellow expat at the Taj Deccan.

Snacks served at the Taj Deccan.

Some of the expats getting to know each other.

Some more of the expats.

Time Flies When You Are Having Fun!

The week started off well with Teresa having the day off and on Sunday we had the opportunity to show a new expat around Hyderabad.  

Teresa started the week off on a good note, she had a half day Spa treatment and enjoyed every minute of it.  They spoiled her from the start to the end and she enjoyed the fruit platter they gave her during a short break between all the treatments.  I told her if she behaves then she can go again for something like this for her birthday if we are still in India.  A couple of the expats met up at Beyond Coffee to enjoy a 4th of July cake.  Vivek at Beyond Coffee had the cake baked specially and it was delicious!  

Teresa was also invited to spend a evening with some executives from a Swedish company on Wednesday evening that wanted to meet up with some of the expats from her company.  They are in the planning phase in opening up a support center and wanted to get more information on how it is for a foreigner to live in India.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful but had a great day on Sunday.  A lady that Teresa works with regularly arrived in Hyderabad a week ago and we asked her if we could take her out for lunch and show her around Hyderabad.  Our first stop after lunch at Via Milano was the Charminar, we could not get out of the car at the Charminar unfortunately due to some festivals that was being held all over town and there were simply too many people around.  We did however drive around in all the small side streets and got to see a lot of the smaller market shops that we have not seen before.  We then tried to get to Golconda Fort but again could not get through all the blocked streets.  We introduced her to the best coffee shop in town and then went to Sahib Sindh Sultan (the restaurant that looks like a train) for dinner that was just super as always.

This week I ensured that I had enough pictures as promised after not having any pictures last week.

At the ISTA Spa.

Not sure what this is but it is at the ISTA Spa.

Sauna at ISTA Spa.

Fruit platter at ISTA Spa with herbal tea.

Our 4th of July cake at Beyond Coffee.

To all you speed freaks out there, SPEED KILLS!

Charminar.

Parts of the Old City.

Charminar.

Charminar.

Side streets in the Old City.

Charminar.

Some little old side street we had to go down.

The were peaking at us through the back of the Auto Rickshaw. 

The roof tops of one of the old hospitals.

Sunday Supper.

I had to take a picture of this good looking couple.

Man Vs Food, Food won!

Our guest for the day, thank you for giving us the opportunity to show you around.

Dinner plate.