Panjim

After a day of beachy time it was time for a day of sightseeing. So we hopped in a car and were off to Panjim, the capital of Goa. It was a lovely 30 minute or so ride and I was ready with my Lonely Planet walking tour. I didn't really know what to expect, I'd skimmed over the sights and knew there was a big church and the town had a "Portuguese feel" to it (Goa was a Portuguese territory for over 400 years until 1961).

Well there was a big church...really big...although maybe it only seemed really big because it was up on a hill. It was painted all white - almost every church we saw was whitewashed - and was quite stunning high up on the hill overlooking the town and the water.

Then we walked over to what I guess could be called the old town with brightly painted houses and small little streets. I would say the best word to describe it is charming. We strolled around mostly following the walking tour but with a few diversions like when we stumbled across a very brightly colored temple which was closed but then walked to another temple perched up on a hill that was open so we peeked in.

One interesting thing in India, which I may have blogged about before so please excuse the repetition if I have, is that quite often there are religious practices that are quite regional. For example, apparently Diwali is celebrated much more in the north than in the south where Dishera (which I'm definitely misspelling), which is just before Diwali, is a much bigger deal. In Goa apparently the day before Diwali they burn in effigy a demon (or at least I think that is who it is - I asked and couldn't really understand the answer). So in Panjim we saw a few metal frames which was all that had remained of what had been burned a few days before. One of them was quite large, maybe 20-25 metres high and was at the base of the hill below the temple. Must have been quite a spectacle to see that burning.

I won't walk you through every step we took but suffice it to say that we loved Panjim; even though it was crazy hot and we did a fair amount of walking up and down steps which made us crazy sweaty (and rather stinky no doubt) we still loved it.

Oh no...blogger just lost half of my post so I guess that is my computer's way of telling me to get back to work.

But first, pictures. The first one is the church high on the hill and the second is a woman walking down the brightly colored streets of Panjim.