Italia!

Tonight is our last night in the hotel if all goes as planned. Our drivers arrive tomorrow at noon to take the boys, me and our luggage over to the apartment. I'm excited and even happier now that I've heard our previously shipped items (many of the boys lovies and toys) have already arrived and are waiting at the apartment. I had planned our "going away" dinner tonight to be at the hotel's Restaurant Italia! which has been the biggest hit with the boys - a fabulously thin crusted cheese pizza. The rest of the menu is pretty good too. It's a place where the boys can watch all the cooking and even visit the station where the pizza chef makes their dinner. All the very Indian, Italian chefs were very playful with the boys and I believe the chefs enjoyed the audience. Anyway... back to my plan... which was to have dinner at Italia!... didn't go as planned... needed reservation...oops. So, I persuaded the managerial looking man (hard for me to ever know who is really in charge here) to let me order and have room service deliver it. I forgot to mention that the real reason we wanted to go here is because of the dessert - Melting Chocolate Surprise. Chocolate Granache is cooked in little pans until its crusty on the outside, melted in the inside and served with vanilla ice cream. Yum - tasted even better delivered to our room. While I'm talking about Restaurant Italia!, I should tell you what happened last time we went. We had all had a late and yummy dinner so John walked Matt and Owen up to our room and left me with Jack to fetch the bill etc. One last request from John... bring up a bottle of wine. We have discovered that wine is a specialty item here - not always available and not always good. So, I concurred and ordered a bottle of the house wine we had with dinner (some merlot by the glass). Our very polite waiter brought the wine, the bill and even was honest enough to confirm that a 10% tip was good and normal. As Jack and I walked away with our bottle of wine in hand... my mind started to re-calculate the bill. Hmm... something seemed off. The more I calculated (100 rupees = $2, 1000 rupees = $20), the more I panicked. Yikes - I think I just spent 4000 rupees on a bottle of wine! I kept walking trying not to laugh and wondering what John was going to do when I told him. Clearly Google can't pay for it - just not right. Can you return a bottle of wine? That's awkward enough in my own country - forget doing it here. So, the bottle sits high in our hotel room - undrunk - and a smile crosses my face everytime I see it. I think it will make it's way back to the states as a symbol - of what I'm not sure yet.
Buonanotte!