Plan for today was to finalise the New Years party tickets – had to pay for these (today was the payment due date!).

Reached St.Regis just after 9:30am, festivities desk was to open @ 10, spare time to get some breaky. To level 8 – their reception was on that level!
Entering the St.Regis reception level, first impression, WOW! This place has been setup on a grand scale – not massive but NICE. The highlight is the curved stair case – very grand. To the lounge area to eat, I settled for scrambled eggs – my mouth allergy had restricted me from eating any hard foods, had to be soups or something very soft. Neha could not resist the eggs benedict – although it was not to the level of what she has at Riverbend in Brisbane , still not bad. Overall a good spread but not value for money.

Light breakfast @ the St Regis lounge

Post breakfast, sorted our tickets to the New Years dinner for the 8 of us (Jayesh/Priya family and us, Jaynesh had already paid for his via phone).

Next was a short walk about in the Pheonix mall, Pooja wanted to see the Zara store for some Tee’s. Girls ended up roaming around a bit more – it was more shopping, this time western gear.

Around 2pm we were off to FriendShip in Santa Cruz, two things there, first Nita had fallen in love with an outfit which we did not get first time around, not sure why?? but lets get that now, and second was to have some more of those amazing toasted sandwiches – the place outside friendship has the best toasties around! – this was a foodie trip, had to squeeze in as much as possible.

 
Toasties @ Sandwizzaa, Santa Cruz
Highly highly recommended

Finished off Friendship, then it was some shoe shopping in the nearby stores on Station Rd, girls got a couple more pairs! Shoes here are a bargain – although they may not last long, they do look good!

Back at Gulistan, Priya and family had arrived, they were in the rooms next to ours. Kids were super happy and decided to order in McDonalds for all of them, apparently the Zee awards were on the TV and all the 4 girls wanted to do was watch some TV, chat and eat McDonalds! Glad for McDonalds home delivery!

We were in Jayesh’s room just chatting away and before we realised it was around 10pm, me and Nita had not had anything to eat yet. Jayesh & Priya had already eaten so were fine. Going through Nita’s list of good restaurants – lucky she had researched this earlier, settled on Kuai Kitchen. This was a highly rated place on Zomato with good Asian varieties.

Got there just after 10:30pm, a very small restaurant – more like a takeaway joint, strangely though it had a great feel to it. We took the outside table – only two tables were outside, and 4 inside – it is a small place.
Ordered a stir fry for Nita and a Soup for me – my mouth was not allowing ANY solids, soup was it for me. Had to be explicit to the waiter, to get Nita’s food with the soup, otherwise they would keep waiting for me to finish the soup first! Also Nita was being stern on my soup not being spicy at all, anything spicy was killing my mouth/throat.
Food arrived soon, it was very nice, and the servings were huge! Nita could not finish her stir-fry, my soup was very nice!

Whilst waiting for our OLA to arrive, noticed a pharmacy near by, ducked in quickly to get an antiseptic garglejust trying everything to make this allergic reaction calm down – fingers crossed.

We were back at the hotel just before midnight, girls were still awake, time to get them sleeping.

Neha’s vlog on Day 22