Super Star Libra Cruise

this was one of the luxuriest holiday we had. I booked a two night package on Super Star Libra for a mumbai-goa-mumbai trip. the cruise was to be departed on thursday evening from mumbai port, reach goa on friday afternoon, start from there for the return journey in the night and come back to mumbai port on saturday afternoon.

I had already booked Air Deccan flight tickets from bangalore to mumbai for the same day in the afternoon. however, a few days before, luckily I came to know the air deccan flight is usually running late and reaches mumbai only at night, I dared not take any chances and booked kingfisher tickets for the wednesday night, though booking so late did make a hole in my pocket.:-(( after this, I had learnt a lesson to not rely on air deccan if I m low on time. however, I put the late running habit of deccan to good use once. while returning from hyderabad, I booked the tickets of early morning deccan flight since it was cheaper(the evening flight was almost double) though I didn't want to return in the morning. later deccan cancelled that flight and transferred us to a flight in the evening without extra charges and so we had one full day to ourselves at half the rate.

so coming back to kingfisher flight. it also got late by abt 2 hrs and we thought to eat something. by the time we had taken puffs and samosas, kingfisher announced that all the passengers will be served dinner at airport hotel. ok no prob, we had that too as we thought now they will probably not serve anyhting on flight. but they served the food again on flight also!! so we had dinner three times and were utterly satisfied with the airlines.:-) since I had booked the tickets from makemytrip.com I had got a free car transfer at mumbai airport and I realized it was at least worth 500 bucks since we drove all the way from mumbai airport to vasi in navi mumbai. lesson no 2. always book the tickets from travel sites to get some add ons.

in mumbai we had a breakfast of 'poha' on a roadside shop, it was so light and tasty. i found it better than batata vada which is more famous. on thursday we went to the essel world, though we should have gone to water world since we had only one day in mumbai.

anyway, the last ride was a train that used to fall into a pool of water and we enjoyed the splash 3 times to make up for the loss of water in our body due to perspiration in mumbai heat.

we left essel world at 4p.m. and it took a good two and a half hour to reach victoria terminus from where we had to board on the cruise!! got scared we might miss it. had no idea about the distance between the two points. just managed to reach in time.

the sight of the cruise was just like Titanic, too big too high!! there were 10 floors the top one being a open deck with two cafes, 2 swimming pools and jacuzzis. everywhere there is no hint of cost effectiveness, it's sheer luxury. chairs, flowers, bed in the room was too great:D


there were two large auditoriums where all the shows were organized.i saw one of the best aerobics cum dance shows and magic cum comedy shows. they were truly amazing. and there are so many activities etc happening that firget passing time, it was difficult to do all of them and still enjoy the facilities.!! the restaurants were too big and food was equally great.

next day we went to bogmallo beach as it was nearer to goa port, and could have been better if we had returned from there itself. but we succumbed to sightseeing instinct and wasted 3 hrs going to churches and temples ( not so great as the cruise obviously)

there were few people who were organizing some games etc on open deck. they were the only bad part. everything was so badly planned and executed by them, even their speech was pretty bad. we had just been to club mahindra ooty and we missed the host there very much. since it was about to reach mumbai back, we got into jacuzzi and spent about 2 hrs.

in mumbai, we went to Inorbit mall, though nothing so great about the mall, we had a very good snap of us in a showroom background. and yaa, not to forget the kulfi falooda in one the stalls there. too good. must have it if one goes there.