Around the World

The Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery, known simply as the Vadodara Museum, is located adjacent to the Sayaji Baug public garden. Commissioned in 1894 by Sayajirao with instructions to the architect R. F. Chisholm to have it on the same lines as UK’s Victoria and Albert museum, it showcases his collections from around the world.  You will thus see paintings and coins, dining sets and ivory miniatures, musical instruments and rare books. Various websites and reviews prominently mention an Egyptian mummy and a skeleton of a blue whale as the premier showpieces. Actually, there are other far more worthy displays than those. Let’s take a quick tour…

As reviewed earlier, our stay at Ishan Villa, Amritsar, Punjab was a really good experience. Here you will get a glimpse of the rooms and the food - two vital aspects of any hotel accommodation anywhere in the world! 

Looking for mid-range and not too expensive accommodation in Amritsar? Stay at Ishan Villa to have a nice, comfortable stay with fairly good food and extremely helpful staff. Note that this first-hand review of Ishan Villa is of the time when we visited the Golden Temple Amritsar, Punjab in  April 2014.  W e'll begin with the location and then talk about the hotel's lovely interiors (that's the entrance in the photo on the left side), and the facilities for guests, and finally, provide the contact details for booking a room at Ishan Villa, Amritsar.

The  Victoria Memorial ,  Kolkata  was creatively designed by  architect Sir William Emerson  as a tribute to  Queen Victoria . He combined Mughal architectural styles to make an Indo-Saracenic structure primarily from Makara marble. The Victoria Memorial was opened in 1921 as a tourist attraction. Besides the Royal  Gallery with portraits of the British royal family, the  Victoria Memorial museum  section contains a vast collection of exhibits that display maps, coins, stamps, weapons, and other artifacts related to the era during which Queen Victoria ruled as Empress of India and the later years of the British colonial rule in India.

When we visited the  Sneh Rashmi Botanical Garden in Surat, Gujarat our joy knew no bounds on seeing the toy train, especially since we had missed riding the one at the Sayaji Baug in Vadodara which we had visited prior to our trip to Surat. The toy train, named Tapi Express, was a real treat, both to look at and its comfortable journey. I'm sure many of us had a toy train during our childhood and even likely that it was red! 

The  Sneh Rashmi Botanical Garden in Surat, Gujarat is not just a garden where you can spend a couple of hours roaming around a beautiful landscape with a huge variety of plants and flowers. To entertain kids, there is a fun zone, too, called 'The Great Fun Amusement Park', and don't miss travelling on the Tapi Express !

A visit to the city of Surat in the State of Gujarat, India gives you the rare opportunity of enjoying a vast (and a I mean really, really, vast) expanse of open space that is lush with greenery meticulously laid out beneath the gorgeous blue dome above. The place referred to is the Sneh Rashmi Botanical Garden in Surat which we visited last year in November.  The image on the left reflects our sheer joy and heaps of satisfaction we got on our trip to this garden. Compliments to the Surat Municipal Corporation for maintaining it so well.