Day 296, Mumbai, India
Life in a 5-star is a dangerous endeavor. The girls had never been to one before, and this has revealed a bar they never knew existed.
Everyone greets you in a friendly way, as if you matter to them. When you go to the lounge on our floor, the wait staff know what we drink and bring it to the table minutes after we sit down. Even in the larger breakfast buffet setting, they know we drink 2 lattes and the coffee is brought before we ask for it. If you ask where something is, the person takes you there, no matter how out of the way it is for them. You will never touch the heavy glass double front doors, meaning there are two men whose sole responsibility is to door openers.
At the restaurant where the girls like to have lunch, Madi has only told them once that she’d like the bruschette with the mozzarella cheese on the side (so I can eat it), with extra balsamic vinegar on the side, a nutella crepe with ice cream on the side so I can have that. There are many different temperatures people drink their water here. We like ours cold with ice, they know that too. Perhaps they access our order history, but no matter how they do it, it makes the girls feel special.
The breakfast buffet is unlike anything we’ve seen in all the 5-stars Paul and I have been to. But perhaps my favorite guy in the mix, was the omelet coordinator. He stands there to assist you in ordering your omelet, relays it to the chef standing two feet away, asks if you would like hot toast with that with what kind of bread, and will bring it to your table when it’s done, so heaven forbid you don’t stand their waiting. Regularly I saw people ask the waiters to go up and get something from the buffet for them so they don’t have to get up. The only response seems to be, “My pleasure.” Not something we are used to, for sure.
Here’s the team of Chefs making the food fresh, right in front of you.
The hot food is here.
This section is all Indian food, no pork, the most popular buffet. Your plate was a tray with banana leaf lining it.
Here are the fresh baked goods. Beyond the sliced loaves, many of them were French in origin.
There was a salad bar next to the milk bar, and a whole cooler of yogurt choices.
There was a self-serve fresh fruit buffet or you can have someone serve it to you if you don’t want to serve yourself.
You can also get fresh waffles or pancakes. The pancakes are a crepe/pancake hybrid. They taste more like crepes but are fluffy like pancakes. The gentleman asks you what size you prefer. The girls got Nutella on theirs.
There is also a cereal bar and a cheese area.
Here was the omelet, egg area requesting area. The omelet coordinator was making a delivery when I snapped this.
And if there is an omelet coordinator, you know there’s a tea steeper. You order your tea, tell them how dark you like it. There is a tea steeping station where someone makes the tea to the requested strength, comes and pours it into your cup when it’s just the way you like it. No forgetting a bag in the teapot and getting bitter tea. They don’t ask if you want sugar, but if you would like a sugar caddy. If you don’t get to your hot drink for a while, they will ask if you want a fresh one. Seriously.
All of these factors add up to a breakfast experience none of us will every forget.
Later in the afternoon the girls and I went to get some mani/pedis. The person who did my nails asked if Miami was in Canada. Yesterday we couldn’t convince our taxi driver that Canada is not in Europe. That made me feel a bit better about our egocentric part of the world in which many people don’t know much past North America. When I was a kid I had difficulty finding the USA on a globe because it was connected to these other two countries I’d never heard of called Mexico and Canada. In our lessons it looked just like a huge independent land mass. So if people here don’t understand much about where we live, I get that.
I asked here how long it takes her to get to work every day and she said over two hours each way. She walks, takes two trains, and walks some more. She said the men on the train are very rude and often block the doors so people cannot get in and out, and miss their stops. Her life isn’t an easy one, and yet she feels very fortunate to have her job. The and her husband both travel four hours a day to their work, and have a three year old girl. We enjoyed hearing about India from both of our nail technicians. 
