Our friend had found a listing for German cafe 'Edelweiss' in her Lonely Planet guide, and the guide recommended the sticky buns. Our friend fixated on the idea of sticky buns quite firmly. Only checking that the cafe was in fact closed had prevented a cross-city trip for sticky buns the night before. So the first order of business the following day had to be sticky buns, which by this point I was starting to get excited about them too. Unfortunately, when we arrived, the sticky buns for that day had not arrived yet. We munched other available things and used the wifi, which was some of the best we encountered in India, as the sticky buns were supposed to be on the way. We waited quite a while, closing on when we were supposed to meet our tour guide. They finally arrived just as we couldn't wait any longer and were heading out to meet the tour guide. Of course, they turned out to be more like cinnamon buns and were merely OK, which was likely inevitable after all the drama. More photos are on Flickr.
Cinnamon bun does not equal sticky bun!
Next, we saw another Jain temple, but after the last one this one could not stand up. It was much smaller and nothing we hadn't seen before by this point in the trip. We also had to bribe the shoe guy so our shoes didn't get lost. At this point, we were getting a bit tired of bribing people.
After the temple, we went to the local palace, which was a bit more for luxury than defense but was was still equipped with the latest in anti-elephant defenses.
The palace, and also a clear example of the piece of dust that was on the lens for the entire trip - see the dot in the sky just above and to the right of the central palace door shown.
Precious stones inlaid into marble. Probably not a weekend project.
The view from the palace out over the city was pretty good.
Sometimes, when you're nobility with a palace and all, you just need to coat the walls of a room entirely with gold and mirrors.
Go go tourism walking powers - down narrow and twisting staircases - very common in the interior of these palaces.
Silver throne chair to get carried around in.
After the palace, we were signed up for a boat cruise on the lake.
We went up and down the lake in front of the palace and old city, and also visited another palace / garden out in the lake itself. It was nice, but small.
Lunch at another expensive tourist place, but they had new and interesting food offerings like that grilled fish dish in the picture that was pretty good.
Just before sunset, we went to a palace garden park. The guides out front followed us forever when we declined services "This park is very technical!" They gave us some sample 'technical' info, saying that the fountains were all gravity-driven, but my engineering degrees suggest they either 1) they are piping the fountain water in from mountains miles away, or 2) they are using electric pumps. The guides claimed it was all gravity power for the fountains but we couldn't see anything tall enough to produce the pressure head anywhere nearby.
Garden design not particularly special, but not a bad walk in the evening.
That evening, we ate in a really fancy place on the lake, in the old city, overlooking the palace. Really, we paid for the view but didn't care in the slightest. The food was pretty interesting, and the cocktails were great. Overall, it was a fairly pleasant day of tourism.
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