Kolkata ~ Christmas break in the city of Joy

Kolkata, famously called the city of Joy, is part travel destination and part home for me. The reason being that while it’s my parents’ city of origin, it’s not mine. So, even after coming here for years for holidays (more like on summer vacations), I still find so many things here to discover, re-discover and experience as a traveler.

My year end holiday plans (of going to Goa or Thailand) got dampened a bit when I suddenly got deluged with work and the husband had a conference to attend instead. But for a traveler, every dark cloud has a silver lining and in our case the silver lining was that the conference was in Kolkata.

So, it was one week Christmas break in Kolkata to end the 2012 year travel with!!  However, planning a holiday last minute has its share of stresses, the biggest one being arranging for that big A, called air ticket!!…we had almost a heart attack looking at the steep rates of the airfares. Thankfully, as always, it was MakeMyTrip to the rescue and we got good prices for one week return trip deal from Air India.

So, we landed up in Kolkata, 2 days before Christmas and had a lovely one week with family and friends. It was full of so many different experiences that I felt I should write a separate post on each experience, however, this post is about all the things I did over the wonderful week of Christmas break 2012 (and detailed posts shall follow).

The fun started with wonderful Christmas celebrations at Park Street, wonderfully lit up roads, Christmas carols and everyone in revelry; we had lots of fun walking, clicking photos and eating yummy food at Park Street.

Ofcourse, we also did what all travelers do when in Kolkata, visit Victoria Memorial. It is truly an amazing monument and every time I visit, I get nostalgic; it’s got so many wonderful memories of my childhood trips here.

St. Paul’s Cathedral (another staple of travelers) was buzzing with travelers and on Christmas eve, it was a different experience for sure!!

The Botanical Gardens was one place, the husband was most excited to visit and boy was it fun!!! After a long time I visited this place with mum (and the husband ofcourse) and the husband was gobsmacked on seeing the Great Banyan Tree at the garden.

Apart from all the places we visited, it was really meeting up with family and my cool (and fashionable) gang of Kolkata bloggers, which was the most memorable experience of the whole trip.Kolkata turned out to be really a City of Joy for us after all J

Here’s me and the cool blogger girls of Kolkata, they were such wonderful charming and loving hosts 🙂