Humayun who???!!

What an exciting weekend!! Saturday I went out site seeing and went to several marvelous different places. The first stop was Humayuns Tomb. He was the first emperor of India, and apparently a pretty big deal. The site is huge, and what I found kind of funny was that in order to get in, you have to pay for a ticket. They charge the equivalent to $5 for locals, and $10 for tourists. They have no way of telling whether you or a tourist or not other than the color of your skin. Everything involved with building this tomb is so eccentric. Indians are a big believer of ensuring that when designing these tombs, everything is symmetric. So you'll find that the tomb itself is very large, and not only hold Humayun's body, but also bodies of his relatives, the royals. His wife had it built for him after he died in the 1560s.the way that they construct these tombs is amazing. So much thought and time goes into building these. They even make sure that while it is built out of marble and known to get very hot, the architect,Mirak Mirza Ghiyath, built it just right so that the breeze from the wind would keep the inside cool. It's amazing. Once you walk in, you can see in the ceiling where the design used house jewels and gems, but over time have been removed and stolen. It's been told that the queen of England's crown actually has some of the jewels from this tomb. We also visited the India Gate, which is beautiful! It's located near the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the Indian president's home. There's a long road that connects the presidents house to the India gate, which on republic day in January is filled with the army, navy, marines, etc. For a march and celebration. If you get some time, I highly recommend you google pictures of it. It's very extravagant. You can drive up right to the gate of the presidents home, but you cannot park for long. The army will ask you to move on. The Rashthrapati Bhavan was actually built by the British, so you can see some european architecture, but overtime Indians have renovated it, so it's kind of like an Indian-British mutt. It's beautiful though. At the Indian gate, there is always several guards guarding the center of it. There is an eternal flame lit in honor to the several hundred thousand Indian troops that lost their lives in the first world war and afghan wars. All the name of the fallen soldiers are inscribed in the side of the monument. They do changing of the guards, etc. It's very neat. I actually got my picture taken with one of the soldiers. :) So, we have discussed two different places that I visited Saturday. Tired? I sweated out about 15 pounds between the two places. Don't complain. Did I mention it was 114 degrees yesterday? I also visited The Holy Sacre Catholic Church, and lit candles that I bought from the cutest 4 year old Indian girl. I lit them at the st. Mary monument in front of the church. I also popped into the church to see it's beauty, but there was prayer going on, so I didn't stay long. However, I did buy 5 rosaries for a total of $15 dollars that I was told were made in Jerusalem. Don't worry, I got pictures. The last place visited yesterday was a Sikh temple. This is a very strict religion that we often see wearing turbans. In order to enter the temple, you must be wearing a turban and submit your shoes and socks. You then have to walk over and wash your feet in a fountain, as you cannot carry any dust into the temple.the top of it is lined with actual gold, and is amazing to see, however, being that the religion is so strict, I didn't get too many smiles for being there. We left rather quickly. Today (Sunday), I went to the Ambience mall to check it out, and it's six floors of fabulousness...lol, they actually have an ice skating rink on the sixth floor, which is a bit ironic seeing as how that's the hottest floor... The mall also contains a bowling alley, 10 different restaurants, a night club, movietheatre, three beer gardens, amusement rides, and a huge food court. I had an Indian BLT which consists of butter chicken, cabbage, stewed tomatoes, and a lamb and asparagus blend on naan (Indian bread). AMAZEBALLS. It's hard to eat at the food court because everything smells awful, but tastes good. Your senses pretty much kick you in your nether regions. You need to go through security checks in order to get into the building, which includes a metal detector. I don't think that there are s A lot of places where young here without security checks... Is that good or bad? There are a lot of pros and co s with each, I suppose.