Thursday, a day off

"We took Thursday off because we were both getting tired.  David having come down with a good head cold and Marty just dealing with an ongoing sore throat every morning and cough (but the cough is better).  

We did get out for breakfast and that is when we found a street closed because of filming a movie.  We circled around to access the restaurant from another street and were able to get in.  We both had variations of omlettes, David a Nepali one and Marty a Tibetan one.

Marty's breakfast (cost of $1.90).

We did a little looking around and got our cell phone set up so we could make contact with people.  And we found one USB cable that can be used to charge Marty's new phone (a bag of cables got left in the Philadelphia airport....grrrrr).

We had needed to The Durbar area to find Yak cheese but David was losing energy and we both just wanted to cool our jets for a bit.  

In the afternoon Marty and KC, one of the other sponsors, went out to find the cheese and do some looking around.

The rest of this blog will be only photos and descriptions.

Below are two of maybe 50 little stalls in what we are going to call the bead market.  They are stringing and selling these beads in single strands or lovely twisted necklaces with 15-20 strands.  Some really good Czech glass beads and some Chinese ones as well and all different lengths as well.

We were surprised to see that the men were often holding the thread with their feet as you can see from the photo below.

 

As we walked along we kept seeing things that we just wanted to capture even if it required us to stop and try to get an unobstructed shot.  We were particularly taken by the bright and shiny brass pots and pans.

Again struck by all the colors, Marty and KC had to stop for this shot on the street.

Some parts of a street appear to focus on one thing or another, here we found the "fresh meat" section.  Probably they would have cut off a chuck of this to whatever specification we gave them.

Given the number of flies and all, we were not the least bit tempted to get any of this to take back to the hotel for them to cook.

We did, however, stop and get several pieces of this fried pastry.  It was very crispy much like pie crust and a little salty like a cracker.  We both enjoyed it and have lived to talk about eating street food.  But, what we ate really pretty safe to eat.

In anticipation of the Hindu festival, Tihar, many street vendors are selling these powdered colors.  These will be used in various blessings.

Below you see the flowers that are sold every day for blessings.  There are even more of them being sold as Tihar approaches.  A five day festival that celebrates each of the following on one day: crows, dogs, cows, oxen, and brothers (but only by sisters).  The festival begins on the 9th of November.  The purple you see is strong dried clover which will be placed on the necks of brothers on the last day.

As Marty and KC neared the hotel they spotted a temple through a dark entrance way and peeked into see a wonderful temple.  Really too big to show, but it was stunning as you see from below.

And one last temple also found by bending down and looking into the dark!

This ended our walk about Thamel before returning to the hotel.  Yes, there were many more photos we could have shared but we need to save some for when we come home.

Our next blog will be devoted to meeting the boy we sponsor and the quick trip we took around the area so he could see some of the sights of Kathmandu.  At age 14 this would be his first visit.