Office trip to Holiday Inn, Goa: Day 1

Date: Saturday, 2/23/2013

Location: Cavelossim, Goa

We went on an official trip for a 3-day getaway to Holiday Inn, Goa. Happens to be my first ever official long distance team outing. Missed the first one since I joined work back in 2011 due to date clashes. The resort is situated at Cavelossim along side Mobor Beach, which lies by the Mobor peninsula down South Goa. Its about a 12 hour journey from Pune to Cavelossim. The bus left for Goa from the Symantec Baner office at around 10:30 pm. Me and my teammates were already pretty tired after work. But once the bus left, we found it hard to get any sleep. So we were up until 3 am playing cards at the back of the bus. Since I find it hard to get sleep while traveling, I barely got any along the way.

The tour bus

We arrived at Sawantwadi, which is the southern-most district of Maharashtra at around 7 am the next morning. Sawantwadi is a culturally significant place with rich history associated with it. Once the capital city of the Bhonsale clan of the Marathas, today it is well known for its woodworks and handicraft industry. There was a booking for breakfast at hotel Konkan Crown. That's where we stopped to freshen up and have breakfast. Breakfast consisted of idilis and medhu wada sambar. Moving past the lush greenery of Sawantwadi, we arrived at our destination at about 11 am.

 

Breakfast at the Konkan Crown hotel

Holiday Inn, Goa receives you with aerated apple juice while you wait at the reception. Since there were families traveling along with us, rooms were allotted with first preference to families and couples, followed by bachelors. I finally got my room at around 1 pm. But I didn't mind the wait as I spent the time exploring the resort.

The Holiday Inn resort

Right from the main lobby, you get a view of the the swimming pool. A short walk from the pool is the resort's private beach. The beach has a long stretch of white sand. The only other place I've seen sand like this was at Kapu Beach in Udupi. Unlike regular beach sand, white sand remains cool even at extremely high temperatures. Only a limited portion of the beach actually belongs to Holiday Inn. It neighbors the Leela's portion of the beach. The beach has multiple shacks such as Sam's and Mike's. The beach as well as the resort are very well maintained.

I was surprised to see the high influx of people at the reception. The hotel is frequented by a surprisingly high number of Russian tourists. So much in fact that many of the staff themselves speak in Russian. February/March happens to be peak season for Russian tourists, as I would learn later.

By the beach

Lunch was at the Mardi Gras, the continental cuisine restaurant at right by the pool. We had booked the place for breakfast/lunch/dinner for the remaining part of our stay there. They serve a wide variety of food with every meal. I can hardly recall disliking anything among the limited number of food items I tried. The sea food is definitely worth trying out. The normal buffet there will cost you around 800 Rs. plus taxes.

During our stay there, I and Kishore had to switch rooms twice. The first was a switch we did with other teammates, from room 177 to 294. We would later learn that 177 had a leak with the air conditioning. The next switch was because of there was some water maintenance going on in our section of the villas. Our final resting place would be room 123. Our experience with room service wasn't particularly great. The response was slow and seemingly uncoordinated. But I tend not to quickly judge a place on such matters. These tend to be isolated incidents and in general everyone had positive reviews for the room service.

Dinner at the Mardi Graz

I spent the afternoon at the pool followed by the evening on the beach with the rest of the crew. A long walk followed by beach football, dinner at Gras and then drinks by the Beach Grill. After another late night walk by the beach and a game of cards, we finally hit the sack at 2 am.