Wednesday 3 August 2011

One hell of a Bangalore Weekend

I must have been to Bangalore a gazillion times but last weekend, for the first time I went with a group of close friends with no agenda - no specific family or friends to meet, no function to attend and no play to stage. All my friends had done this before, it was a first only for me so when we started saturday morning off with breakfast at Koshy's they all nearly fell out of their chairs when I said I had never been there before. It was decided then (though actually it was probably the agenda anyway) that we should spend the entire weekend visiting as many such cool hang-out places - pubs, restaurants, breakfast joints etc etc and we covered eleven over two days!!



I initially had grand hopes and plans of sketching in each place, but the second place where we went to was Hard Rock cafe and because I took a while painting there all the others were forced to buy a second round of drinks and there was much Tsk-tsking and genial pulling of my leg all around so I desisted from then on. The waiter at hard rock who waited at our table was a Sandeep who was a happy chirpy chap. If you asked him to turn up the music volume he would do so and then dance all the way down the aisles between all the tables and he was most intrigued by my sketch and then my little painting kit. Soon a bunch of waiters came and huddled around our table and as soon as the sketch was done (the paint was still wet) they asked to see my sketchbook and gave me many smiles. Altogether a happy place.



But our schedule was ambitious, we had to move on; I won't bore you with a list but we covered a lot of area and Tarun, Uk and John are planning to get a whole lot of bragging mileage out of last weekend. On Sunday we had a superb breakfast at this place in Indira Nagar called Daddy's Deli. It's a Parsi joint and the Akuri and different side orders and waffles were yummy. Big thank you to Sidey for not just putting us up at his place but for taking us to this scrumptious breakfast. From there we moved to a new place called Toit that everyone we bumped into was talking about and when we got there we realised why.



Its really beautifully done up. The resto-bar occupies four levels with staircases and mezzanines and bridges and double heights all within three stepping up pitched roof volumes. I decided long ago not to blog any photographs here and my decision still stands so I'm afraid all I can show you is one sketch but this was the top-most level where we sat in these deep-set divans at low tables. This level opens out into a terrace garden but the best part is the roof. You know the sky-light tile in the mangalore tile system? Well the entire roof here has only the slylight tiles so it forms a lovely waffled light-and-shade pitch roof and in the splendid Bangalore weather that light filtering down as we sat there was just amazing.

Disclaimer to all Bangalore relatives who read this blog: really sorry I didn't call you but it was a group pact, none of us were to call our relatives this weekend. But hope to see you in October :D

7 comments:

  1. Very nice sketches...particularly Toit's. Koshy's is the only place in your list that I am familiar with. Just goes to show that I am probably more than a generation behind in my knowledge of cool hang-out places in Bangalore.

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  2. Hey... you put colour in toit! Wow this makes our trip look even cooler to brag about!

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  3. Thank you both :) yes i spent a patient half hour on the colour back home.

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  4. Stumbled upon this sketch on flickr when searching for images of our pub.

    Thank you very much for visiting Toit and the sketch is fantastic. Next time you visit Toit, please ask for any of the owners and we'd be happy to share a drink - not that we are hinting at getting more sketches made but we won't complain if you do volunteer :).

    Oh, and the story on flickr about how the name Toit came about - not true, but nevertheless a great one and maybe we'll use that as the original one is getting boring now.

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  5. Hey thanks for commenting. Its very exciting for me that you found my sketch on a random search. Thanks for visiting the blog. In our two days of pub-hopping we kept hearing different stories about Toit, how it got its name and how it was to be pronounced. Someone even suggested it should be said as "twa" cos its french. So please do enlighten me on the real story. I'm very curious.

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  7. When it comes to Bangalore, some of the major attractions include Lal Bagh, Bangalore Palace, Cubbon Park and Tipu Sultan's Palace. While travelling to this city pick from various hotels in Bangalore and enjoy a memorable stay in this ever-buzzing city.

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