Taxi!

For dinner last night we decided to eat at one of the restaurants in or around the Taj hotel- pretty much the most well, known, most pimp place to stay in Mumbai. We hop into a taxi and tell him the Taj hotel, near the Gateway to India (the enormous archway right at the end of the peninsula) on Colaba Causway (like the M St. or Walnut St. where there are a million shops. The cabbie wobbles his head and tears off down the street. I figure everything is cool, even though the driver looks to be max 14 years old. Everything wasn't cool. He had absolutely no idea where the heck the epicenter of all the action in the city was. Every street corner he stopped and asked directions. One time he even parked the cab and jogged up the block trying to figure out where to go. So after a 50 minute trip that should have been 15, we arrive and find that every single restaurant has stopped serving. Perfect. Luckily, we're in the Taj hotel and after we explained the situation to the concierge he frantically dials about 9 restaurants in about 75 seconds and comes up with one that will accomodate us, even though they're closed, since he called from the Taj. Sweeeeeet. We hop into a taxi and hand the guy the address written by the concierge. He starts to drive away and decides that he doesn't know where he's going. Not again. He immediately pulls over and hops out, and this time, instead of parking the cab, he lets it keep rolling, shouts to some other guy who runs over, hops in and peels out. This guy gets us there and after bickering with this new guy about the fare (Rs 85 or about $2 but should have been only like Rs 30) we say 'screw it' and cut our losses. The Maitre'd (or however you spell it) steers us directly to our specially made up table in an insanely swanky, airy restaurant with cool lounge music playing. Dinner is delicious Italian food (with an Indian flair) preceded by uniquely spicy lobster bisque soup. No room for desert and including a big fat ~30% tip still came to under $100 for the three of us. So after our two debacles with taxis earlier in the night, we ended up having an awesome meal in essentially a private restaurant, ironically called Taxi. We win.