Victoria Memorial - A Must See in Kolkata

With the first round successfully underway, our Chief Arbiter, R Anatharam, decided to take two hours off in the morning (of course only after the team lists were submitted and the pairings made) to check out some of Kolkata's landmarks.

Our hotel is off course fortunately situated perfectly for the tourist and Victoria Memorial, just a 10 minute ride by car (even in less than ideal traffic) is perhaps the city's best known landmark and so off we went.

Unfortunately it was a slightly foggy day and we were not allowed to take photos in the interior as other than being a tribute to Queen Victoria, first Empress of India (as part of the British Empire) in the capital city they founded as it is also an historical art gallery.

But we did our best and really enjoyed the outing in a beautiful morning in sunshine without the heat as the photos that follow will show:

Here we are at the entrance of Victoria Memorial. Entry is 10 Rupees unless you are a foreigner in which case we have to support tourism with 150 Ruppees! Of course our Chief Arbiter never travels anywhere without his devoted wife!

This is the entrance beyond which photos are not allowed and all I can say is the architecture is amazing and exhibits very informative indeed.

Every the adventurous man, Anantharam decided we should try the bridge before returning to the hotel. With traffic starting to build up our driver was smart enough to instead swing us over the new bridge and not the famous Howrah bridge (where we were assured we would suffer up to a five hour delay!). It also helps when we were riding in a Vehicle marked Kolkata Police.

Yes, we did make it back for lunch at 12 noon!