It seems like it’s a smoggier day than normal in the K-dot. A couple of monkeys are hanging out in the Buddha Park, as well as some child beggars.
We walked from there to the National Museum. There was less traffic on weekends for sure. The National Museum was a further walk than we thought, so we were a little grumpy by the time we got there. It bore more than a passing resemblance to the KulturPark in Izmir, Turkey. Admission was $3 plus a $1 fee for a camera.
There were 3 galleries: one art, one Buddhist art, and one natural history. The art gallery and most of the Buddhist art gallery were temple iconography. There was an interesting mandala exhibit upstairs in the Buddhist museum. The ticket takers were very unfriendly. The natural history museum had some interesting taxidermy, including a two-headed buffalo skin.
We walked across the street to the military museum, because why not. It was a boring endless gallery of commander portraits and different guns.
$1 admission thought, so you can’t beat the price. We walked from there to Kathmandu Durbar Square along an actual paved road which had decent sidewalks for a while and even a few decent-looking homes, which were probably officer houses from the adjacent military base, next to the ordnance depot. It descended back into squalor as we approached the river.
We stopped for a late lunch at another rooftop place overlooking Durbar Square. Molly had vegetable egg rolls, which were filled with spaghetti only, and I had the Newari set, which was pretty good. It had rolled dried rice instead of steamed rice, and a shot of local lighter fluid (“wine”) along with a small portion of a bunch of different items. We walked back to our hotel. The unpaved road north from Durbar was filled with mostly-closed businesses (because of Saturday?) and we got nervous we wouldn’t find a rollerboard. We dodged back through Thamel and found one for $28 which seemed ok. We bought some tea and salt and headed back to the hotel.
Molly packed while I read and then we went to Thamel House for dinner. Molly ordered the veg set and I did non-veg, and we shared. As well as a couple of Everests. We started with roasted soybeans, potatoes, and then momo and a bean soup. And then they brought out the main courses. It started with rice in the middle of a big planner, and then waiters started scooping things onto our trays: lentils, paneer with veggies, wild boar, fish, chicken, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and maybe a couple other things, plus a shot of “wine”. Then they came around to see if you want more of anything. There was a stage set up, but we stuck around for a bit and nothing appeared to be going to happen as far as song & dance goes, so we bailed. There was a lovely dessert of yogurt, rice, & nuts. We stopped at Best Shopping Centre on the way back to the hotel to load up on snacks for the flight. Internet was too slow to stream a movie, so I watched a Bayern Munich Bundesliga game and Molly played Dots.
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