Mumbai (Bombay): India's modern city

My trip to Mumbai, well, it was definitely a new experience in India. It was a new part of India that I had come to assume did not exist. Mumbai had real functional sidewalks that people actually used! It had traffic rules that people actually followed, and it had taxis with meters instead of rickshaws without meters. There were moments in Mumbai when I honestly forgot I was in India, which was a wonderful surprise. Hyderabad is a much less developed city in India than Mumbai (obviously) so I had gotten very used to the rural, dirty, sidewalk-less collection of suburbs that is Hyderabad, and was lovestruck by the history and development that was present in Mumbai. Everyday (and sometimes more than once a day) my friends and I strolled down the wonderful cobbled sidewalk from our hotel to Moshe's Cafe, which was a lovely little cafe that one would expect to find in New York City. Moshe's quickly became my obsession for the duration of the trip, as it served french-pressed coffee and real espresso! We did literally all of the suggested activities in Lonely Planet, and them some. My favorite part of the trip was Bangaga Tank because it was such a hidden gem amongst hundreds of houses along a small winding road on a hill.
We spent one night in serious style, as we decided to go to the nicest restaurant in Colaba (the area of Mumbai we stayed in)and eat like Kings at a price that was still pricey, but great for what we got. Indigo fed me a delicious dish of asparagus risotto, which gave me a very different feeling of full than I had been feeling from Indian cuisine. We drank all the martinis under the rainbow (literally, we all unintentionally ordered different colors) and relaxed on the rooftop, enjoying Mumbai's nicer half.
We visited a huge Hindu temple and felt uncomfortable and out of place, as people did not seem to happy to see us there. We spent a tremendous amount of time eating, as that seemed to be the natural thing to do while on vacation. Each meal included appetizers, drinks, and if not dessert, than the coffee shop visited immediately afterwords did the job. I stayed in an air conditioned triple with Anna (my roommate here) and Evan, which was clean to the eye, but dirty to the nose. The Welcome Hotel was a funny little place, as the shared dormitory style bathrooms seemed to make little to no sense at all. The woman's bathroom consisted of one tiny room with a shower head directly over the toilet, while the men's consisted of four individual and much more spacious rooms. I guess men travel more often in India, but it still struck us women as surprising and annoying.
Next weekend (not this coming) I will be traveling to Hampi via my first Indian train and am very excited for yet another adventure. The weekend after that I will be going to Mysore with the entire CIEE gang, which will be very nice as we won't have to plan anything (it is organized through our program directors). The weekend after that is what I am most looking forward to, because I will be venturing to northern India to see Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur!
I have almost two months left in India and time seems like it will travel fast with all of this traveling. It is getting hotter here with each passing day, and I'm holding off on using the ac, as I'd rather save it for the hot weather that I have yet to experience. On the academic front, classes are still canceled left and right, which is frustrating retrospectively since we are paying for these classes, but nice in the sense that at that moment I don't have to go.