Every time whenever it comes to
deciding which holiday destination to visit, there is always a war of words
among our family members. My reference of family does not mean three or four members,
it’s a group of around fifteen including kids, youngsters and seniors. This
time deciding the right destination was more crucial as we were going on a tour
after a gap of three years. Everybody was busy collecting data on more
attractive destinations, from this data and discussions majority of us agreed
for Kerala as the destination for our forthcoming tour.
When our family friend Venugopalan
came to know about our travel plans, he extended a helping hand by taking the
responsibility to take us around the notable places to visit in Kerala. Venugopalan
being the resident of Thiruvanantpuram having a huge house in its vicinity, we
landed in this city first. Looking at the immense tourist potential of this
capital city of Kerala, we thought of visiting some selected places to visit in Kerala. Some of the
highlighted places in and around the city are Kanakakkunnu Palace, Sree Padmanabha Swami Temple, St.
Josephs Cathedral, Trivandrum zoo, Science and Technology Museum and Kowdiar
palace. We covered most of the places in a day’s tour taking our lunch at the
cities most renowned Kalavara family restaurant. Seafood cooked in keralite
style of cooking, with awesome side dishes was a great experience for all of
us. Among the above places Sree Padmanabha Swami temple is the must visit place
in Thiruvanantpuram which was previously called Trivandrum.
We thought that second phase of our
tour should be more enjoying and entertaining, so we filtered a few places to
visit like Kovalam beach, Shanghumugham Beach and the Veli lagoon. Kovalam beach is a paradise for
the beach vacationers located just few km from the city which is renowned as
one of the finest beaches in India. We had excellent time around the beach
where we shopped, took an exclusive medicinal oil bath and went for a soothing
Ayurvedic massage. Halcyon castle offers luxurious accommodations of
International standards. We spent our evening at the nearby serene Shanghumugham
beach close to Trivandrum International airport. The huge “Jalakanyaka”
sculpture and the amusement park attract tourists to this place. At Veli lagoon
we had enjoyed lots of water sports and a coffee at the floating restaurant. We
had a nice opportunity to get the glimpse of sunset at the beach. Our wish of
taking a Keralite dinner was fulfilled at the Indian Coffee house. The ancient
stone pavilion and Vettukad Church near the beach are also best places to visit.
We were really accomplished with our
tour of Kerala, which became spicy under the guidance of our great friend. In
order to respect his request, we stayed one extra day at the capital city in
which we had the chance to get acquainted with the common Keralite delicacies
like Paysam and appetizer Rassam. Offering thanks to Venugopalan we left this incredible
place for a return journey.
