last but not least, the TAJ!

the entire trip i have been afraid that we would be lazy in the end of the trip and skip the taj mahal.  luckily i was wrong.  we hopped on a plane to delhi...

 after a quick night's sleep in delhi we headed to the train station to try and buy a ticket.  it was a bit hectic, but i shoved my way through and managed to get us some general class tickets.  dirt cheap, but well, in general class there are about 100 people in three square meters.  we walked down the the wagon that we should be on, and it was so full you could not even look in or try and climb the steps, so we snuck in sleeper class. we heard that the conductors will let you upgrade on board.  about an hour before we were to hop off the conductor came by and i told him we wanted to upgrade, he said now that was not possible and we should pay a fine of 1200 rps (150 sek),  our tickets had only costed 80 rps (10 sek), so this is  a pretty steep fine.  i argued and said we should be able to upgrade, and he got annoyed and said he would come back to us.  but he never did and we snuck off the train at our stop, and although we saw him at the station in agra, we just kept on walking, naughty us! yeah for dirt cheap transportation.  thomas and the girls enjoyed their last train ride in india...

 yes, why does one go to agra?  to see the taj mahal of course.  i have been looking forward to it the whole trip.  from the train we took a rickshaw to our hotel, and ate some lunch on the rooftop restaurant,  while i can say the food was not that exciting, the view was not bad at all.

after a good nights sleep, thomas and got up really early to watch the sunrise over the taj mahal from the top of the hotel,  it was pretty smoggy, and not that exciting of a sunset.  but after breakfast we headed to the wonder of the world...

 the girls loved all the flower carvings.  i think they may just have inspected nearly every inch!  it really is a beautiful building.

 after wandering the grounds for a couple of hours, zoe took a break from admiring the architecture and went tadpole fishing in the fountains.  she actually found some.  pretty funny.

yeah it was a fun day out at fabulous sight. glad we did not miss it.