Kalote lake - you couldn't imagine!

After months of battling nausea and morning sickness, Sunday seemed like a good day for a small outing somewhere close by. Besides, it was raining after a long time making it the perfect type of weather for a drive, and our new car was waiting to get some fresh air outside the city!

We had a number of limitations - good road being a major one - and a lot of places got quickly eliminated. Lonavala remained an option but it's just too crowded and boring these days. Milind Gunaji's book came to the rescue and we decided to explore Kalote lake, a little off Khopoli.

Directions to get there are pretty simple - exit the expressway at Khalapur and continue toward Mumbai on NH-4 about 4-5 kms, locate Westend Meadows on the opposite side and turn in adjacent to the complex. Continue for about a couple of kms until you reach the lake. It's hard to believe that there can be such a serene and beautiful place so close to the main road and yet so virgin. Do not expect any of the usual - thelas, hawkers, etc. There are a couple of resorts - Eden farms and another (I forget the name), but we didn't explore any of those. The only thing to do here is to sit and enjoy the beauty of the place. Others, normal and fitter people that is, can even take off on foot and explore the landscape. We obviously could not do that. Hope to go back there sometime for that part.

We got back to Pune via NH-4, again a good change from the by-now monotonous expressway. Except that the road is pretty bad at certain places and we had to come back real slow.

It was a great Sunday afternoon spent well though. This place is definitely worth trying!

Copacabana - Full of variety

It must have been the lure of adequate space at a reasonable price that made the owner set up this restaurant at Vishal Nagar, Wakad. Else you could have easily imagined this joint in a plush area in Koregaon Park or Kalyaninagar. Our sole reason to get there for lunch was its proximity to the residence. But everything about this place turned out to be a surprise!

There is ample of parking space, which is an immediate winner. The ambience is lively and youthful, the decor impressive. There is a lounge in the evenings and expansion is still in progress, with Cabanas planned behind the restaurant.

The menu is so long and so varied that it really takes a while to go over it peacefully and actually put a finger to some specific item. From Korean to Mexican, Chinese to Malay, there is a vast array of cuisines to choose from, including most of the familiar and global delicacies - be it the Spanish Paela or Mexican Enchiladas. Despite the long-list of items, the food was served quite quickly and turned out to be passably tasty. But the real icing on the cake was the spread of desserts on offer. Not just that, they actually HAD whatever was listed on the menu - an all too common disappointment at a lot of restaurants otherwise. The blueberry cheesecake, caramel custard and kulfi we ordered were simply superb.

We all thought that the 'concept' is a bit too early for Wakad despite its density of the 'IT crowd'. This was confirmed when I overheard an oldish man tell someone on the phone that he'd come to have lunch at 'Copablanca'... wonder what the owner (or whoever named this place) will have to say to that!

With some aggressive marketing, Copacabana has the potential to become a 'hub'. I would recommend it not just to people who live around the area, but to people who don't mind driving a bit for a good dining experience. After all most of us criss-cross to Koregaon once a while, don't we?