We spent basically most of yesterday traveling, and arrived in Jaipur (the pink city) just in time to eat dinner and go to bed.  Just to preview, this is a city that you MUST see some time in your life!  WOW, is the word to describe it!  We met our guide (we are not big on hiring tour guides, but we are SOOO glad we did today) at 8:00 and made a beeline for the Amber Fort.  Some quick history, the Amber Fort is located about 20 minutes outside of Jaipur.  The old city of Jaipur was built about 300 years ago, and the Amber fort is about 500 years old, and is built in a mountainous region.  As the population grew the old city could not support the population so the Maharajah moved the capital to Jaipur.  About 150 years ago the Prince of Wales was coming to visit, and the Maharajah ordered the city painted pink to honor him.  All of the buildings are still required to be this color. 

Jaipur

Amber Fort

So we crossed a couple of things off of our bucket lists this morning.  The first one started the morning off right, and this was an Elephant ride up to the Amber fort!  The kids had a great time, and it was a treat.  We had seen pictures of the Amber fort, but we really had no concept of how fabulous this place would be.  The Maharajah who owned this palace, the Fort on the mountain above it and the wall that surrounds the city must have been fabulously wealthy.  The architecture of the building is beautiful with a combination of Hindu and Islamic architecture.  The had a system to move water up from the valley below to provide not only drinking water, but water for their fountains, Turkish bath and 99 toilets. 

In case of danger there is a tunnel running from the palace to the fort on the top of the mountain.

Water Palace

After leaving the Amber fort we headed back towards Jaipur, and crossed another item off of our bucket list, riding a camel.  Cindy and all of the kids rode the Camel, and I went along side and took pictures.  This was all took place on the road around the lake that the water palace is located in.  Unfortunately, the Water palace is closed so we could only take pictures from across the lake.

Astronomical Observatory

This was one of those things on the itinerary that really made me Yawn, like really we are going to an observatory?  But how cool was this place!!  They had like 15 different machines that they had built, and they were all amazing!  The worlds largest sun dial, it keeps accurate time to within 2 seconds.  Very cool things that track the suns azimuth, latitude longitude.  12 different structures one for each sign of the Zodiac, that  tell you all kinds of cool astrology things!  Keaton just lit right up after our guide started describing all of these things, and it was easily the highlight of the day for him.

Palace

For the last place of the day we went to the current palace in the Pink city.  The last Maharajah died last year, Prince Bubbles as he was nicknamed, and his heir is his 13 year old nephew I believe.  Anyway, they still live in the palace and own huge tracts of land in this area, making them very wealthy.  Pretty much everything that we have seen is owned by the Maharajah.  Between us, we took about 800 pictures today, and they all need to be seen to get a true feeling for this experience.