Having had a late breakfast at Panjim Inn, we were ready to explore the place. The town map in our travel book showed a familiar name: Malacca Street! The thing about Goa is that they still preserve the old names (streets, landmarks, quarters, etc) given by their Portuguese colonists, and Malacca Street was obviously our first destination. :-)
We trudged along narrow streets flanked by brightly-coloured Latin European style houses as we passed the ancient Fontainhas quarter. The town centre proper was a typical modern Indian town - straight roads with shophouses. There was a very conspicuous white church on a hill in the town centre, built by the Portuguese for their sailors/soldiers, who had endured months of ocean travel, to come ashore to say thanks to the Lord as soon as they arrived from Lisbon (what a trip that must have been!). They then travelled another 10 km to the east, upstream the majestic Mondavi River, to their barracks at Old Goa (the old capital till the 1840s).
Pic shows the spot where Malacca Street starts, flanked by the orangish state library building and police HQ to the right, and shophouses to the left. The structure in the middle of the junction is the traffic policeman's shelter. The Mondavi River is right behind me, where there is an esplanade giving scenic vistas of the river.
