Agra is known as the 'City of Love' as it is home to the Taj Mahal, a beautiful mauseleum built by Shah Jahan for his favourite (yes I did say favourite!) wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to their 14th child.

Our accommodation was in a brilliant location right next door to the east gate of the Taj but, as with any silver lining, it did mean that to get anywhere we had to contend with local shopkeepers hounding us all the way up the road. Our room wasn't quite as impressive as the location with a toilet that didn't flush, a fly problem and the noisiest air conditioning unit I've ever heard.

Our first day in Agra also coincided with Veidi's 50th birthday so we tried to make it a special one for her, with a beautiful handmade card from our resident artist Hayley, a poem from moi, a cake complete with candles from all of us and finally a small gift with a big happy birthday wish. This was then topped off with an afternoon at the Taj Mahal - what better place to spend your birthday!

The Taj Mahal was extremely hot and, as it was a special day, I'd put on my new 100 rupee dress which unfortunately, as I discovered far too late, is made of fabric which doesn't really breathe so I spent most of the day prising it away from my sweaty body - gorgeous!

The queue for the bench where Diana sat in her famous solitary pose was quite long, actually that's a lie, this is India after all, I think the scrum for the bench might be a better term! Adopting Indian manners we muscled in and managed to get our photos taken observed by 30+ people.

There were many 'gardeners' wandering round the Taj very keen to advise where the best photos could be taken. When I was with David we just ignored their offers of assistance but later when I was with Veidi and Helen we succumbed to one of them and let him take photos for us together, seperate, standing, kneeling, with arms outstretched and many more - all for a fee of course!. Speaking of photo's David and I were serious objects of interest earlier on in the day when we played centre stage on a number of family shots, including one with a heavily pregnant lady.

In the evening we all jumped into the 'pope mobile' (our taxi around Agra) and set off for a local restaurant where there was a rather entertaining little boy outside who performed some traditional Indian dancing for us mixed up with some Michael Jackson moves before launching into a rendition of 'Yellow Submarine' - which we naturally all sang along with! It was then back to the hotel for a spot of Indian rum and a chat.

The following morning Veidi, David and I set off to catch the pope mobile for a spot of sight seeing. As we left the hotel the area around the Taj Mahal seemed eerily quiet with just 2 small bare foot children watching the local monkeys stealing food from the shrine. As they were shooed away by a soldier with a stick we were certain that something big was about to happen so we asked our driver for the low down - turns out that some German politicians or dignatories were visiting the Taj Mahal that morning so it had been closed to the general public.

We actually drove to the other side of the river to get another view of the Taj Mahal and the bank there was being guarded by soldiers. They seemed ok with us, let us take our photos and asked us where we were from with big smiles on their faces but then this grumpy older guy intent on exerting his authority called over our driver and started to question him. Our driver was made to produce his papers and then the soldier took just a little bit too long to give the driver them back, they then followed us all the way up the road until we got in our car and drove off - very menacing!