India: Agra- Here at last!

We arrived in Agra last night at 3 am. That means that the train we expected to take 14 hours actually took 28 hours. We got to our hotel at 3:30 am only to find it all shut up. We tried ringing the bell but got we got no response. I was resigned to sleeping on the street for a couple of hours but Lynne kept trying and we eventually got into our room after 4:00 am. The hotel had given away the two cheap rooms we had booked and only had one expensive room left. That meant that Stuart K and I had to sleep on the floor. We couldn't get the fan to work either. We stayed at the Hotel Sheela, it has a lovely peaceful garden and is only a few hundred meters from the Taj Mahal. After a few hours sleep we got up and headed for the Taj Mahal. It is a lovely building but it's expensive to get in and the main areas are really busy. In a way I preferred the Bibi-ka-Maqbara we had seen in Aurangabad. It was smaller and a lot less rushed. After that we headed to the Agra fort. Its two outer walls are very impressive but inside it is more like a palace than a fortification. Again I preferred the Daulatabad fort at Aurangabad.