Today is Friday. We left our hotel with the gigantic swimming pool and set off for Pondicherry. We visited the Shore temple, build on the seashore as the name suggests. We shared our visit with lots of schoolchildren which is always fun. They were all excited to come up and say "hello" and smile for us. The temple was fabulous, gods and building details carved out of single huge pieces of granite. The second temple was from the same time period but was made up of large rectangular stones that were stacked to make the temple and then carved. The third site we visited was a huge rock wall which had been carved out to make a temple on one side and a pictorial display of the gods and the decent of the Ganges next to it.
We had a unique Indian lunch experience which was sort of a sampler plate with a banana leaf plate, rice, and lots of spices, dips and sweet treats.
After checking into our hotel we went on a tour of this French inspired city which included window shopping, a tuk tuk ride, and some delicious expresso on the side of the road. This place is more dangerous than any city we have visited to date. They all do seem to pass on the left but everybody wants to go straight down the middle of the road or even the wrong side until they are just about to hit another vehicle or pedestrian (no sidewalks) and then they suddenly remember to vier to the left. I went shopping with Mimi after the group left and we decided it was safer to just stay on one side of the road and not try to cross. We got directions from one of the merchants to get us home to the hotel but we got confused as we couldn't tell a road from an alley and streetsigns were hard to find. We decided to get a tuktuk back: it only cost us 40 Rubies or about a dollar.