Sometimes you really just need a vacation...

     After driving home from the rail testing excursion in a full car, I really needed some personal space and room to stretch.  Instead I hopped directly into a van with ten people.  This was because the Michigan State kids had decided to accompany Stephen, Autumn, Rachel and I on a weekend trip to Pondicherry.  The drive was fun and filled with music, which made the squished drive more than bearable. 

 We arrived in Pondi at around 11pm.  Our driver didn't know the city but the place he gave up on driving happened to be a short walk to the youth hostel.  There, the manager was extremely helpful.  Apart from letting us check in after they were closed down, he sent a car to get us dinner.  That night we sat on the rocky beach to talk, ate our midnight dinner, and ended up sleeping on the roof to avoid the heat of the hostel.

wrong lighthouse

Early the next morning we left for the heart of the city.  Instead, we ended up on the opposite outskirt of the city.  We had asked to go to the old lighthouse, but all our driver heard was lighthouse.  We ended up getting a little exercise, and stumbling upon the best place you could hope to stay.

Le E'scale (or something French) is a hotel an Englishman owns in the French Colony of the city.  He referred to each of his guests by their nationality, which got quite hilarious as he explained to us how he would rearrange his guests to serve us best.  He moved the Americans in room 5 to room 2, and once the French couple got back from lunch he would move them from room 6 to 3, and that French in room 3 had to checkout first.  With his pace of speaking on an accent, a confusing jumbling of guests, and several qualifiers on his sentences, we all had something to laugh about later on.

Each floor had two rooms and a common area. Nicholas (the owner) was able to give us the fourth floor, and he put 4 additional beds between the rooms.  The facilities were absolutely amazing, and amongst 10 people, very affordable.

The town was extremely lush and the buildings all very well maintained.

We did some walking on Saturday.  Right next to our hotel was a very old Cathedral.  The sign hinted that it might of been the third attempt to build one that wasn't destroyed shortly after completion back in the 18th century. That day we also got some amazing bread, coffee, and sweets.

Gandhi memorial on the beach

yupp.

awesome roof of our hotel to relax

maybe hard to tell, but every roof is optimized for relaxing

moooo
For daytime fun we went to the beach.  We passed some really pretty places on our way to swim.

palm trees

We took a trip to Auroville on Sunday.  It is an experimental community that represents a hundred different countries (a hundred different countries' hippies that is).  They focus on different types of housing, architecture, food sources, spirituality, learning and cultural research.  I was less interested in all of things and more interested in climbing the weird buildings though.  Maybe next time.

All in all, it was a great trip. Thumbs up for Pondi.