Claire and Morten Travel Blog in India 2012: 02/03/2012

After a good night's sleep and total relaxation yesterday we were both high on energy and I went up for a run in the small gym of the hotel. No aircon but at least there was a fan I could point to my back while running.
Afterwards we showered and went down for breakfast. Then we spent 5 minutes orienting ourselves on a map and on sights before we headed off to see them.
We visited the Pondicherry museum and saw the Governors home, as well as the next-door park, before heading down to the beach side where we spotted the Mahatma Gandhi statue. Finally it was time for the three Catholic churches, which we saw in succession while also doing some shopping for essentials like shampoo etc.
We also went into a travel agency where we asked the girl there to book us a train journey between New Jalpaiguri and Lucknow, a stretch we had failed to book on cleartrip on three occasions, which had still been deducted on my credit card and which I was now waiting for a refund on. However after 15 minutes of waiting she hadn't managed to book it either due to system problems, same as we experienced, so we left her to try and book and call us back.
Then we walked back towards the hotel and came across a barbershop, which I immediately took advantage of. It was great fun as they didn't have much English-next time try and communicate with your barber or hairdresser in sign language to let them know what you want! :-) Not only that but we don't think the barber had ever cut the hair of a Westerner before, after all it was one of my infamous Google maps shortcuts and a side street well off the beaten track, so he was a bit nervous and sweaty according to Claire. But he really got the job done and things were looking good afterwards:-)
Then we headed back to the hotel, I was drenched in sweat from the day at perhaps 35c in Pondy so had a shower while Claire booked an Italian restaurant called Don Giovanni. Turns out that's actually the guy and he's Italian alright. So after showers and ironing of shirts we headed down and got a rickshaw in the middle of rush hour. But it only took us 15 minutes to get there anyway and we were in good time just before 1900 and found the restaurant on the top of a hotel on the 5th floor with a good night view over the city centre and we could hear the hustle&bustle down below.
For starters we had a cheese board to share consisting of 3 kinds of cheeses and bread, which had Claire praising the place as a cheese addict after her fix. For mains I had an Italian salami pizza and Claire had a Tagliatelle with par a ham - washed down with a Carlsberg on my part and a glass of port like red wine on Claire's. It was very nice food and we even ended up with a chocolate cake for desert and Claire an espresso. Top Knotch stuff!
Afterwards we walked back to exercise off a bit of our bellies and were back from the honking and beeping, while passing the shops that were still open at 20:30.
We spent a bit of time doing some more planning and decided that instead of trying to book the train to Lucknow we would instead fly to Amritsar via Delhi, see the Golden Temple and the change of Indian/Pakistani guard and then take a train to Lucknow from there. In that way we would save a fair bit of travel time as Amritsar is "out of the way" on our planned journey. We also informed the travel agent of this by email so that she wouldn't book the train to Lucknow.
Then it was time for sleep as we had arranged with the hotel for a driver in the morning from 7:00 to Tranquebar/Thadangambadi to see the Danish Fort.