1/30 , Tuesday

We wandered back to Sita to see if we could get into a class.  Turns out that the class began at 10, not 11, so we were out of luck.  We decided to walk along Mission street because we had not spent much time on it.  We came to a big Cathedral, Immaculate Heart, and went in.  The interior was austere without much ornamentation.  One thing I did notice, and not being Catholic, I can’t say if this is true for all Catholic Churches, but on the columns outlining the nave, were the stations of the cross.  Having recently to Jerusalem and walked the stations, I picked up on them right away.

Above is a man cleaning the walls and fans of debris and dust.  There was a woman who followed behind him sweeping up all the dirt.
The altar was rarely plain, I was expecting the over the top decoration you see on Hindu temples.  No garish colors or strange icons.  A very straight forward, simple Cathedral.

After leaving the church, we, well, Bill, wandered into a mens clothing shop and bought 2 shirts and 1 pair of shorts.  He was rather pleased with himself.  The shirts are bold plaids with odd embroidery on the pocket flaps and back yoke! Both have “animal” emblazoned on the pocket and one has animal on the back yoke and the other has what could be a stylized claw mark.

We continued to poke around the main avenues, and walked slowly toward the Bay of Bengal.  Along the way, we saw these scenes.

This was a demonstration of nursing students but I don’t know what they were protesting or perhaps supporting, I can’t read Tamil!

 This is an old Ambassador car nicely framed by a bougainvillea.

 I took the photo again, so you could see the policemen sitting in the shade.

 This is the approach to the promenade

 Here is a statue of Ghandi.  The plastic tarp is framing a stairway up to the statue where devotees can drape flower garlands in celebration of various holidays.

This was the view from our table at Le Cafe

There we settled in for a small bite at Le Cafe.  This is the only cafe allowed on the beach side of the promenade.  it is open 24 hours a day, can’t imagine how it does that!  The menu was quite limited and certain things were only available after 4 and others not available after noon.  I ordered the “lasagna” (in quotes, because, while tasty, had very little resemblance to lasagna) and Bill ordered the chicken burger.

 Bill ordered an affagatto above and below is my lasagna.

The. Lasagna was with a bechamel sauce, rice noodles, a curry-ish tomato sauce and some type of cheese.  Looks worse than it tasted.  

i needed a lie down after the meal because the sun just takes it out of me.  Around 6 or 6:30 we went out to get some dinner.  Just when you sat something about India being very peaceful, your world is shattered by some kind of procession.  We scampered to the corner to see what was all the racket and what do we wee but a catholic procession going on.  There was an idol surrounded by lights on a platform that was hoisted on men’s shoulders.  In front of the procession was a loudspeaker on a cart blaring some religious music which people were singing and swaying to.  However, from behind was a bullock cart, without a bull, being pulled by a man and on the cart was a generator which ran the juice for the lights and the loudspeaker.  Too funny.

 The lit icon on the platform you can just make out the men carrying it

 This is the cart with the generator

Here is the lead cart with a spot light and loudspeaker

We popped into Spice Route on the corner and had a decent meal of starters.  We had a river fish masala, nizami potatoes, and Bill ordered the grilled prawns.  We rounded out the order with jeera rice, and chapati.  The fish was spicy and delicious, reminded us of the masala fish in Mahabs.  The potatoes were very tasty.  I had just bought a cookbook that had a recipe for them in it and I was interested in trying them.  They are boiled potatoes that are hollowed out and filled with meat or cheese, or veggies and the hole is stuffed closed with some of the hollowed out potato.  These were then put on a skewer and grilled  with red and green sweet peppers and some red onion.  Worth trying to replicate.

We wandered the 50 feet back to the hotel and promptly feel asleep.