ANOTHER LAZY DAY IN KERALA- it's getting to be a habit

The weather was even hotter and stickier today and we idled around on the rooftop having breakfast and chatting to fellow travellers until 10.15.  You learn a lot by doing this and can sometimes help a little yourself.

We entered the oldest church in Cochin and saw where Vasco da Gama who discovered India had been buried before they dug him up and took him to Lisbon - it is a great, simple but solid building with Dutch tinges and I particularly loved the huge material fan system all roped up to an area outside where you would imagine a chap from 'it aint alf ot mum' would have been pulling on the rope to keep the masses cool.  There were constant crowds arriving of locals as well as foreigners to pay homage.

We did a little more retail therapy in our favourite local shop called Anoukhi which is the same company as East in the UK only with much wider range here.

By early lunch we walked along the promenade busy with locals taking their Saturday beach stroll and made it to Bristows hotel and pool just in time for beer and a swim.  The sea breeze was pleasantly cool and I am ashamed to say we ate a burger and coke as part of our swim package - and enjoyed the lack of curry.  We saw the chinese fishing nets working but didn't see anything actually caught in them.

This evening John ran about town booking our next stage of journey to Coimbatore on the train while Moira and I sat and chatted amongst the crows in the roof garden.  We spent a couple of hours trying to contact our respective families and suddenly it was 8 pm and time to go hunting for dinner - although our hostess Sheeba had given us some mutton curries to try for free - which John had mostly wolfed down and then had to drink all our water to recover!

We have got a taste for the high life now after Bristows so we decided to go to a recommended place called the Malabar House which had live music - it was very quiet with guests sitting silently around a pool and the live music was tasteful tablas and flute.  We had been too hot and sweaty to change and we had to be vetted before they would let us in - they seated us at the back out of the view of the designer diners and we had a delicious chef's salad and a seafood tagliatelle which were all delicious.  Yes I know we should be eating curries - but sometimes it's nice to have a change.

As we exited the malabar hotel tonight we were graced with the presence of a huge statue of a wooden horse in the foyer - rather nice in hardwood and Moira pointed out that it was rather well endowed - and suddenly it reminded me of a little amusing incident in Mandawa in Rajahstan where I was up early awaiting the arrival of our driver on the village Main Street when a herd of about 20 donkeys came delicately clip-clopping down the road in a frisky way but notmaking a sound - I reached to get out my camera when i realised that one of the sweet little things was extremely well endowed and then I quickly realised that the other clip-cloppers were his harem and within a couple of seconds he had had 3 or four of them and the females kicked up their  after their turn and went skipping off down the street - and I realised why some say 'rigged like a donkey'....you see all sorts of sights in India- who knows what tomorrow will bring...

We will probably visit Mattancherry - the village next door which is the centre of the spice trade.

This picture on the wall in our room shows the  fusion of this very Portuguese looking woman  wearing a Keralan sari.  

And of course, the Portuguese brought the catholic faith with them and many of the houses here are full of it. This picture overlooks our bed!

as you can see Jesus is watching over us and the churches are very well used - also we were told today that the first of every month is fast day an it is illegal to serve or drink alcohol - though having pointed this out the hotel still served it to us - we also heard it is illegal to smoke in the street and we think the young brit couple in the swimming pool were asked to leave probably because they were being a bit too lovey dovey in the pool - the hotel was full at lunchtime of well heeled indians with their families and they were all well covered up.