Day 14

Today we woke up in Fort Kochi and had about two hours to do day time tourist things before heading out. We went to St Francis church where Vasco de Gama (forgive me if I’m spelling this wrong with not Google available to check) was originally buried before his body was moved to Portugal.  It’s one of the only Catholic churches that survived when the Dutch took over the area. We then headed to the Dutch Palace to learn about how my ancestors really messed up the place. Sadly we had to leave the area pretty quickly to get on our way but not before we made a shopping stop where I managed to spend 8500 rupees ($170) on a large beaded tapestry which was locally crafted by hand. This was my one and only splurge of the trip and I was pretty proud of my newly developed haggling abilities. I got them down from 10,000 rupees and at a different place I laid down the law with a cocky guy who tried to raise the price to punish me for arguing with him and saved myself 360 rupees. 

We then headed to the main land of Cochin by taking our bus on a ferry which we all were pretty entertained by. Another U of Iowa course has been staying in this area so we met up with them to share our experiences so far and get some KFC after. It was another long drive back to Trivandrum but it’s so worth it to be back with my checked bag full of clean clothes and my blow dryer.