Chennai (Tamil Nadur) - February 5th, 2007

This morning I went to breakfast with two of the ladies, and aftewards we all had different agendas for the day. I went to buy the train ticket to Bangalore so I go in the morning because there is a wedding celebration here and the hostal is reserved for party people, so we have to vacate the room.
I went to visit the Vivekananda Museum, which used to be the Ice House when at first the ships used to bring big blocks of ice from North America and store it in this oval-shapped building. The museum there has a lot of displays and photographs of the 'wondering monk'. This swammigi stayed here in 1897 at the time he returned from Chicago, New York and Pasadena, Calif., and preached to respect and accept all religions.
After that, I walked to the seashore of Marina Beach. The sand was unbearably hot, just to have to walk from the boulevard to the water. They have some nice and very modern monuments and memorials along the Marina Beach blvd, which is a 13-kilometer sandy stretch. This beach was the scene of devastation after the 2004 tsunami; most of the fishing shanties along the area were inundated.