Beautiful beach,different city,best shopping. Review on Pondicherry

Weekend or 3 day trip is best for pondi. If u can travel in the night then u can plan it for a weekend.Its an unplanned trip for us.We have holiday on July 5th, 2010 Monday due to bharath bandh.The climate on Saturday was good and we thought of going out.After we came out, we realized the climate is too gud and we decided to go for a drive and chose Pondi .We started at 3PM in Bangalore(old madras road) and reached pondi at 10PM. While we were on the drive we booked hotel over telephone anandha residency(budget room costed us 1700/-).The road till krishnagiri(NH) is extremely good and from there its a single road (210km) till pondi.By the time we reached pondi we were tired and we took rest.We started late in the morning to go out as we have 1.5 yr old kid. We have been to arvind ashram, beach view.Shopping outside arvind ashram is good. U.you have shops having stuff from tirupur, erode(famous for cotton exports).We went through the colonies here.Constructions are different and beautiful.Sunday afternoon after lunch we shifted to st.james court beach resort where we got a duplex room for 2700/-.We could not get normal room.But later I realized the money is worth for as the resort has private beach and swimming pool which is awesome.We enjoyed a lot as the climate is also very good.We started back on Monday afternoon at around 3pm and reached Bangalore by 10PM. Overall trip was fantastic but tiring as it is unplanned and we need to rush for resort booking.Best way to book hotel/resort is through makemytrip over call/internet as u get some discounts.If u can go on working days u get resorts at a nominal price.If u want to spend in a good resort u need to spend at least 2k per day.Petrol charge comes around 3k for the whole trip(We went by Santro and the mileage is around 18).Overall trip costed us 10k which is on higher side but if u plan it and go in a group it will come less.food in st.james is good but if you plan to get room service they delay it so much that u lose interest in what u eat.If you are planning for 3 days trip u can also plan to cover Tirunvannamala(i is a pilgrim place which is very good that is exactly in between krishnagairi and pondi)