Our 2nd full day in Jaipur began with a visit to the City Palace. Guide Sunil told us that a building in the complex had been the scene of a large wedding party on the night before and the rental price was approximately $20,000 USD for the one night.

The many buildings, gardens, courtyards, decorative art and carved stone doorways (like the one shown here) presented an overwhelming display.   

We especially enjoyed a very fine textile collection as well as an amazing collection of ancient swords, guns and other weapons.

Our next stop was Jantar Mantar, an outdoor observatory built in 1726 by Raja Jai Singh that some describe it as the largest sun dial in the world.

In fact it includes a series of shadow clocks and calendar devices for telling time and dates as well as makes accurate astrological predictions. Given the focus given to horoscope in determining the timing of important events (like weddings) in India, this was probably seen as a necessity.

It is one of five such astronomical wonders built by Sawai Jai Singh across India with including the first one in Delhi and we were somewhat amazed that the devices really did still prove relatively accurate.

Our original plan was to spend the afternoon in the village of Sanganer, famous for textile block printing, handmade paper and Jain temples but we had bought some examples of the block printing the day before and at that point had been traveling for a full month and decided to have lunch and then return to the hotel for an afternoon of relaxation and preparing for our flight to Chennai the next morning to meet our Tamil Nadu Textile Breakaway Tour.