I always find the beginning of a post the hardest to write, and then I decide to just start writing and I bet by the time I'm done, I'll be the author of yet another loong post. :)
This year has been fantastic in terms of my travel. Oh yes I've had some horrid experiences with transit visas but then I've learned a HELL lot from those experiences so that my next travels are a lot smoother. The US trip was special like that, because I researched and found and practically booked the flights and the hotels myself and ended up with a perfect trip. If you know me then you know that I'm jinxed when it comes to flights, tickets, dates and sometimes even online payments! But then, that's the challenge, and thankfully this time I managed to catch all my flights on time. Major win!
After my Boston trip last year, this year was a totally different trip. I visited 4 cities for starters, San Francisco, Miami, New York and Boston. I think I didn't end up doing justice to New York in the sightseeing front but I had a total gastronomical trip there to compensate.
I guess we all fall prey to the "Oh, I MUST see this place" or if you're me "Oh I HAVE to click a picture of that" and then in the second trip you realize (unless you snap out sooner) that those kind of memories don't last very long. The ones that last are the ones that you experience and have some emotional connection to. And this trip was exactly that. I didn't end up clicking a lot of great snaps, but I ended up with my mind full of wonderful little stories.
San Francisco is a funny city. Mark Twain wasn't kidding when he said "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." As luck would have it, I was prepared for summer, the AC offices (which aren't freezing like the ones in India mind you) and the flight journeys. I just had one thin jacket, a kimono sweater, a couple of scarves and thankfully a beanie (which is a new term I learned for a kaan-topi). The sun is shining brightly on you and the wind that hits you is chilly! It's super odd. It took me a day to get used to that, and then I began to like the chill but I can't imagine being comfortable in a weather like that. The city is gorgeous though. Built on the hills that make Bandra look like a mound! :) These hills are steep! When my friend was driving us through the city while we hunted for parking, we had to go up one of them where I would have been petrified in the driver's seat, it was literally like going up on a 90 degree slope. Impossible but for the engines of the cars that run there and the courage of the driver in my eyes. They make for beautiful photographs and great exercise though. I loved the walk to office everyday. Needless to say on my first day I got thoroughly lost and had to eventually take a cab because I just couldn't figure out the grid. Seemingly easy to follow maps are hopeless if you walk in the opposite direction and don't have data enabled on your phone. I loved seeing streets which was bare in the day with furniture and boards tacked/stacked on the walls and bustling cafes in the evening with beautiful canopies! One of the weirdest things that I found in SF was that it shuts down so early for dinner! The streets are practically empty after 9pm and it just feels very odd when you compare it to Bombay. Though that's probably because everyone in US eats dinner very early, around 6.30 - 7. I had some amazing food in SF. Most of my detailed food reviews are on TripAdvisor! :)
My friend, Harini, decided to take me and her cousin out for a drive on Sunday so that we could see something else apart from just the city. And what a brilliant choice that was. We drove nearly 3-3.5 hours to Point Reyes Lighthouse which was on top of a mountain/hill right along the coast. The drive itself was amazing. All along the coast with the ocean on our left and the beautiful mountains on our right... The roads obviously filled precariously with curves. Some of the pictures are here. Like any city SF had the good areas and the ghetto looking areas, I'm not sure what I should've expected, but on my ride to the airport, we drove through some parts of those areas, and it felt like any other city in India where the not-so-fortunate people live, the same look in their eyes. And maybe because I'm new and completely unfamiliar I felt scared even while I was in the cab, maybe in reality there's nothing to it, but I guess it isn't just like what we've seen in the movies. One of the things that surprised me a lot was the number of Indians in SF! :) I guess I should've been expecting that given the number of Indians that work in our SF and MTV offices, but I was just very surprised. On my first night we went to a club in Sunnyvale downtown and practically the whole club was filled with Indians (and maybe this is generic, maybe some of them were Sri Lankans / Pakistanis, there's really no way to distinguish them) and Asians. It was quite funny in a way. Even in SF, while walking on the streets, while getting into buses, etc etc. Kept reminding me of the opening shots of Kal Ho Naa Ho where Preity Zinta is jogging on the streets of NY and has a voice over saying how 1 in 4 people in NY is Indian. Felt exactly the same way! :)
Moving on, I then spent a weekend in Miami with my cousin Jennifer and it was beautiful. The weather in Miami was perfect. Hot and humid. Felt like home. Though maybe for someone who finds Bombay/Chennai humid, Miami's maybe not your cup of tea. It was 94% humidity so it's crazy for someone who sweats easily (not me thankfully!). We went to the Miami Seaquarium, a place which my mom visited 15 years back on her visit to Miami. It was just as fun as I thought it would be and more. We saw the sea lion show with Salty who was an absolute star, then we saw the dolphin and the killer whale show. There were some protestors standing there asking for 'Lolita the killer whale to be freed'. Having been a big fan of 'Free Willy', I decided to check out what they were saying. Found an entire site dedicated to the "truth" about the seaquarium, which they call the seaprison. While there might be truth in the fact that they are helping rescue some of the marine animals, they are also using those animals to make money and are not giving them the basic facilities. Some of the facts are quite disturbing, especially the miniscule size of Lolita's tank. I thought that was only the display tank and that she had a much larger tank to roam about in her "off" hours, turns out, that's all there is to it and they've been promising a larger tank for nearly 25 years! I hope she gets her freedom soon. The next day we went to the Miami South beach. It is every bit as fun as the movies told us it would it. :) There are cars and cars parked playing music, restaurants and cafes serving massive cocktails, everyone's wearing their beach clothes (and there's really not much of that!) and the beach is endless! What struck me the most was the sand! There was not a single stone there... almost seems as though they had someone to pick out the stones every night! :) :) The temperature of the water was perfect, like a heated pool. I can't imagine anyone saying that they'd prefer the pool colder... The coast was amazing... And after being in the water for some hours, we found the perfect dining / drinks place at the plaza to end our night with! I was remarking to my cousin how there are so many 'drive-through' options in the US compared to India. While we've just started seeing the concept of 'drive-through restaurants', there I saw 'drive-through ATMs' and Jennifer told me there was a 'drive-through liquor shop as well!' :)
Next stop, New York, New York! Our New York office is housed in this fantastic building at Chelsea Market on the 15th street at 9th Ave. The city is super easy to navigate, everything is at some street on some avenue and it's all obviously logical! So the 15th comes after the 16th and so on. Very unlike Hyderabad where Road No 10 and Road No 11 are not at all parallel! I was staying approx. 15 streets away, which was just a short walk of 15-20 mins. Unlike SF, I was able to navigate the route quite easily (how difficult is it to walk straight! :P) New York was special because I had the best meal of my life there. A restaurant called Buddakan which serves this asian fusion cuisine. Fancy place but what a place! I had this delicious King Pao monkfish with Wild Mushroom chow fun. Best ever!! While I didn't sight-see much there, I walked on this beautiful Hi-Line park which was a railway line and now has been converted into a beautiful park with very different and unique seating places at points. There are so many restaurants, I was spoiled for choices. So I just picked a new cuisine everyday! I don't have too many stories about NY, because frankly, I was just so tired of running around and being alone by then that I ended up taking a bus to Boston a day earlier instead. :)
This post is already super long so I was hoping to keep Boston short but there were so many amazing things we did in Boston! :) One of the things we did on our first weekend was a day trip to the Plimouth Plantation, it's a beautiful site which recreates the way the life was for the native Americans, or the Wampanoag (pronounced exactly the way it's spelled) people and the English colonies set up by the people who came to Plymouth on the Mayflower I back in 17th century. They have actual native americans who live and answer your questions just like they were still continuing to live that life. They wear their traditional leather skin clothes with tattoos and jewellery. Then you can walk to the english colonies where you meet englishmen and women dressed in the 17th century clothes and doing chores like cooking, knitting and having conversations in the dialect of that era. What was very interesting was the way they never stepped out of character. A few miles away, they have a Mayflower II which was presented as a gift by the English people to US in the exact dimensions and shape of Mayflower I and it made the voyage across the sea to be docked here. When we asked one of the men (dressed like a sailor-boy) about how long it took them to get here, he spoke about the 55/60 days and then he added, but we're not going to be here for long, just 2-3 weeks and we'll be off! :) Amongst the other fun things I did in Boston, was the amazing Ethiopian cuisine and the fresh Brazilian cuisine that Uma took me out to! More detailed reviews on TripAdvisor! I also found time to go to the Museum of Science this time and they had Egyptian exhibit there which had an actual mummy of a 17 yr old girl. It was amazingly exciting!!
Well that's it! Yay you made it to the end of my sojourn in US! Tell me how you found it. Or don't. Haha... Cheers to your fun trips for this year and beyond!
PS - I know I kept saying the reviews are on TripAdvisor but they aren't there yet. I have to still write them! :)
This year has been fantastic in terms of my travel. Oh yes I've had some horrid experiences with transit visas but then I've learned a HELL lot from those experiences so that my next travels are a lot smoother. The US trip was special like that, because I researched and found and practically booked the flights and the hotels myself and ended up with a perfect trip. If you know me then you know that I'm jinxed when it comes to flights, tickets, dates and sometimes even online payments! But then, that's the challenge, and thankfully this time I managed to catch all my flights on time. Major win!
After my Boston trip last year, this year was a totally different trip. I visited 4 cities for starters, San Francisco, Miami, New York and Boston. I think I didn't end up doing justice to New York in the sightseeing front but I had a total gastronomical trip there to compensate.
I guess we all fall prey to the "Oh, I MUST see this place" or if you're me "Oh I HAVE to click a picture of that" and then in the second trip you realize (unless you snap out sooner) that those kind of memories don't last very long. The ones that last are the ones that you experience and have some emotional connection to. And this trip was exactly that. I didn't end up clicking a lot of great snaps, but I ended up with my mind full of wonderful little stories.
San Francisco is a funny city. Mark Twain wasn't kidding when he said "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." As luck would have it, I was prepared for summer, the AC offices (which aren't freezing like the ones in India mind you) and the flight journeys. I just had one thin jacket, a kimono sweater, a couple of scarves and thankfully a beanie (which is a new term I learned for a kaan-topi). The sun is shining brightly on you and the wind that hits you is chilly! It's super odd. It took me a day to get used to that, and then I began to like the chill but I can't imagine being comfortable in a weather like that. The city is gorgeous though. Built on the hills that make Bandra look like a mound! :) These hills are steep! When my friend was driving us through the city while we hunted for parking, we had to go up one of them where I would have been petrified in the driver's seat, it was literally like going up on a 90 degree slope. Impossible but for the engines of the cars that run there and the courage of the driver in my eyes. They make for beautiful photographs and great exercise though. I loved the walk to office everyday. Needless to say on my first day I got thoroughly lost and had to eventually take a cab because I just couldn't figure out the grid. Seemingly easy to follow maps are hopeless if you walk in the opposite direction and don't have data enabled on your phone. I loved seeing streets which was bare in the day with furniture and boards tacked/stacked on the walls and bustling cafes in the evening with beautiful canopies! One of the weirdest things that I found in SF was that it shuts down so early for dinner! The streets are practically empty after 9pm and it just feels very odd when you compare it to Bombay. Though that's probably because everyone in US eats dinner very early, around 6.30 - 7. I had some amazing food in SF. Most of my detailed food reviews are on TripAdvisor! :)
Moving on, I then spent a weekend in Miami with my cousin Jennifer and it was beautiful. The weather in Miami was perfect. Hot and humid. Felt like home. Though maybe for someone who finds Bombay/Chennai humid, Miami's maybe not your cup of tea. It was 94% humidity so it's crazy for someone who sweats easily (not me thankfully!). We went to the Miami Seaquarium, a place which my mom visited 15 years back on her visit to Miami. It was just as fun as I thought it would be and more. We saw the sea lion show with Salty who was an absolute star, then we saw the dolphin and the killer whale show. There were some protestors standing there asking for 'Lolita the killer whale to be freed'. Having been a big fan of 'Free Willy', I decided to check out what they were saying. Found an entire site dedicated to the "truth" about the seaquarium, which they call the seaprison. While there might be truth in the fact that they are helping rescue some of the marine animals, they are also using those animals to make money and are not giving them the basic facilities. Some of the facts are quite disturbing, especially the miniscule size of Lolita's tank. I thought that was only the display tank and that she had a much larger tank to roam about in her "off" hours, turns out, that's all there is to it and they've been promising a larger tank for nearly 25 years! I hope she gets her freedom soon. The next day we went to the Miami South beach. It is every bit as fun as the movies told us it would it. :) There are cars and cars parked playing music, restaurants and cafes serving massive cocktails, everyone's wearing their beach clothes (and there's really not much of that!) and the beach is endless! What struck me the most was the sand! There was not a single stone there... almost seems as though they had someone to pick out the stones every night! :) :) The temperature of the water was perfect, like a heated pool. I can't imagine anyone saying that they'd prefer the pool colder... The coast was amazing... And after being in the water for some hours, we found the perfect dining / drinks place at the plaza to end our night with! I was remarking to my cousin how there are so many 'drive-through' options in the US compared to India. While we've just started seeing the concept of 'drive-through restaurants', there I saw 'drive-through ATMs' and Jennifer told me there was a 'drive-through liquor shop as well!' :)
Next stop, New York, New York! Our New York office is housed in this fantastic building at Chelsea Market on the 15th street at 9th Ave. The city is super easy to navigate, everything is at some street on some avenue and it's all obviously logical! So the 15th comes after the 16th and so on. Very unlike Hyderabad where Road No 10 and Road No 11 are not at all parallel! I was staying approx. 15 streets away, which was just a short walk of 15-20 mins. Unlike SF, I was able to navigate the route quite easily (how difficult is it to walk straight! :P) New York was special because I had the best meal of my life there. A restaurant called Buddakan which serves this asian fusion cuisine. Fancy place but what a place! I had this delicious King Pao monkfish with Wild Mushroom chow fun. Best ever!! While I didn't sight-see much there, I walked on this beautiful Hi-Line park which was a railway line and now has been converted into a beautiful park with very different and unique seating places at points. There are so many restaurants, I was spoiled for choices. So I just picked a new cuisine everyday! I don't have too many stories about NY, because frankly, I was just so tired of running around and being alone by then that I ended up taking a bus to Boston a day earlier instead. :)
Well that's it! Yay you made it to the end of my sojourn in US! Tell me how you found it. Or don't. Haha... Cheers to your fun trips for this year and beyond!
PS - I know I kept saying the reviews are on TripAdvisor but they aren't there yet. I have to still write them! :)
Comments
And you are right, one can see so much more if one is not constantly glued to the camera's viewfinder. I'm trying to break my compulsive picture-taking habit so that I can concentrate on the moment.
Keep posting =)
-Pallavi