Tumble Dry Life

Beachy Crete

2009-08-17T03:54:00.000-07:00

Anita had flown in a couple of days early into London and had come in with a hunger, a hunger for exotic fruits. She spent most of her time in London this time shopping for and eating mangoes and pomegranates. Her London part for the trip was a day and a half packed with a visit to Southall and a couple of dozen mangoes and pomegranates (white and red). Once she was satisfied, we were ready to board our EasyJet flight out to Heraklion (Crete).

We had booked a week at a resort in a town called Rythemno. Rythemno is on the north coast of Crete, in the middle of the two biggest towns in Crete, Heraklion and Chania. Our flight flew into a beautiful Heraklion airport. It was almost like the pilot was going to attempt a sea landing, just as the airstrip became visible. The airport is on the edge of the sea, with the water swelling, looking as if it is at a slight angle to the land, about 5 degrees or so to the land.

We hadn't booked a car before hand and took one from a rental company just outside the airport. Got a pretty decent deal on a Hyundai i20, which later broke down and we exchanged it for a bigger and better i30. Well, we had 7 days of sunshine and beaches to look forward to and we enjoyed every bit of it. Here are some pictures of the trip...

Our Resort

We had a very nice one bedroom apartment in the RCI resort in Rythemno. A complex with a nice swimming pool, jacuzzi, squash courts, palm trees etc. It also had a little kitchen where we would make our breakfast or the odd dinner. Helped us save quite a few pence and also eat home cooked food along with the traditional Greek taverna food that we anyway had once or twice a day.

Although we had a great resort at our disposal, we were there to visit Crete and not just chill at our resort. Our fantastic tour manager (Anita) would plan each day out, where we would visit, what beaches, what was unique about them etc. This wasn't always easy on her with me, an inherently lazy person, and a very pregnant Anusha. Thanks to her great planning, we still managed to see quite a bit of Crete without it actually being exhausting on Anusha. I am sure she would have managed a lot more out of this trip had Anusha been, well, less pregnant.

Rythemno

Rythemno is a nice, quaint town with coast line lined with cafes and shops, leading into the main town square. The same road leads further on to the castle, which is perched up a little hill along the coast line.

The drives and the local Tavernas

Anita had done quite a bit of research on Greek food before we arrived in Crete. Her theoretical and practical knowledge of traditional Greek food was quite astonishing, as was her appetite for wine leaves and Salad (Since we were in Greece, we didn't really call it the Greek Salad). And to her and Anusha's luck, we found quite a few really fantastic cafes along the local roads that served our staple diet of wine leaves, stuffed capsicum and tomatoes and salad. Well, bread, chips and juice for me. Both Anusha and I had ODed on the Greek food within the first couple of days and were looking for some alternatives but Anita kept on packing in the wine leaves and salad. I would like to think she's had her quota for a lifetime but I would be surprised if I was wrong. By the way, never order Pizza in Crete. It's some local variant that has bread, some sort of sauce and tons of cheese. Quite soggy and unappealing to our taste buds. Here are a few of the cafes and the views from there.

The lay of the land

While the coasts are adorned by beautiful, warm, sandy beaches, the middle of the island is quite mountainous. The roads to the south from the North cut through these mountains and at places are quite narrow (single laned) and there are a few tunnels for good measure.

The Beaches

We visited a few beaches during the week we spent there. From the shabby Falasarna to the fabulous Elafonisi. Falasarna didn't even deserve any picture time. Well here are pics from some of the other beaches.

Trio Petra - Not too bad

The beach with the three rocks. The three rocks on the beach that have been cut by centuries of the sea beating into the coast and give this beach its name. The beach nice and clean, the sand soft and the water a pleasant blue. The water was a bit rough and the waves were quite harsh. Not the kind of sea you would like to swim in too much.

There are a couple of cafes just by the beach. We went to the one with the blue umbrellas and weren't disappointed. The waiter was very nice and even let Anusha order from the breakfast menu during lunch. The waiter was a great conversationist and explained that the "Toursists" that come to Crete stick to the North coast, enjoying their resorts whereas the "Travellers" roam around the many unspoilt and uncommercialized beaches in the South. So before you visit Grece, decide if you are a tourist or a traveller.

Elafonisi - Highly recommended

Absolutely clear, beautiful, shallow, calm turquoise waters in which you can see your toes twitching even if you are standing in neck-high water. This was the best beach for my money. It does tend to get quite busy and we were there a couple of weeks before peak tourist season. Finding space on the sand might be difficult in peak season. However, there is quite a bit of water for people to walk and swim in. You can walk quite a long ways into the water on to the little island and back or swim all the way there.

There is an additional feather in the Elafonisi cap. The sand is a very pretty pink. I haven't seen pink sand anywhere. If you pick up a fistful of sand, you will see bright pink sand particles mixed in with the traditional sand. It gives it a beautiful shine.

Matala Beach - Not worth it

Matala's only claim to fame are the shallow caves that line one of the cliffs that walls the beach. These caves were created naturally by the water hitting the cliff but today there isn't anything natural about them. Tens of years of use and abuse by nomads and beach bums have left the caves smelly and quite unwelcoming. The caves aren't really deep or interconnected, hence taking away all the potential fun factor. Not much to write home about. The beach itself is a small over crowded piece of real estate, lined by cafes and hotels. Too touristy.

A note of caution, do not let yourself be welcomed to a cafe by an aging, potbellied, greek guy with offers of free ice cream.

Anita's Santorini Trip

One of the days, when us two lazy bums decided we were just going to stay in the resort and not do anything, Anita took off to Santorini for the day. She took a ferry from Heraklion port to Santorini with a tour group and came back that evening. Although Anusha and I were happy not going, Santorini does look enticing. Maybe another trip?

On our way back after picking Anita up at Heraklion port, we came across this shot. It was too good to miss.

Greek villages and people

We met some of the nicest people on this trip, living in some of the cutest looking villages. Hardly any of them spoke English, but that didn't stop them from talking to us or helping us. We asked one German couple for directions and didn't really follow those to the T because we wanted to kind of do something different. They chased after us for a bit to tell us that we had missed a turn. A couple of girls driving a pickup truck led us about 10 miles out of their way to get us back to the highway since they could not provide us directions in English and it was easier for them to show us the way.

This little girl in the picture and her dad helped us find Elafonisi beach and the girl was happily chatting with Anita.

One of the villages we drove through was Spili. Just loved the quaint feel of the village. We stopped for a while for us to walk around the local shops etc.

All in all, it was an amazing week spent in one of the most amazing places a week can be spent at. Left to us two lazybones, we wouldn't have done much, but thanks to our tour operator and whip cracker, Anita, we actually ended up doing so much. I would highly recommend enlisting her planning services the next time anyone is travelling to Crete.

I would definitely like another trip to visit some of the other islands. Crete was amazing and I am glad we went.

Barcelona

2009-08-12T11:54:00.000-07:00

I found Barcelona to be one of the prettiest cities in Europe and I think staying in the heart of the Gothic Quarter definitely made better. The flight's approach into Barcelona is very very picturesque, with a view of mountains giving way to very turquoise waters and white sandy beaches.

A modern airport, well connected to the city by train, leading into a city that is a mix of old and new. We worked through the metro route to get to the Barri Gotic and walked through the narrow streets lined with shops, cafes and restaurants. Basically a very quaint old town feel. Living in the Gothic Quarter for 4 days heightened the feeling of being in the old Barcelona. I don't think living anywhere else in Barcelona and making trips to this part of town would have given us the same feeling.

Of course Barcelona's most important monument is Antonio Gaudi's Sa Grada Familia, a church that has been under construction for about 200 years and is expected to be under construction for another 20 years.

The Gaudi legend says that he put in all his money and his dying years in the construction of this monument, so much so that he slept on site for the last few years of his life, and died on the streets in front of it, in such a poor state that people thought he was a street urchin and didn't come to help.

The Dean of Gaudi's architecture school had said of Gaudi at his graduation, "we will soon find out whether we have given a degree to an idiot or a genius." I guess the jury is still out. Below are a couple of example of his eccentricity.

Here are some misc pictures of us and the city.

One of Catalunya with a hint of Gaudi-ness in the background.
One of me with Gaudi
Party time behind the Sa Grada Familia at about 11pm. It was quite interesting to see just as many 50+ couples as 20- ones.
Anusha sitting in front of the palace
Us locked in a cellar at a museum.

Bruges

2009-08-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

Bruges is a city made for tourists with a medieval look to it. The city centre is lined with cafes and gift shops all waiting for tourists. Signs and directions making sure the dumbest of tourists don't get lost.

On our way we met a very grumpy Mr. Flower. Thought you'd like to say hello.

Brussels

2009-08-12T08:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes yes. Even through the pregnancy we managed to travel. Largely due to Anusha's dogged stubbornness to use the Schengen Visa effectively. We managed to club three trips within a matter of 6 weeks (Five, if I include my two trips to India inbetween these trips).

Brussels (this post) and Bruges (next post) was the first trip, followed by Barcelona and then Crete.

Brussels wasn't the choicest of destinations to head to but we were desperate. Anusha had been wanting to travel and we had been waiting for her first trimester to be over and for her to get comfortable with the pregnancy. We had to book this trip on a very short notice and the only place we could find cheap enough for Brussels. We hadn't spent a lot of time in Brussels the last time and combining it with Bruges would definitely make it a worthwhile trip.

The city visit itself our typical, walk around till you drop kind of a visit. The town center is the main attraction in Brussels with not much else around, unless theme parks and standing in really long lines and overpriced food are your thing.

We had booked a nice hotel slightly out of the city but a short walk from the metro and very easy to get into town from. It was in a nice district of the city with very pleasant scenery and good walks closeby. Being 4 months pregnant wasn't stopping Anusha from walking around qute a bit.

Food wasn't a problem with pizzas, veggie burgers and waffles available everywhere. Just above this metro station, I found a little local store that stocked the most amazing samosas. I had one, then another two and then went back for more :).

The picture is of Anusha chatting up an old Belgian couple in French, providing directions to places she does not know in a language she no longer speaks :)

My most exciting moment of 2008?

2009-01-01T10:24:00.000-08:00

Well, it wasn't driving on the Autobahn at 210kph or the amazing pizzas, pastas or gelatos in Italy. It wasn't missing the train from Venice and taking the night journey halfway around Europe. It wasn't sliding on ice on my bum at 30kph in switzerland or watching the Prague castle light up around dusk. It wasn't even the 5 for I took while bowling legspin for Turnham Green.

My most exciting moment of 2008 happened to me as I walked out of a meeting in India. It had nothing to do with work. There I was sitting and minding my own business when Anusha called me from the UK to tell me that she was pregnant !!!!!

Yep, you read it right. We are having a baby... YAAYyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!

Of course that's a big reason why we haven't been travelling much for the last couple of months and I don't think we will be for the next month or so. Although come Feb, our Trips tag should start seeing some more action.

The other thing I am planning to do is to start off a blog. A support group for fathers-to-be :) Let's see if I get any traction on that one. Surprisingly, there are a few people I know in the same boat and am sure there are thousands of others out there ! :)

Forgot to talk about Diwali !!!!

2009-01-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

I know I am a few months late :) but better late than never. As I was about to write our last trip of 2008, I started reminiscing about the Diwalis of the old. Arvind, Ranganath and I used to go pretty crazy around Diwali, spending a lot of dad's hard earned money on new clothes, gifts and lots and lots of patakas!!! Wish I had some pictures of the older Diwalis we spent in Delhi.

Once Arvi moved to the US. I did spend the next couple of years still carrying on the flame and lighting patakas and racing rockets in the park and creating havoc, Diwali was never the same.

Roll forward a few years, add a wife and a bunch of new oldies to the equation and Diwali starts looking like a bit of a drag. Planning Diwali as a married couple is a very tricky affair. Which bunch of oldies do we spend it with? Where do we spend our time? What shape should the Diwali function take blah blah blah. The whole spirit of Diwali gets pretty crushed :) under the weight of all these decisions and discussions.

Diwali 2005: Anusha and my first Diwali as a married couple
I planned a perfect escape. Had 10 days off and didnt want to waste it hence we drove off to Goa as quickly and with as short a notice as possible. :) This was supposed to be the big function diwali and big dinner etc. Instead, we drove over the hills into Mangalore, stopping over for lunch in Udipi, a beach stay at Karwar and then finally GOA !!! We hadn't booked for any place to stay anywhere and it was very much a spur of the moment plan with negiations on room rates as we went along. We came back through Jog falls and Shimoga after spending the Diwali in style.

Diwali 2007: Return of the Jedis
We had decided to spend this Diwali in Bangalore. For mom and dad, this Diwali was going to be big with Arvi, Sri and kids coming from the US and with Anusha and me flying back from the UK. This was the chance for mom to have both her daughter-in-laws under one roof for the first time and be able to show them off to her friends ;-) and for Dad, this was the first time he would get all the sub nodes of his entire family tree under one roof.

This was when Anusha and I finally got to see Aashi and also a good time to teach Aayush about how Diwali should be :)

For Arvi and me, it was a chance to get back into the old ways of patakas and spending the Diwali how we used to. We spent quite a bit on Patakas, which included the atom bombs, rockets, multiple shot rockets and two 5000 Ladis. Of course we exploded all the ones we bought ending the night with the Ladis. A good way to relive the past.

Diwali 2008: The empire strikes back
This was the last of our 2008 trips together. We spent this trip split between Hyderabad and Bangalore as usual. Diwali 2008 was to be spent in Hyderabad, Anusha Style.

We flew over to Hyderabad the night before Diwali and woke up early for our Ganga Snanam (or "whatever muddy river exists in Hyderabad" snanam). We all wore new clothes and took pictures while we were all clean, Anusha's mom "bought Anusha a sari" for Diwali. She bought the sari, making sure with the design that Anusha will never keep the sari and it will end up back with mom :). Of course Divya's choice of the sari would have been a lot more appropriate ;-) but mom wouldn't listen to her.

All of us went for lunch at Naren's in-laws' place for their first-deepawali as a married couple. A good few hours of laughing and eating followed leaving us all stuffed on our return. Pity, I forgot to take the camera. That was a lovely lunch with a lively gathering of people. Took these pictures the next day of the Hyderabadi's goofing around.

Heading back to the UK, mom had pressed on the Taxi driver that we needed a big car for the airport since we have 4 adults and 2 big suitcases :). Little did she know how big the car would be. Scared out of his wits, the taxi guy sent us a 10 seater van. I have to admit, although we didn't feel a single bump on the road, we looked very silly getting out of that at the fancy new Bangalore airport :)

The Buda and the Pest

2008-12-31T06:46:00.000-08:00

Budapest is the lovely capital of Hungary and we expected it to rival the beauty of Prague in every way. Budapest is a combination of the twin cities of Buda (West of Danube) and the Pest (East of Danube). The Buda side is the hilly and scenic side whereas the Pest side hosts the museums and other historic monuments and the Andrássy út.

We stayed at the Hotel Buda. An old hotel with really friendly staff, nice views of the buda hills and great connections into the city by bus and tram. Having gotten off at the airport, we got a bit of a shock. It was as if we had stepped out of Europe and into a developing economy (which it is). The ghosts of the communist era are still very visible in Budapest. Old delapidated buildings, an ageing subway system that looks right out of an old 1950s war movie and busses with seats ripped out and grafitti all over them greet the visitors coming in to visit what is touted as one of the prettiest cities in Europe. I wasn't as surprised by this state of Budapest as I was by the fact that we didn't see any of this in Prague.

Don't get me wrong, as you would see from the pictures attached to this post, central Budapest is a very very beautiful city. Everything from the Buda castle perched up on a hill to the chain bridge and to the neo-gothic parliment building is simply breathtaking, even more so at night than during the day.

Central Budapest is much larger than central Prague. We spent the first evening walking around the Pest side of the river. We took the number 4 tram, the most used tram in the world, to get to the Octogon and walked into the city from there. We passed by the St Stephens Bassilica, the chain bridge and the famous New York Hotel facing the chain bridge and the castle and walked over the bridge to look at the magnificent neo-gothic parliament.

The second day was spent walking around the Andrássy út. Andrássy út is the most posh street in Budapest with amazingly large and beautiful houses flanking either side of this street. It runs on either side of the Octogon. One side leading to the river and the other leading the the Hősök tere (heroes square). It being a Sunday, the road was closed to Traffic and there was a very festive atmosphere around. Street art (accidental art), little shops, hungarian stage plays and dancers, musicians and the odd eccentric with his two huskies on a grass patch in the middle of the street:). Couldn't not take a picture of him now.

The rest of the day was spent pretty much taking the local trams and buses around town and spending some time just getting to know the city.

I also snapped up a couple of interesting pictures of the castle and Budapest historical skyline.

A tiny Pisa Firenze

2008-09-23T14:15:00.000-07:00

Previous night's trip had made sure this wasn't going to be a relaxed holiday. We had gotten back from Venice at 8am and had to be on our train to Florence at 10am. That left us with just enough time to take a breather, shower, have breakfast and head on back to the station which we were sadly feeling home now. The train ride to Florence was 3 hours long and fairly uneventful. The train itself was a swanky new Eurostar, much better than the ones that run from London.

Upon reaching Florence, we immediately picked up tickets on the next available train to Pisa. Pisa is only an hour away from Florence and I hadn't come this far not to see the much talked about leaning tower. There isn't anything else to do in Pisa other than the leaning tower, so we figured a total round trip to Pisa of 3 hours should do fine. Having gotten to Pisa we took a local bus ticket. Anusha insisted that we buy just a 1 hour ticket since we will be back at that station by that time. Even the ticket clerk expressed his surprise as the express nature of the visit and reluctantly gave us a 1 hour ticket. Luckily for us, there was a bus just about to leave for the tower complex and we quickly boarded that. 10 minutes later, we were at the Piazza dei Miracoli "Square of Miracles". The piazza has four main buildings: the Duomo, the tower, the Camposanto monumentale ("monumental cemetery") and the Baptistery.

There and a bunch of shops and cafes. The tourists are totally set up here. I bet these places are twice as expensive as any other place in Pisa. For the next 20 minutes or so, we were happy snappers, clicking away some pictures of the tower: from the front, the back, the sides, everywhere, with us in the frame, without us in the frame and so on. Hey we were still better than about a hundred others there that were very eagerly shooting the famous leaning on the leaning tower or holding up the leaning tower position. I clicked one of Anusha with those folks in the background, just to capture the whole silliness of it.

I had heard mixed things from people who had been to the tower. Personally, I thought that the tower was much more impressive in real life than it is in the pictures. It is leaning a fair bit, some by design and some not. I do think its definitely worth a visit if you are in the area. Happy with the captured set of pictures, we grabbed a slice of pizza and some gelato and were back at that station within our ticket hour to catch our train back to Florence. We still had the whole of Florence to explore.

We were back in Florence by 4pm and walked into the tourist information center housed in this old historic building. Whatever happened to inviting people with a smile. Any tourist center we have been to in Europe with the exception of Milan and Stockholm have really grumpy people running it. They are no way helpful or nice. Rather I think they go out of their way to be mean to tourists. After a hiss and a grunt, she finally parted with a map. When asked what are some of the key places to visit given that we had limited time. She refused to help, pointing to the map and saying "It's on the map". After that very helpful conversation, we decided to follow the map and go to the nearest and what seemed like the top place to visit, florencja-fort-centrum kongresowe. The doors of the fort clearly said - NOT OPEN TO TOURISTS! Now this is the kind of information that is not on the map that I would expect a helpful person on a Tourist Information center to impart to tourists and we weren't the only ones there. A bunch of people walked away from those gates disappointed.

Not to be deterred, we continued on what was going to be our walk tour of Florence. The city center isn't huge and is very walkable. We walked by many of the sights, quaint streets, old houses, silly statues and piazzas and ended up on this street with an amazing view of the Duomo.

It looked as if someone had painted a huge stage background of the Duomo. The entire Duomo looks is very well painted and dressed up with modest gold paint in places. The small building right opposite the Duomo has a gold plated door with each of the gold plates being the canvas for amazingly detailed paintings.

The whole Duomo Piazza is a key attraction and opens up to the main shopping street with all the major name brands and nice little cafes. This is where Anusha had a plateful of the best pasta we've have ever tasted. It did Tuscany proud. We walked on further through some more narrow and beautiful streets, a small local produce market and ended up at the Palace square, where we sat and finished the rest of the pasta and took some pictures.

Our next stop was to walk to the famous bridge, the The Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge), over the Arno river. This bridge is lined up with houses on either side and we didn't know that we were on the bridge until we got to the middle of it. Believe me, it looked much nicer from the inside than the outside. As per WikiPedia: "It is said that the economic concept of bankruptcy originated here: when a merchant could not pay his debts, the table on which he sold his wares (the "banco") was physically broken ("rotto") by soldiers, and this practice was called "bancorotto" (broken table; possibly it can come from "banca rotta" which means "broken bank"). Not having a table anymore, the merchant was not able to sell anything".

We took a different walk back to the station stopping by a local Italian live concert - where the guitarists were jamming, the drummer was on a roll and the singer was singing really well but just not together :-). Whenever the singer shut up, the music sounded really good.

Anusha was pretty full from the pasta earlier but I was still hungry. On our way back to the station through local streets we ran into a small Pakistani hole-in-the-wall type of place. Of course I walked in :). This is where all the Bangladeshi street hawkers seemed to hang out. I guessed the food was decent.I ordered a full-plate rice with Cabbage and Daal. Amazing quantity and quality for 4 Euros.

Before I knew it, we were back in the station in the ticket line. Seemed like most of our time on this trip was spent at one station or another. We watched a movie on the laptop on our train ride back and made our way back into Milan by 11pm. Tired from being in trains and stations in-between walking around in the cities, we retired for the night and were completely knocked out for the night.

Paradiso Venezia

2008-09-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

Our trip to Venice started off uneventfully but wasn't going to end that way. Little did we know that when we started our day with the nicely filling breakfast at the Splendido. Finished with our breakfast, we walked over to the train station and made our way to the ticket counter to buy tickets for Florence for the day 3 of our trip. Our plan for day 2 was to take the 8am train out to Venice and get back to Milan on the 7:45pm train which reached Milan at about 11pm. We had about 20 minutes to board our trains, got to the ticket counter to our favorite ticket counter lady. The day before, we had established some great hand signals to ease communication since she spoke only Italian :-) She greeted us with a nice big smile and after a few hand signals (the nice ones), we walked having bought tickets for Florence for day 3.

We ran to the train and got into the first available seats that we liked since we weren't able to read what coach or seat numbers we were supposed to be at. After about 20 minutes of watching people pass by, we were evicted from our seats, told which ones we were supposed to be on and we made those seats our home for the next 3 hours. Along the way, we were joined by a group of older Irish women travelling around northern Italy for a week. We exchanged travel stories, their dated back since the 1960s. Made for a very interesting train journey into Venice.

It was yet another fantastic day. A warm 28C and sunny.

Getting out of the station in Venice, you are greeted by the glorious Grand Canal. we bought the 12 hour pass, really expensive at nearly 14 euros each. By the way, this was the only tourist information center that didn't have a free map and were selling a basic map for 2 euros.

Standing at the steps of the station, we were thinking how Venice really does look different. Its really amazing to visit a city that was built on marshy lands. Did you know that the city of Venice stretches across 118 small islands, has about 150 canals and 400 odd bridges. We were fortunate enough to visit 3 or 4 of the islands and some countless bridges and canals on this trip.

You have to take the ferry into the city or you can walk. Since we had the pass, we took the main vaporetti (water bus) to the Piazza San Marco and passed some along amazing sights along the water: Beautiful old buildings, Gondolas, other water buses, water taxis running crisis crossing the canals etc.
Piazza San Marco was bustling with tourists. Actually more like splitting at its seams. Any more people and there would have been some falling into the canals. The Piazza is the only on in Venice. All the rest of them are called campi. This is the heart of Venice and has been around since the 9th century. It is lined with state buildings and St Mark Bassilica. We started walking into the city. Small streets lined with restaurants and shops and thousands of people pouring out of every one of the narrow streets. I didn't think the islands could host as many people as it does.

Although there is a map, its not of much use. The really tiny streets aren't even on the map. The only way to really find Venice is to get lost in Venice and we did exactly that. Walked on through streets that had no names, over bridges and by the canals, in and out the various campi. We grabbed food as we walked from one of the many local shops and stopped by a fresh juice store. The guy running the store had been to India 6 times: everywhere from Dharamshala to Gokarna to Kerala. We had a nice long conversation with the dude and fantastic smoothies. Finally he showed us on a map where we were and then found our way back to the Ponte di Rialto (Rialto bridge).

Rialto bridge is the oldest of the four bridges over the Grand Canal and is the beginning of the Rialto Market. Its a bustling part of Venice and definitely an important stop over. Important tip to remember is that the prices in the street shops in Rialto are a decent bit cheaper than most other places in Venice. After a little bit of shopping to buy an Asterix & Obelix made in Murano glass, and a handbag for Anusha, we got back on the ferry to visit some of the other islands. We decided to take the waterbus to Lido island and got some really nice pictures along the way.

History lesson: Murano is a small island just off the main venice island. Earlier all the glass factories used to be on the Venice island and since most of the houses were made of wood, the then rules of venice decided it wasn't safe to have the factories on the same island as the city. So he setup this Murano Island and moved all the glass factories there. However, the factories are not the best place to buy Murano glass. People say its about 2-300% more expensive on the island. Go figure.

We had a bit of something to eat in Lido by the water and then set out on the next bit of our journey. The agenda was to take a road-bus to just go around Lido and were we in for a surprise. The bus ran the length of the island and then got on to a ferry and ended up driving all the way across another island to a small village of Pallistrina. A good chunk of Lido and Pallistrina is all beaches. I am sure it would have been completely packed, had it been a weekend. Of course Anusha must have been a fish in her previous life. The moment she sees water, she hits a level of joy that is seldom seen. We were at a beach and Anusha wanted in. We spent about an hour just walking along the beach. Well in all the excitement of the islands and the beach, we forgot to keep an eye on the time. We were pretty far away from the station in Venice and had to catch the 7:45pm train.

Then the panic began. We had to wait for 20 minutes at the stop to get the next bus that went over the ferry and then took the ferry from Lido back to Venice only to miss our train by 10 minutes. When we went to the ticket counter to get the next train, we found out that the 7:45pm was the last direct train to Milan. We thought of just staying over in venice for the night, but then we had the train to Florence the next morning. We simply had to get back that night.

After about 15 minutes of contemplating and discussions with the Railway assistance folks, we finally booked ourselves on the 11:30pm train which got to Bologna a2 2:30am and then take a connecting train from Bologna to Milan at 4:30am which would end up in Milan at 7:30am. We bought the new ticket and also pushed our train for the next morning back by a couple of hours to 10am.

Things turned for the better after this though. We met two of the nicest people in Venice. One was working the front desk of a hotel by the station. He not only showed us our way to the only Indian restaurant in Venice, but also called them to make sure they were open and made a reservation for us. He talked to us about Venice, its history etc. A really nice conversation.

We made our way to the Indian Restaurant, where we were greeted by this guy from Delhi who was running this restaurant for an Italian lady. The food was great and also he explained to us how Venice really works. About the fact that everything has to come from outside of Venice since there is nothing really in Venice. How the cost structure affects the people who actually live there and how there is a Venice for residents and a Venice for Tourists. Just an example is that the ferry ride that cost us nearly 7 euro would cost a resident 1 Euro.

After the meal and some walking around the streets, we made our way back to the station to start our night journey back to Milan. The night trains in Italy are very much like the Trains in India. The coaches can be compared to the first class AC coaches on a Rajdhani just that the seating structure within the cabin is a bit different. Instead of 4 berths, the cabin has 6 seats , 3 on either side, that would recline and join in the middle to form sleepers. Here we met our third nice guy for the night and we spent the first hour talking about the economic differences in the rich North Italy vs the poorer South Italy. The two hour layover spent in the waiting room in Bologna was painful and the follow on train journey on a very packed train with no reserved seats, even more so. But we managed to find two seats to sit and snoozed lightly while sitting.

We finally made it to Milan at about 8am. Lucklily our hotel was just around the corner from the station. We checked back into our room, quickly showered and had breakfast and got ready for our next train ride, our journey to Florence and Pisa.

Gucci’d and Pucci’d in Milan

2008-09-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

Our last trip to Italy was all about Rome. Rome had more than enough to keep even us, an attention-span challenged couple, interested for three days and we still came back wanting more of Italy, its wonderful pizzas, gelatos and people. At one point Anusha and I were debating taking a 2-week backpacking trip though the boot-shaped country, starting off at Milan and making our way through Venice, Florence, Pisa, Napoli and then onto Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. I know that would have been a wonderful trip but schedule clashes and the impending move to the US made that trip impossible. Not willing to give up completely on our Italian dreams, we decided on 4 days based out of Milan but with day trips to Venice, Pisa and Florence.

We landed at the Milan Linate airport around 10 in the morning. Milan Linate airport is probably has the smallest arrival lounge I have seen in a big city in Europe. The old Bangalore airport was bigger. What is keeping this airport ticking is that its only 7 Kms from the city centre. Talking to people I gathered that it is probably looking at either a major facelift or the same fate as the old Bangalore airport as the new Malpensa airport (56 Kms from Milan) is the bigger airport for Milan and has better connections to different parts of the city.

As usual, we found the best public transport means to our hotel. We had to take a bus to the city centre and then either walk or take any of the other means of public transport to get to our destination. As with any other major European city, Milan has a good public transport network consisting of three Metro lines, plenty of Trams and busses. The bus dropped us off in the city centre and we had our first glimpse of the magnificent Duomo. I will tell you more about the Duomo a little later.

I was a bit suspicious of our hotel in Milan. It’s name, Splendido, sounded more like a Spanish underwear brand than a hotel and didn’t exactly inspire a lot of confidence. It had decent reviews and was supposed to be right next to the central station making our day trips easier, so I picked it. True to the reviews, the hotel was about 100 feet from the central station, has a fancy reception area and very nice and decent sized rooms. The only complaint I have with the hotel, as with the ones in Vienna and Dusseldorf, the AC does not cool! We were early and had to putz around the station square for about an hour eating, watching the pigeons and people before our room was ready for check in. Taking these early morning flights isn’t a time saver really since we end up crashing at the hotel for a couple of hours recovering before we head out in the city. By the time, we made it back into the city centre, it was 4pm.

The magnificent Duomo greets you as you get out of Duomo metro station. It’s a gothic style cathedral made from what looked like White Marble. This whiteness gives is a very distinct look unlike any other cathedral we had seen before. Like with most things, it’s true image cannot really be captured by a camera. It has to be seen in person to get the full appreciation of its beauty.

Beside the Duomo is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. The GVE is the one of the top shopping arcade of Milan where big name brands such as Prada, Gucci, Pucci, expensive restaurants and McDonalds have learned to coexist peacefully. The Duomo Square was extremely lively and we walked through north from the side of the Duomo through the shops and restaurants and out to the Piazza.

The next stop was the castle (more like a fort). This 800 year old structure has been built and rebuilt multiple times by generations as with the case with any other castle. However, unlike the Prague castle, this one isn’t glamorous at all. It’s a dull red brick building and we even passed by one of the walls in the tram earlier without really noticing it and had to come back to see it. Although our first impressions of this castle weren’t great, it started to work its magic on us as we walked into and around it.

What we needed was to understand the past to bring the present into perspective. This old map of Milan depicting the old city walls and the castle hammered the point home for us. We spent the next hour of so sitting around the castle park people watching.

Exploring the non-touristy parts of Milan was the next item on the agenda for the evening. We transferred a couple trams and took them to the end of the line watching the city unfold from within the tram. We decided to take a bus back so that we take a different route. We looked for a bus which travelled to the Centrale FS. Just to give you some context, we took the bus from the east end of the city and had to get to the north-central part of Milan. A journey of about about 7-8 Kms, 30 minutes max, according to the map or at least so we thought. Shortly after we left, the bus left the map and I could no longer follow where it was headed. We travelled for about an hour and still we were in untraceable territory. Directions for the San Siro appeared and disappeared. That’s what got me thinking, the San Siro is in the West of the city and we weren’t supposed to be West. We finally managed to trace what the bus was doing. We were on one of the city orbitals. We had gone South and then West and now were finally heading North. We were never really off the map, I was just looking in the wrong direction. A little over an hour and a half after we had left, we got off at our stop. Since it was an orbital, had we taken the same bus number one from the other side of the road we would have made our stop in 20 minutes or so, but then we wouldn’t have been able to see the parts of Milan that we did.

There was one episode still left in this chapter. Anusha was absolutely famished after this unplanned journey all around Milan. We got into a local Pizzeria and ordered a Pizza with cheese, onion, tomato, olives and anchovies. Yeah yeah, I know Anchovies is fish. I confused anchovies with artichokes. We asked them if we could change the order but they had already made the pizza. We ended up ordering some pasta and having that instead and paying for the whole lot anyway and also a hidden cover charge. This is one thing to look out for when eating at local joints in Northern Italy. Find out upfront if there is a cover charge. Most places have a cover charge of anywhere between 3-5 Euros on eating in.

I was somehow expecting more from the Fashion capital of the world. The dressing sense for most Milanos seemed either too sleazy or too trashy, maybe because it was a Sunday? The town and the people seemed very unwelcome and cold. I guess there is more in common with Paris than just the craze for fashion. We do have a day during the week as well. Maybe we will feel different about Milan by the end of it?

Anyway, having learned a couple of lessons for the day, we turned in tired and weary. We had to be up at 6am the next day to make our 7:30am train to Venice.

Beautiful Prague - the Czech In

2008-09-11T10:43:00.000-07:00

I started off the last post with “We were so tired the night before from the lack of sleep...” but little did I know what was in store for the end of the trip. If you remember the last post, we barely got the airport in time for the checkin, but instead we were Czeched in. Czech airlines first said that the flight was delayed due to the incoming aircraft being delayed but we could all see that the plane was standing right there at the gate. They then proceeded to blame the weather in Prague and then in London. They would come back on the intercom every 30 minutes only to tell us that the flight was delayed by another 30 minutes. Finally around 11:30pm, 2 hours after the flight was supposed to take off, they came back to tell us that the flight was delayed by 8 hours and would fly the next morning at 5:30am and that we should line up at the ticket counter for the next steps.

The tired and somewhat upset passengers in a show of good character lined up at the ticket counter only to be left standing for another hour by the ground staff without any information as to what’s going on. After a few of us disgruntled passengers expressed our anger in the nicest but most forceful of ways, they proceeded to get us a hotel etc.

While we were all waiting in line, one of the passengers who was a ground staff for another airline, let us know that we should ask for a full refund of the flight since EU regulations clearly state that if the flight is delayed by more than 5 hours, passengers are entitled to a full refund. But of course, when we got to the counter, we had to drill the information out of the Czech Airline folks. Reluctantly, they gave us the information needed to get a refund.

At about 12:30am, we were put on a bus and driven for about 45 minutes to get to our “transit” hotel, which was right in front of the place we had lunch the day before. We got into bed by about 1:30am only to be woken up by the alarm at 3:30am and back on the same bus bound for the airport this time. The rest of the flight was uneventful and we came back into London a good 12 hours after we expected to have come in. We filed for the refund but haven’t seen any of this money yet. I doubt we ever will but hey, at least we tried.

It was sad that a really nice trip to a pretty city such as Prague had to end this way. But I still do maintain that Prague is one of the prettiest cities in Europe, just don’t fly Czech Air.

Beautiful Prague - part 2

2008-09-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

We were so tired the night before from the lack of sleep and all the walking around town that we basically crashed only to be woken up by the alarm at 8:30am. We were checking out today at noon. We showered and headed downstairs breakfast by 9:30am. The breakfast setting at the Jelini Dvur is small and cozy and comfortable although the choice of Macaroni instead of eggs for breakfast was a bit surprising. That didn’t stop up from filling ourselves up to our nostrils with oj, cereal, coffee/tea and Macaroni.

On coming back to our room, we finished our packing and just chilled out for a couple of hours before checking out at noon. We left one of our bags at the reception and headed out to visit the castle. We had 6 hours and a few things on our list to tick off today. The castle was a short 5 minute walk from the hotel. The castle was a mix of different architectural styles having been refurbished more times than I can count on my hands. It hosts a mini city inside it, galleries, museums, cafes, guardhouses, church etc. We walked the perimeter of the castle, appreciating the view of the city from on top of the hill and walking through an outdoor photo gallery.

The steps from the castle lead to the Lesser Town. Don’t go by the English. It is not lesser than anything else in Prague. Pretty, quaint and well preserved old town at the gates of the castle with cobbled streets, old buildings, fancy stores and cafe’s adding the new touch while still keeping the spirit of the city the way it was in the days gone by. By the way, watch out for the guy hanging out of a ground level window scaring people.

Prague seems to have lived through its shares of fights with tyrants and oppression. Mean kings, the second world war and then the communist “friends”. One voice that acted as a voice against oppression and stood for freedom against the red army for the Czech was John Lennon’s. There is a huge tribute to the legend in the form of a Lennon wall. The wall itself belongs to a monastery who check the wall for indecent content from time to time but allow all things Lennon to remain. There is a spitting image of Lennon carved on the wall. The fans even had a mock burial when Lennon passed on.

Frank Gehry’s designed some crazy buildings. But the dancing house in Prague has to rank as one of the craziest. This one in Prague seems like a safety hazard waiting to happen. I bet if this were in the US, some woman who did not quite see the bent parts of the building would have slipped and fallen and sued Gehry for gazillions of dollars for being dumb.

We had the urge to explore some non touristy parts of Prague and go where no tourist had gone before. We decided to catch the first bus that showed up and go to the end of the line. Boy did we pick the right bus. The tour went through some of the prettiest residential areas of Prague and ended up at, what seemed like, the old forgotten ruin of the Strahov Stadium on top of the Petřín hill. On our way down from the hill we had a late lunch at a very quaint looking pizzeria. The two us shared a salad and pasta.

Taking a roundabout route and a couple of bus changes, we decided to pay the Jewish quarter a visit. There are 6 different synagogues close to each other in this small corner of old Prague. Our plan was to visit a couple of them and buy some bohemian crystal piece from the many stores in the area. Why buy from this area? Well, for some reason the Jewish folks here are more than happy to discount and one can talk a nice bargain if one was familiar with the art. Having been an unwilling apprentice to my mom’s daily shopping exploits in Delhi for the first 20 years of my life, I had picked up a trick or two.

Top tip: The shops in this area sell things a little bit cheaper than the other parts of Prague anyway and easily about 25% less than the duty free stores at the airports. After about 20 minutes of shopping, we negotiated a 600czk for a piece that was marked at 690czk but as with every negotiation, I walked away thinking that I should have beaten them down that little bit more.

Sorry for the digression, getting back to the synagogues now. The old-new synagogue (ONS) supposedly has the remains of an ancient daemon Golem, created from clay by a powerful Rabi about 800 years ago to protect the Jewish population of Prague from a tyrant ruler. Legend has it that the daemon had to be put down by the Rabi because it eventually turned on the Jewish folk after demolishing the forces of the evil king and also that it can and will be resurrected if needed. I wonder where it was in the late 1930s. We also visited another pretty looking Synagogue very close to the ONS.

That was pretty much the last planned stop on our trip. We walked to the National Museum to take our subway back and came across a gallery of pictures of 1968 Prague.

We had just enough time to head back to the hotel, pick up our stuff and get to the airport. We go there but did the plane take off on time? That’s a whole different story for another post.

Beautiful Praha - part 1

2008-09-03T13:06:00.000-07:00

When people talked about Prague as the most beautiful city in Europe, I thought they were kidding. How can a city compare to the likes of Rome, Venice etc. but I could see what they were talking about once I got there. It is most definitely one of the prettiest cities in Europe if not the prettiest. The different thing about Prague is that even the bad areas aren't really bad. They are still slightly downtrodden old, pretty buildings.

As soon as we made our way into the city, we knew we had our work cut out for us. We had two days and plenty to see. We took a bus from the airport to a nearest tram stop and took the tram to our hotel. It took a total of about 45 minutes from the airport to get to our hotel which was 5 minutes walk from the castle and we even had a castle view from our hotel room [Pic]. The hotel building itself was still owned by the castle authorities and reflects the architecture of the castle.

We put our stuff down, freshened up and after a half hour rest, we were on our way to explore the city. We had a bunch of things to see, the castle, the lesser town, Charles bridge, the old town, the Lennon wall, the dancing building and the Jewish quarter.

We started off taking the tram to Charles bridge and walk over to the old town from there. Charles bridge, constructed about 800 years ago, was the only bridge over the Vlatava river and used to connect the old town to the castle. Its a pedestrian bridge with painters and different vendors trying to ply their trade and of course a ton of tourists :-). Looking up from the bridge, the castle on top of a hill makes for quite an imposing sight.

Anyway, walking over the charles bridge we made our way to the old town center. We spent the afternoon just walking through streets after streets of pretty buildings, canal-ed streets looking like venice, nice cafe's and designer shops etc. The atmosphere, although extremely touristy, seems very chilled out and relaxed. Storekeepers paying the right amount of attention, broad smiles all around and people eager to help. English isn't spoken very widely though and we did struggle to communicate with the locals. Well, I even got offered some dope , well the guy was speaking Czech so I guess I don't really know. He should really get some classes on identifying his target customers right.

While in the old town, we caught a street stage show being put on by cultural groups from the various countries. The Italians kept their show lively and us captivated and dancing whereas the polish dancers bored us enough for us to be attracted by other lures and we walked on.

The Old Town was the original place of settlement of Prague. In its north is the Jewish quarter, south is the crazy quarter with slightly more downtrodden buildings. To its west is the river and the castle and to its east... well more of Prague I guess. The old town square has been the heart of the old town for about a 1000 years now. It houses the very gothic Tyn Cathedral and the Astronomical clock. It's about 700 years old and still running :-) and the swiss thought they made good watches.

We got on to the trams and the busses after that to take a tour of the rest of the city. The outskirts and the places not usually frequented by the tourists. Again, the city impressed. As I was saying earlier, there aren't any bad parts to prague, well none that we could see anyway. After dark, we came back to the old town to take a look at the town and the castle at night and the sigh was just mesmerizing. It took the word picturesque to a whole new level.

Grabbing some dinner in the form of a pizza slice and a falafel sandwich, we turned in for the night. Well ,I hadn't slept the night before and Anusha hadn't had more than a 4 hours of sleep so we both were pretty knocked out for the night.

Match report - TGCC v. Churchill

2008-08-18T01:05:00.000-07:00

Chasing a low score of 94 in 40 overs wasn't ever going to be a big challenge, even on the low, slow, green Fullers wicket. Nick H and Freddie opened the batting Nick pretty much went on a Sehwag style rampage with smashing nearly 7 runs an over for the first 6 overs. Freddie as usual was blocking the other end and scored about 1 run in the 60 run opening stand. Nick mixed some fantastic off drives and lofted pull shots and was particularly punishing of the bad bowling from the near end. Very soon, they switched to an off spinner and Nick using his feet really well to him lofted a couple of fours over mid-off. From the far end though, the other opening bowler, big lad over 6 feet 4 inches was generating a fair bit of pace, bounce and swing and was consistently beating both the opening batsmen outside the off stump. His hard work was finally rewarded when he Nick's off stump cartwheeling and TGCC were and 60/1 after 12 overs.

The Churchill captain made some quick bowling changes causing a bit of a middle order crash, TGCC were very soon 85/4. I came on to the crease at than point and 5 balls and a couple of boudaries later, TGCC had successfully won the third Sunday game in a row. Important to mention that Freddie carried his bat through the innings, scoring 3 runs out of the 96 scored by TGCC. Talk about blocking one end !

Earlier in the day, our opening bowlers, Charlie and DJ hit the perfect on and about the off stump line beating the opening batsmen consistantly. The best part was that both the bowlers were extremely disciplined and bowled no wides or no balls. DJ produced some good chances off his bowling with two catches just falling short of slips and one being dropped in covers. By the time the two opening bowlers had finished their spell Churchill were 14/0 off 10 overs.

The first change bowlers continued the good run and finally we had we got our first breakthrough when Sam Hall rattled the woodwok with a an inswinger to the right hander from left arm over the wicket. Churchill sent in a pinch hitter next who improved the runrate over the next few overs. By the time I came in to bowl, Churchill were about 44/1 in 20 overs.

My very first ball, pitching on the off stump and turning just enough, produced an edge that was dropped by the wicket keeper. Although there wasn't much purchase from the green & slow wicket, I was still able to turn the ball a fair bit. I was mixing up seam-up deliveries with flighted legspins. Four balls later, I induced another edge, this time of a ball pitching on middle and turning to a feet outside off stump, and the first slip diving to his left caught a tough one. The new batman coming in shuffled around the crease trying the follow the next few legspinners and I knew then that I will have another wicket soon. As expected, he tried to pull a flipper, surprised by the bounce he managed to edge a skier to midwicket. Beating the batsmen very often, I had another a few other near missed in the next couple of overs. A couple of full tosses and a bad over cost 8 runs with the pinch-hitter still trying to go after the bowling. The bowling at the other end was beginning to falter and give some runs away also.

My last over, I got the pinch hitter out. A flighted leg spin following a couple of quick straight ones and a googly made him play too soon and straight back into my waiting hands. Wo hoo!!! the third and most important wicket. The quickies came back and polished off the tail and 93 of 40 overs was never going to be a challenging target.

I finished with figured of 6-0-18-3 and scored 9 runs of 5 balls faced with two fours. All in all, not a bad day at all.

Lille-d

2008-08-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

Lille wasn't particularly a choice destination. It was one borne out of necessity. We had to get a ticket to some place in France in order to get a visa and we chose Lille. We didn't know much about Lille or had had a chance to read up about it.

What we learnt about Lille was amazing. About a little over a 1000 years ago, Lille was probably an island and hence the name. It was not always French. It was Flemish and Spanish before it was French. Louis the IV fought for Lille around 1667AD and won it for the French. This is when Lille really started becoming the 4th largest metropolitan area in France. Traditional French character, values and architecture was introduced to Lille and most of the monuments we visited were created by the French after this time. The park in the picture is a good example of that: Used to be a downtrodden street and now has become a really nice park.

Once the French took this city over, this rapidly developed to be the Manchester of France, heavily industrialized with textile mills etc. These industries were put out of business by cheaper offshore products but resilient Lille reinvented itself. While re-modernizing itself with new town centre, fancy L shaped Euralille building [pic] and software and services industries, Lille rediscovered its culture and heritage and setup the old town as a perfect balance to the new hi-tech parts.

The Place du Général de Gaulle or the Grande Place [pic] is the centre of attaction. Right next to the The Palais Rihour [pic], a 16th century building that hosts the Tourist information centre, the Grand Place is at the cusp of the old city and the new shopping district. The new age shopping district houses all the big high street brands, specialized boutiques and cafe's and restaurants. Walking through to the city to the extremely well preserved old town, we came across a blend of modern and old. Most of the houses in the old town have been modified to be either very cool cafes or high end designer stores. It was quite an experience walking through the old town... and it is as far as old towns go.

All this was on north and north east of our hotel. Oh! by the way, we stayed at the Hotel L Hermitage Gantois. A 4* deluxe hotel which is a modified 16th century hospital. A fantastic historical building with a really cool setup.

Just on the south side of the hotel was the mini Arc de Triomphe. Smaller but not less significant for Lille than the Parisian counterpart is to Paris, this was once a gate of the old city. Adjacent to it is the Town Hall and its belfry.

A little further up were the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, the second largest museum in France after the Louvre, and the Republique building.

A walk further south revealed residential and industrial part of town. A nice walk through what seemed like the forgotten part of town. All in all, a restful Sunday in a very modern park watching people walk by ended a nice, relaxing weekend in a Lille that pleasantly surprised us.

Cricket me a pitch !

2008-07-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

We won today. I had an okay day, but hey, we won !

We batted first and put up a 201 in 35 overs. I went in to open with Freddie and we didn't exactly get off to a flier but we didn't lose a wicket either. 10 overs in and we were 40/0. Decent start considering we were always 2o/2 or something like that in like 4 overs. Although the pitch was very dry, it was really slow, low and unpredectible. We soon stumbled to 52/2 with both the openers, me and Freddie back in the pavilion. I scored 20. Don't know what I was thinking and decided to play on the back foot to a short pitch delivery on our home pitch, a pitch where the ball is never where you expect it to be was caught plumb in front of the wickets. So plumb that even our own empire couldn't save me. Anyway, the middle order also collapsed until we were rescued by a 75 run 6th wicket partnership and some late order hitting got us to 201. This was a very good score on our home wicket where usually 150 is a winning total.

Our opening bowlers started off well and we had them 20/2 in 5 overs. But some good hitting by one of their openers got them back into the game and they were soon at 75/2 in 15 overs. This was until the spin duo came on. One left arm spinner (Singh) complimented by a right hand leg spin bowler from the other end (Me) and very soon the match changed shape. Singh ended up with figures of 7-1-14-4 and I from the other end got 6-3-4-2. We got the quickies to come back in and close the match off and they were all out for about 120. :-)

My batting average is in a bit of a mess this season. So far 5 matches with scores of 25, 14, 4, 0 and 20. Last season I averaged a little over 30. Well, I will be out of London next weekend and so no match, but am hoping to improve the scores in the coming matches.

At least my bowling has been going better. I kept wickets in 2 of the 5 matches but in the other three that I have bowled in, I have ended up with about 10-5-16-3. Not too bad for a leggie in a 35 over run riot.

Wales Day 3

2008-07-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

Unlike the first two days, this day started off relatively early. We were ready, all breakfasted and out of the hostel by 9am. We had a 1-hour drive to the station and had to take the 11am train up the hill. The train was expected to go only 3/4th of the way up the hill and we had to walk the other 1/4th, about 45 minutes.

We got there with enough time to spare and decided to get something to munch on. By the time we finished the food and got to the train, the coach was very full and we struggled to find any place to sit. After packing us all in like sardines, the train started on the slow ascent up the mountain. A really really slow ascent. The train journey was a bit of a letdown. Although it was sunny at the base, it was cloudy, cold and raining at the top. After a fairly boring 45 minute journey, we got off at the station. Instead of making our way up to the summit in the rain and cold, we decided to head down the trail to the base of the mountain.

The path was slippery and rocky and quite steep in places but was an amazing trek down. With amazing views all the way down, I kept on clicking pictures.

The weather improved with the decreasing altitude and it got more sunny and warm. Smita trotted (literally like a horse) her way down the steep incline. She seems to think this reduces the stress on her knees and reduces her health insurance premium. All I know is that we had a good laugh at her expense. A couple of hours after we had started on our trek down, we found ourselves back at the station cafe feeding our even increasing appetites.

Waving our goodbyes to Wales, we started off on our 5 hour return drive to Hitchin. All I can say about the drive is that, 5 hours in the backseat of a car sucks big time especially when all you want to do is get back home, shower, get a good cup of chai and go to sleep!

I would classify Wales as a poor man's Switzerland. My summary is that it is a good place to go for hiking and camping etc. in pretty surroundings, provided you have a better way to incorporate weather predictions into the holiday planning model.

Wales Day 2: and you thought yesterday was lazy

2008-07-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

Most of our trips have been 3 day trips and Day 2 is usually the most exciting day of these trips.

Not this time. Day 2 was started off as one of the laziest days, even more so when you think that this was to be a full-on hiking day. We were supposed to hike up mount Snowdon. Guess what we ended up doing.... if you know us, you have guessed right. We woke up late, lazed around and finally made our way into town and had the biggest & best breakfast possible :-) Well, in all honesty, weather was a big spoilsport today. It was a horrible day with non-stop rain till late afternoon.

After the filling brunch, we got to the station to take the mountain rail up to Snowdon and even bought the tickets but then exchanged them for tickets for tomorrow, since tomorrow is expected to be sunny and bright. So with tickets and a plan for tomorrow but no plan for today, we all kind of stood there scratching our heads as to what to do and we started walking back to the car.

Before getting into the car, I saw this interesting sight of the parking attendant talking to a Ferrari driver. In order to just talk to the guy, he had to take a knee and salute the Ferrari. Thought this was interesting.

Right beside the carpark was a stream, a crystal clear stream which Anusha wanted to pollute by plonking her feet in it. Oh! did I mention that it was cold and we all were pretty sure that the water would be freezing. But then again Anusha's 'feet in streams' fascination knows no sense. For the next few minutes, we all watched her hop and scream in the cold water. Well, you had to be there to truly enjoy it.

After our little scream-stream episode, we spotted a small trail off the back of the parking lot. We decided to take that and landed up at the old ruins of what was once a small fort with amazing views. I'll let the pictures do the talking. Take special notice of the details like the faces by the hanging jacket from the window of the ruin and the mountain rail in the background of the second picture.

With Smita navigating and Raghav driving, the infamous four headed off once again in search of exotic locations and prettier locations. A beautiful 2-hour drive took us through many a curvy roads, each with a better picturesque view. It was one of those stop - look around - soak the scenery - off again journeys. We finally ended up in island county of Anglesey, an island with some awesome views of the Welsh coast of the Irish sea.

We stopped by a local pub on the way back to grab some food. As usual we overstuffed ourselves and crawled our way back to our hotel room. Somehow, all of us got re energized by looking at the pictures from the day and a cup of tea and finally decided to embark on that elusive hike. It was a really nice hike up the hills & away from the village. We were supposed to be on this circular path that would get us back to the village from another side. However, we strayed off our path because the one we were supposed to take was being guarded by some really mean looking bulls that were watching our every move. We trekked for a little over an hour along whatever path we could find and finally with Raghav claiming 'aama yaar, idu straighta bullukke poharade!' (this path is heading straight towards the bulls again!), we turned around and came back to our village.

Finally going to be sleeping light after the hike. Have a fairly full day ahead of us with the train ride up the mountain, another hike and the drive back to Hitchin. Stay tuned ....

Wales Day 1: The lazy Welsh

2008-07-19T00:33:00.000-07:00

As we walked into their place, Raghav warned us that Smita is planning to make us all get out at 7am the next day. We all knew at that point itself that we weren't leaving before noon the next day. This was supposed to be an adrenaline high, pushing the physical boundaries type holiday. Coming off of a hectic project, I knew that wasn't going to be the case.

True to form, we all woke up late and lazed the morning away chatting and playing the piano. Finally we got ready and got out just after noon. We had decided that we were going to drive to Snowdonia. A couple of pit stops on the way to fill up our pits and 4 hours got us nicely to within striking distance of Snowdon. Smita had booked us in a hostel in some village no one had ever heard of - Penmachno.

Penmachno is a village in an isolated upland valley, about 4 miles south of Betws-y-Coed (which we still don't know how to pronounce) in Conwy, North Wales. Beautiful surroundings, small windy roads, old church, nice people, cozy cottages and green hills and valleys.

We had booked a bunk-bed room with shared bathroom facilities. While we all settled down, Smita the brilliant planner realized that she had forgotten her hiking boots for this hiking trip. Of course we all made fun of her !

Given that we had a couple of hours of sunlight left, we thought it would be nice to just explore the area a little bit. All jumped back into the car and drove off to Conwy falls. Once we got to Conwy falls, we walked around for about half an hour trying to get to the bottom of the falls, the top of the falls etc. without much success. The authorities had barricaded the falls because it was raining and slippery. After all the waltzing around, I came to the conclusion that Conwy falls is just a false falls.

Making our way back to the Conwy cafe, we ordered pizza and salad for dinner. Or at least so we had thought. While the three of us ate our food, Raghav was sitting twiddling his thumbs because the waiter has never taken down his order. Of course we ordered again and Raghav got his pizza. I ordered a melt-in-your-mouth brownie with some local Bara Brith, a local Welsh ice cream, all this of course to keep Raghav company. I didn't particularly like the Bara Brith, tested coconuty but the brownie was awesome!

Once back in our hostel, some more researching and some Uno and we were all ready for bed.

Many superheroes, 3 movies - 1 winner.

2008-07-13T03:26:00.001-07:00

Recent superhero movies have all been a letdown. Last couple of weeks, I have seen three superhero movies. Prince Caspian, Kung-fu panda and Hancock. Here's what I thought of them...

Finishing last was Hancock. I did expect more laughs from this movie. There were some scenes and dialogues that were funny but I guess my expectations from this movie were high. I did like the twist in the middle but then the second half of the movie spiralled off into this whole new movie, belonging to a completely different genre without much connection to the first half. The movie had way too much happening and made for, at best, an okay movie.

Prince Caspian and the Kings and Queens of old come in at second place. Decent animation, good visual effects, with child actors growing up into their roles and some good fight sequences made for an entertaining couple of hours. Peter Dinklage, as Trumpkin the dwarf, is amazing in the movie and I loved the accent. Also refreshing, was the comedy by the mouse king. these supporting actors, by far, have the best dialogues and the best dialogue delivery of the lot. Notable mention should be the centaur leader. He did seem like the one ideal to lead the Narnians instead of Aslan. Then again, I didn't write the book.

The winning superhero by a clear margin is the the fearless dragon warrior. Jack Black is in top form as the Kung-fu Panda and so is Dustin Hoffman as the master Shifu. Probably one of the best animated movies I have seen to date. (well, maybe Monsters Inc. was better) Amazing animation, breathtaking action sequences, very funny dialogues and a strong supporting cast set this movie up well. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the movie and will definitely buy the DVD when it comes out.

Hitchin's got talent !

2008-06-29T03:34:00.000-07:00

Mango passion !
This is Raghav displaying his Mango peeling skills - he got the entire mango peeled in one go - It's really all connected !!!!!

Neem hakim khatraye jaan !
A really cool electronic piano in the hands of a novice can be a pain in the ears.

Kids on the bikes !
Smita and Raghav biking around London. A really nice sunny day spent in a perfect way.

Viennese surprise - Final day

2008-06-28T03:23:00.000-07:00

As with every other trip, we wanted to take day three as a more relaxed one. We started off day three pretty much like day two with the nice breakfast. We packed up our luggage, checked out of our hotel and headed on towards the two things on the agenda today, Grinzing and Naschmarkt.

Grinzing was the first stop. This little village style suburb on the outskirts of Vienna still retains the charm of the old Austria. It was a 45 minute fun ride by the tram to get to Grinzing. The old style tram only added to the charm. This area still has the houses structured very much in the traditional Austrian style. Of course these houses have been turned into little shops, restaurants or cafes. Situated on sort of a top of a hill, this place was very beautiful to walk around in. A nice walk and a coffee later, we were on our way back to the city to our next stop, the Naschmarkt.

Naschmarkt loosely translates to Nibbles Market. Just south of central Vienna, this market is a long street lined with little speciality shops and cafes. The shops offer fresh fruit and vegetables from around the world, exotic spices, meat, fish and ecological foods and the cafes serve everything from traditional Viennese food to amazing desserts. Bargaining is the rule of the land here and the fittest survive. Saturdays are supposed to be really crowded and buzing with people. We went on a Monday :-).

Saying our goodbye to Vienna was pretty hard. On the whole this city has a lot to offer to anyone, no matter what their interests are. Everything from a great cultural and cullinary experience to easy access to the fantastic alps for the nature or outdoorsy types. Hopefully we will be back one day to see more of Austria.

Oh! just to make sure: Austrian airlines have the best food and service I have experienced in Europe. In a time with Alitalia wouldn't serve water to save money and frown to save energy, both amazing food and great service is abundantly available on Austrian Airlines.

Viennese surprise - Day 2

2008-06-28T01:48:00.000-07:00

A fairly filling buffet breakfast (but not quite as good as the one in Stockholm) kicked off day two. The hotel receptionist was very helpful in guiding us to the right spots to visit. It was not so much as "visit this place, its great" as it was "Don't go there, it's shit!". It helped and we were on our way to Schönbrunn Palace.

The Schönbrunn Palace was built as Vienna's answer to Versailles. Nice big palace with a large garden encompassing a few fountains, many different statues, a Gloriette on a hill, a maze and labyrinth and a zoo amongst other things. Of course in order to go through everything it would have taken much longer than a day. We almost missed most of it. We entered through the main gates, walked around the front of the palace for a bit and thought of heading on to other things in Vienna as it started drizzling a little bit. But something prompted us to walk around the back of the palace before heading out. This is where most of the action was.

The path around the palace is lined with about 32 large very Greek looking statues. As we came around the back, we were greeted by the big french garden facing the Neptune Well and the Gloriette on top of the hill. The fountain seems pretty small from the palace but as you go closer to it, its humongous size becomes more and more dominating. After a nice hike up the hill, we got to the Gloriette, which houses a very nice cafe and provides a magnificient view of the palace with the city in the background.

After making our way down from the hill, we walked in the maze and labirynth. An hour of fun and games later, we were ready to head out to the other sites of Vienna.

Next, we travelled next to the Opera, the Ruprechtskirche (about 1200 years old) and other sites and other local tourist hotspots. Finally it was back to our room and we ordered some Indian food delivery, ate in our room and retired for the evening.

Viennese surprise - Day 1

2008-06-21T01:26:00.000-07:00

I was pretty sure I would find interesting things on offer from a country which has been home to people like Mozart, Strauss, Beethoven, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hitler. On one hand you expect Wein to be culturally super rich and on the other you expect to find freaks of nature.

The trip over to Vienna was very standard. Flight from Heathrow and then public transport in Vienna. Once in Vienna, we were greeted with a very warm and sunny day. We made our way to the hotel which was located in one of the most affluent residential areas of Vienna, right opposite a nice big park. The hotel itself was very fancy but comfortable with small number of really big rooms and good service. We checked in, dumped our luggage and headed out. There was a big party going on in the park just outside so we hung around there for a bit, eating some food and enjoying the band playing.

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is how good the public transport is in any european city we have gone to so far. Wein has a, extensive network of overground trains, underground trains, trams and buses. Travelling to and fro anywhere in the city was a breeze. Our hotel was outside the Wien Ring Boulevard. Ring Boulevard is 4 kilometres long and circles the entire city centre with Trams plying every 5 minutes in either direction. It is amazing that the need for a ring road was foreseen and construction started about 250 years ago.

Day 1 continued on as we travelled on the trams 1 & 2 looking at the numerous sites on offer. The ring road is lines with important sites such as the Parliment, the Hoffburg, the Karlskirche, the Staatsoper, the Museumsquartier (6th largest cultural complex in the world) etc. The Karlskirche was being setup for the Life Ball 2008 celeberations and there were lights, speakers etc. everywhere. Working our way along the ring, we got to the HoffBurg. Once of the many parks of Vienna, packed with people eating, drinking and chilling on a warm weekend afternoon. There was a nice statue of Mozart in the park and of course we decided to take a Patel shot.

From here, we moved into the city to StephansPlatz which is centered around the 1157AD built StephansDom. This area is also adorned with high end shops and cafe's and is a good place to hang out at. There was a little street show going on with a group of young punks showcasing their breakdancing abilities. A fun show that lasted for about 10 minutes.

We took the subway to the modern, hi-tech Vienna. A dramatic change from the historical center and spent a bit of time walking around the tall buildings putting the finishing touches on the day. Tired and weary but happy, we got back to our hotel room to the comfort of our bed.

Then there was Germany... Chapter 5

2008-06-14T05:23:00.000-07:00

Dusseldorf has the best standard of living in Germany. It has a sweet Altstadt, third largest Japanese community in Europe after London and Paris, and a funky waterfront.

We started off by heading out towards the Altstadt but stopped by the famous Königsallee (King's Avenue). This is the capital of the Dusseldorf high end shopping scene. The canal and the bridges over it are built based on Seine in Paris. The "Kö", as its affectionately called, is the highest rents for shops in Germany.

After circling around the Old town for about 20 minutes, we found the parking. Old building and streets lined with cafes and small shops. The Dusseldorf Altstadt is known as the longest bar in the world (längste theke der Welt). This small Old Town has more than 300 bars and discotheques and there is one street which has bars lined up opening to the streets.

We walked around for a bit, got into a chocolate shop and had some really good hot chocolate from a local cafe and proceeded on to the waterfront. The water front near Altstadt was also lined with cafes and bars. Had this been summer, I am sure it would packed with people, but we could walk traffic-free on this cold Sunday morning.

Walking on the waterfront, we had an amazing view of the modern Dusseldorf. The waterfront is further highlighted by the tall tower and the weird looking Frank Gehry buildings down at the Dusseldorf harbour. We had a great time spending the day walking on the waterfront, stopping by the local cafes and shops.

Finally, it was that time in a trip again. We were on our way back to the airport, but not before the last hint of drama. We took the airport exit and then realized that we hadn't filled up the gas tank. Frantically looking for an airport, with a near empty gas tank, we came across this old deserted looking gas station. Of course it being Sunday, there is no one at the station and its credit card only with all instructions only in German. Don't know what we did or how much we paid, we did manage to get to a full tank.

Dusseldorf airport is the third busiest airport in Germany after Munich and Frankfurt and is much better looking. We returned the car at the rental car place and walked around the duty free shops for a bit, grabbed a bite to eat and boarded our plane. Before we knew it, the pilot announced the landing and we were back in English speaking land. Well, almost. We were back in London.

Little did we know that our trip was still a few hours away from ending. We got home around 10:30 at night only to find out that we were locked out since our lock was acting up and our key no longer worked. We spent the next couple of hours, being very well taken care of, at our next door Neighbours' place waiting for the locksmith. Finally it was 1am before we were able to get into our apartment.

Quite an eventful end to an eventful and fun trip trip and it was nice to be back home.

Then there was Germany...Chapter 4

2008-06-08T03:38:00.000-07:00

After the backpack escapade, today was expected to be a calmer day. As usual we got ready, grabbed some breakfast and drove off towards Luxembourg. We hadn't heard much about Luxembourg before and didn't quite know what to expect. Luxembourg was about an hour ahead on the same route as Aachen. It was a fantastic, sunny day with temperatures of about 23 degrees. A very scenic 2.5 hour drive later, we got to Luxembourg city.

Before we go into Luxembourg, here's a bit of history. Lucilinburhuc (Luxembourg fort) was setup in 963AD and the town started building around that. Over the years, Luxembourg has lost territory to the French, to Prussia and the Belgians. But today, Luxembourg possesses the highest GDP per capita in the world and is the worlds most industrialized nations. It has one of the best standards of living in Europe. More interestingly, it has less than a 1000 people army, no air force or navy!

It was nice driving into this calm, well laid out city, past the Spuerkeess, towards the Notre Dame cathedral. After driving around for a few minutes, we found a good parking spot in the old city. Standing next to the Gelle Fra monument, you can see that the Luxembourg fort, dismantled in the 1860s, once an imposing site is completely integrated into the old city. We decided to take the road-train tour around the fort. It gave us a nice talk-through historic tour of the fort and the old streets.

After the tour, we walked around the local shops and cafe's grabbing something light to eat before heading out towards the extremely modern UN/financial center of Luxembourg.

All in all it was a very good day spent in a very sunny and pretty Luxembourg.

Then there was Germany...Chapter 3

2008-06-08T00:33:00.000-07:00

Passport passport... where are you ?

One of the incidents that happened to us while we were on this trip confirmed to me that my brain is in my stomach.

It was about 9:30pm by the time we made it back from Antwerp to Dusseldorf. Of course we were hungry and we had decided that we will stop by a McD or a Burger King and pick up a burger or something.

We pulled up at the McD's on our way and as usual, I carried the "backpack". The "backpack" is usually an extension of my back. It had the laptop, camera, ipod, cash, passports. Basically everything important. So rather than leave it in the car, I usually carry it around.

So we walked in into the McD, looked at the menu, found nothing vegetarian, and walked out. Simple - 2 minutes flat. We got back into the car and drove off to our hotel to eat at the indian restaurant opposite. Once there, Anusha got out at the restaurant to reserve us a table and I made my way to the basement to park the car. It was when I was locking the car that I realized that I had left the backpack at the McD. Running like crazy, I found Anusha at the restaurant. Both of us ran back to the hotel reception without paying the restaurant bill (but promised the guy that we would be back to pay take care of the damages). Back in the reception, I was rambling incoherently to the reception desk fellow, partly because of the panting and rest because of this choking senstation that usually occurs when you have done something really stupid.

As with any other city, there are umpteen McD in Dusseldorf and we had no idea which one it was. All we knew was that it was close to the big tower and tram lines. With the reception desk dude calling every McD in Dusseldorf, Anusha calmly suggested that we try to trace our way back. We left our mobile number at the reception desk and drove off trying to find a place we both knew we couldn't find. We headed out trying to retrace our steps but no breadcrumbs to lead us to this place.

Fortunately for us, the hotel called a few minutes later. He had found the right McD and they had informed him that the bag was safe with all its contents in place. Thanks to the GPS, we found our way to the new address, found the bag and all its contents intact.

What was most noticeable was how calm Anusha was during all this. I know it's easier to be calm when you are not the one who has made the mistake, but her being calm was exactly what we needed. Needless to say, Anusha never let me forget this incident for the rest of this trip or the next one.

The stupidity-of-the-day was enough to drain us every ounce of energy we had left after a full day of travel. We went back to the Indian restaurant, ate, paid our bill this time and went back to our room for a good night's rest.

Then there was Germany...Chapter 2

2008-06-01T01:40:00.000-07:00

After a sweet night's sleep in our fancy hotel suite, we woke up to unlimited cups of cappuchinos :-). Definitely made my day. As with any other trip, we were pretty much planning as we were going along. Today we decided we will go to Aachen and then Belgium.

We made a pit stop en route to fill our hungry pits. Finding vegetarian food in this country, where people seem to eat only sausages for breakfast, lunch and dinner, is a little bit of a tall ask. We ended up at this local roadside restaurant/cafe thing where the owner didn't speak any English. Of course we tried using a few words from our German translations handbook but to no avail. Fortunately for us, one of the other customers spoke English and ordered our breakfast (Fried Eggs and bread) for us.

Beautiful Aachen
Back on track and with our tummies full, we sped along towards Aachen, one of the prettiest cities in Germany. The Aachen Altstadt, old town, is lined with huge gothic buildings, modern art fountains, old roman style streets etc. Aachen seems like a happy mix of Roman and Gothic Architecture. The Gothic city hall and the cathedral face off, forming a very buzzing and pretty square. Walking about the pretty Altstadt, we came across, what is very common in most european cities, various street performers. The pick of them was this classical band performing right outside the city hall.

The one factor that makes Aachen unique is the fact that the city is on the border of three countries. One of the restaurants on the German border in Aachen pretty much has a door leading to Belgium, another to Netherlands and the final one to Germany. After walking around for a bit in this beautiful town, grabbing a hot chocolate and something quick to eat, we were on our way again to explore new worlds.

Boring Belgium
Driving into Belgium, our first stop was Brussels. To be honest, Brussels isn't the prettiest city we've been to. It seemed quite bland and devoid of character. In fact, the city reminded us quite a bit of Paris minus the coolness factor. We visited the Palace, the cathedral and town hall in Brussels. As you can see from the picture of the Brussels Cathedral, its very French in design. Kind of looks like the Notre Dame but relatively tiny and far less impressive. Unsatisfied with Brussels, we finally drove off towards Antwerp.

In Antwerp we visited the Grote Markt, Guildhouses and the Town hall in Antwerp. Antwerp seemed like a city that, given some time, would have impressed us quite a bit. However, as things would have it, we didn't do Antwerp justice by just driving through most of it.

Before heading back home though, we had to get a souvenir, or in this case, eat a souvenir. We filled up nicely on REAL BELGIAN WAFFLES. Plotting our trip back to Dusseldorf, we realized we were actually driving through the Netherlands to get to Germany. Netherlands wasn't on our agenda since Anusha had another trip planned to Amsterdam with her cousin Anita later the same month. Our extent of The Netherlands experience was limited to waving at any Dutch folks and windmills we could see :-)

Then there was Germany...Chapter 1

2008-05-31T04:25:00.000-07:00

Our conquest of Western Germany began in the year 2008 in the cold and wet month of March. Over the course of these 4 days we managed to get around to visiting 6 cities & 4 countries in 4 days.

We had planned for a different holiday this time around. Going to Germany and not driving on the autobahn was something I have been dreaming about for a while. This was the perfect opportunity. We had decided that Dusseldorf would be the base for this trip. It's a beautiful city within a few hours drive of quaint historic towns in western Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Netherlands. We booked our tickets and off we went.

Upon landing at Dusseldorf airport, we made our way to the rental car place. We had booked a compact car and I was expecting a Renault or a ford or something. Instead, she gave us a cool Merc with a navigation system and winter tires. Unsure of driving on the wrong side of the road, I slowly and hesitantly drove out of the airport but seemed pretty much at ease about as soon as we got out of the airport.

We stayed at the Nikko in the center of the city. The Nikko was a cool hotel that is designed primarily for Japanese tourists. Well, we had a great buffet lunch at an india restaurant right opposite the hotel and headed out on our drive to Koln. It took us about 30 minutes to get to Koln from our hotel. Of course it was 30 minutes at about 180kph average. I even touched 200kph at one point.

The Kölner Dom is one of the largest churches in the world. It's a perfect example of Gothic Architecture with really sharp edges, gargoyales, ornate enterances and the works. From the inside, the dom has humongous and beautiful stained glass windows. We spent the day hanging around Köln, walking around the bustling shops even on a cold rainly day. Eventually, we headed back to Dusseldorf, this time taking the winding country roads through a very pretty countryside.

The room we first checked into didn't have the air conditioning working effectively and after speaking to the front desk, they switched us to a cool executive suite with its own cappuchino machine :-). A few cappuchinos from that machine was a great way to start the day.

Stockholm Day 2 & 3

2008-05-25T05:52:00.000-07:00

Day 2 started extremely well. We woke up just in time for the buffet breakfast. The best spread of fresh fruits, yoghurts, breads, cheese, cereals, eggs etc. that I have seen in a long time. We had our fill and took the bus out to town to spend the day in the city.

We spent the first part of the day roaming around aimlessly in the city just exploring areas and then we ended up at the Vasa museum. The Vasa was built in the 1620's on order for king Gustavus Adolphus. The scandinavians were building a great empire around the Baltic Sea and the Vasa was expected to be the flagship of the fleet. It was loaded with guns and was expected to lead the assaults. They spend tons of money and lots of labour in building this great ship and decorated it woth gold etc. In the greatest anticlimax, it sailed for a grand total 5 minutes before it sank to the bottom of the sea. Not the best story for a "great ship". However, what was great indeed was how they savaged the ship from the bottom of the ocean in the cold baltic waters and recreated the magic of the Vasa. We spent the best part of the day in the museum, playing around with the various things. everything from the physics, imitating history to designing warships.

After finishing up at the museum, we walked out, got something to eat from the local street market and headed back to the hotel to chill out for the rest of the evening. Once back in the hotel, we hit the gym and the sauna for some relaxation.

Day 3 was greeted by heavy rain. We had plans of getting to Sigtuna, a local historic village, but the rain played spoil sport and we ended up just train-ing around town before heading our to the airport.

Stockholm - Ikea Town - Day 1

2008-05-25T03:59:00.000-07:00

Spent about 3 days in Sweden - NO IKEA !!!! They work through other retail outlets in Stockhom though., every single furniture store you come across has Ikea furniture !

Walking into Stockholm, we were greeted by huge pictures famous personalities from Sweden, everyone from Bjorn Borg to ABBA.

The Stockholm Archipelago is one of the largest in the world and the largest in the Baltic sea. Stockholm is a really nice city, with a very quaint old-town with waterways running through it. Add to it the Scandinavian architecture style and it makes for a very picturesque holiday. [Picture borrowed from wikipedia]

Making our way from the Arlanda airport to town was fairly easy. It is amazing how all these citites we have been to in Europe have amazing public transport making travelling around so easy. Stockholm has the mainline trains, the subways and an extensive bus network. Anusha made sure that we take all modes of public transport possible. We bought the 16 trip ticket which we needed to get validated at entry into a mode of transport. I must admit that I do like the Oyster card mode of payment a lot better though but I guess they can trust their people more in Stockholm that we can in London.

We took the bus from the airport to the main bus station in the city. Once in town, we were greeted by a very cold but sunny day. We walked around the main streets walking through the city soaking the ambiance. It was a very nice day (by swedish standards) and people were out biking, ice skating, shopping etc. For us, it was still very cold but we braved it nonetheless.

Walking through the city, we got to the "Gamla Stan", old town, with its museums, pretty & narrow medieval streets, fantastic cafes and small quiant stores. We stopped by a local cafe and got some coffee and hot chocolate and something to eat. The hot chocolate was almost the best we had. The best one being undoubtedly the one we had at the train station in Rome.

Anyway, after spending the day in the Gamla Stan, we headed to our hotel in the suburb of Bromma. We took the subway and then the bus and it took us roughly around 30 minutes to get to the hotel. The room was very nice, big window and a huge bathroom. The entire room was Ikea. The cupboards, the beds, the painting, the table/chairs you name it!

Bulk processing of posts !

2008-05-25T01:51:00.000-07:00

Finally after a long 4 month break, I'm back.

Somehow this busy world has a way around letting me get to my blog. It seems like a big conspiracy. Thinking a slight bit harder, I realize how un-important I am it is probably my incompetent time-management skills, when it comes to my personal life, that allow time to dictate what I do and don't do.

Anusha and I have had an eventful past 4 months. Trips to Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, had my parents over here for a month, then a trip to Austria.

The last 4 months have also contained unknowns about the future leading to Anusha's failed trip to Hyderabad (and she is not happy about this) and my failed trips to Singapore and Oz.

Finally, we have about 4-weeks of visibility. Thats 4-weeks more visibility that I have had in the past. Will start writing more.

Swiss Trip - Final Day

2008-01-12T12:52:00.000-08:00

This was the day after the head-banging and waking up from partying. With heavy heads and heavier hearts that our holiday was ending, we finally managed to roll out of the bed and got out by about noon. Today was going to be about nothing. We just wanted to chill and have a relatively relaxing day before boarding our flight back from Zurich. That is exactly what we did.

We took the bus to Interlaken where the town was getting ready for the evening’s new year party and fireworks. They don’t quite celebrate New Year Eve with the great fireworks etc., rather they save it all for the New Year day. There was going to be a carnival atmosphere, with live bands and fireworks. Too bad we couldn’t stay the 1^st.

The city centre was closed for traffic so as we hiked from the station into the city centre in the search of a restaurant which would help us conquer our hunger. Quite sick of sandwiches, we were looking for some hot, soft food and decided to look for an Indian restaurant (surprise surprise). We looked at a couple of Indian restaurants in the area but both of them were closed. One of them was on holiday. The entire restaurant was on holiday till middle of January.

Anyway, it was cold, we were very tired and since we were looking for soft food, we walked into an Italian restaurant hoping to get some half-decent pasta. Instead we were extremely pleasantly surprised with what we got. Although the service seemed a little cold, the food was really hot and tasted absolutely fantastic. I had the best cannelloni I have ever had. So much so that I had mine and then some of Smita’s.

After lunch, we made our way to the station and started on the return leg of our journey with the Train to Zurich Airport. Check-in was uneventful this time and involved no running frantically to the gate to catch our flight.

With the typical post holiday 'sad-to-leave but itching to get back home' feeling, we occupied our seats and then we had the Mastercard moment of the trip:

Plane ticket to Switzerland - £100
Clothes to brave the cold - £80
Train to the Airport - £30
Free yummy Swiss chocolate on the plane – PRICELESS!!!

Getting back home was a bitter-sweet moment. Well it was the end of the trip and we all had to get back to work the next day. Smita made us all some great tasting vegetable khichdi and after having our fill, we went off the sleep and that was the end of our holiday.

Swiss Trip - Day 3

2008-01-06T07:17:00.001-08:00

Today was just another day where the sleepy heads didn’t wake up on time. I woke up fairly late by my standard, around 9am, and tried to wake the others up but was greeted by groans and complaints. Anusha, who has built up immunity to my wake up screams, totally ignored me and continued to party in the land of nod. Raghav, who doesn’t quite have the same immunity, rolled over and covered his ears and literally turned his back on me. Smita, I am sure was thinking of ways to come up with some potion that would make me disappear.

Eventually, bugged with my failure to wake the gang up, I showered and was ready to head out. This somehow seemed to get people out of their zombie state, especially Raghav. That’s when I found out the easiest way to wake Smita up. She hates the smell of toothpaste in the room. So when Raghav brushed his teeth, she had no choice but to wake up. He he he... I used this to annoy her the next day. Anusha woke up jumping it’s my birthday, it’s my birthday and so it was. She used this line to great effect all day, whether it was to choose where were headed, get the best seat on the train or to get the last bite of the chocolate.

Raghav and I got some coffee downstairs and with the others still waking up and getting ready, I decided to take a walk around Iseltwald for about a half hour or so. It was just fantastic walking around this place and soak up the scenery. Absolutely stunning views. [Picture]

After I came back from my walk, I got back and started hurrying these guys to get ready so that we can make the 11:33am bus to Interlaken. Of course by the time these lazy buggers got ready, we had to run to the bus stop, only to miss the bus by 1 minute. Having missed the bus, we headed back to the hostel to make some Maggi so that we don’t end up losing time getting grub later. Btw, making Maggi does take a lot longer than 2 minutes. As the scent of the food tickled our nostrils, we realized how hungry we all really were since we hadn’t had much of a dinner the night before. I bought some bread from the local shop and we all sat and had a good Maggi & Bread brunch.

After the lunch, we did manage to make the next bus. We had decided on small city of Biel as the prime candidate for our lazy day-trip through a small town in Switzerland. On the Train to Beil, Anusha was taught a lesson in how to play UNO [Picture] while Smita and Raghav were soaking up the Sun.

Biel has a very quaint, Gothic city centre and a very nice waterfront. We got off at the station and walked around the town centre for a bit and took some nice pictures along the way. [Picture]. Then we took the bus to the waterfront, a very nice, calm place with a lot of people walking around in the nice and sunny 4 degrees temperature. This was summer compared to the snow covered mountains the day before. We wanted to take a picture of the four of us on a walk bridge and the guys wouldn’t let me set up the camera on the bridge rails. So, we asked this guy who was walking around to take a picture of us all. He was an old German dude who had probably never seen a digital camera but was very happy to oblige and in the end the picture came out pretty well. Before we left, we snapped a few more pictures of the beautiful evening sun reflecting on the water [Picture]. We headed back into town and stopped by the local grocery store to pick up some food for dinner and then made our way back to our hostel.

All of us got back pretty hungry (as usual) and prepared our dinner. We got chatting to Deniz about New Years Eve celebration and if anything special happens around then. We had just about finished dinner and were ready to turn in early when Deniz stopped by for a picture with the girls. [Picture] She left and very promptly came back, sounding pretty excited and asked us to follow her out to the street. We were all in our PJs but we jumped out to see what she was going on about. It was the traditional Swiss Bell Banging ceremony in arrival of the new year [Picture]. These guys walk about town in a procession on new year’s eve, beating the bells and walking in and out of homes/hotels and the people whose places they walk into are supposed to give them food and drink. We walked for a bit with this procession dancing like it was a Shaadi Barat.

The dancing pretty much got both Smita and Anusha in the mood for some new year eve partying and when Deniz offered us all a ride into town, they jumped on the offer and Anusha played her “It’s my Birthday” line once again to get me and Raghav to join them. Deniz drove us into town a little later and gave us the local Interlaken club tour. We walked into a couple of clubs and finally settled on one playing 90s hip-hop music /bhangra combo. Of course it was run by fellow Desis. We partied into the new year and then took a taxi back home in the early hours of the morning. Thanks to Smita’s enthusiasm, Anusha did get her party/dancing after all!

We continued on chatting for a bit upon our return to the hostel. Tired & weary, we turned in for the night. Sad in some ways that tomorrow would be the last night of our holiday before we land up in reality world again.

Swiss Trip - Day 2

2008-01-05T05:54:00.001-08:00

True to form, the second day began in quite an interesting fashion. The night before Raghav had challenged us that he would wake up at 6:30am. He woke up at 6:15am, well at least he thought he woke up at 6:15am ;-). We had asked for breakfast to be served by 8:30am. So Raghav and I got ready and went down for breakfast at 8:30 with the girls still getting ready. We walked down and found the food all cold and laid out on the table. We were both surprised and a little upset that she had put the food out early and that it had gotten cold. Deniz came out and looked at us and said “Did you guys decide to sleep in late?” Raghav and I both looked at our watches and responded with a surprised “We said 8:30 and we are here at 8:30.” Deniz laughed at us and said that we are on Swiss time now and not on London time and that it was 9:30am and not 8:30. That’s when we realized our rookie mistake and had to re-plan our entire day since we had missed our morning train that we had planned for.

We had our breakfast and were deciding where to go when our local Santa helper, Deniz, suggested we go sledding since we had some fresh snow the night before. She offered to take us into the city to get our equipment on rent. Our eyes lit up immediately and we jumped on the offer. We got our equipment and hopped on the train to Kleine Scheidegg. The mountain train was really picturesque and was much better in the morning than in the evening. [Picture]

Once up there, the girls decided they needed to shop for ear muffs. Of course shopping and I don’t really get along. I sat outside the store brooding for about an hour while they tried out 20 different ear muffs. Really, an hour to shop for ear muffs? Women and shopping, I’ll never understand that. Anyway, as soon as Smita purchased her pair of earmuffs, she broke them [Picture] and then she had to buy another pair of course. Anusha's expression in the picture is priceless though.

Once we were done with the shopping and the little snowfight, which Smita won [Picture], it was grub time. We ordered food in the nearby mountain restaurant. The food took about 2 hours to arrive. So finally after about 4 hours of conceptualizing this sledding plan, we finally made it to the slopes.

But, it was all worth it once we got there. We had 3 sleds between the 4 of us. Anusha and I decided to double up on a slide and Smita and Raghav decided to go single for the evening. [Picture] Smita “the fearless” headed down the slopes first paving the way for the rest of us, soon followed by the ungainly couple and then by Raghav “the cautious”. Very soon Smita was off on her own leading the rest of us by a mile with Raghav slowing moving along the track. After going over the initial bum(p)s and hiccups, the ungainly couple figured out how to manage the sled without falling off all the time and started picking up speed and very soon caught up with Raghav only to give his sled a good kick and send him off on his journey of the day. He carried on for quite a bit eventually stopping after banging into Smita.

Somewhere along the way, Smita lost her sled to a slope and Raghav and Smita had to go on a rescue mission in order to recover the sled. This wasn’t exactly the mile hike she was looking forward to but one that she had to go on. She was quite lucky in that someone stopped it when they had, otherwise it would have to be a much longer hike and may have involved a drop. He he heeeee.

It was an amazing experience but by the end of it all of us felt like semi-thawed bags of frozen vegetables. Cold and wet we returned but only after conquering the Eiger slope and promised to come back, only better prepared with the clothing.

While we waited at the station, Raghav had a sudden fixation on buying a sandwich. This wasn’t too irregular for Raghav so we didn’t make much of it until about 2 hours later when he pulled the cake and chocolate box out for Anusha’s birthday. Since we had to skip dinner in our quest to come back to the hostel on time, the cake served as both the birthday celebration cake and the dinner.

With our clothes all hung out to dry on the heater [Picture], we all retired for the day tired, achy and sleepy.

Swiss Trip - Day 1

2008-01-03T07:43:00.001-08:00

Waking up at 4 in the morning just isn’t fun, is it. Even when you have a fantastic trip ahead of you !!!

We woke up tired and sleepy, got ready and got the airport just in time for the flight to Zurich, all the time cribbing about how early we had to get up. Little did we know just how much fun was in store for us over the next 4 days.

Upon arriving at the Zurich airport, we had to catch the intercity to Interlaken. We had booked ourselves in a hostel in a village close to Interlaken. The train ride to Interlaken was exactly the wake-up call we needed to get our rear-sides in gear. As we gazed out of our windows in awe, our minds started waking up to the fact that we were in one of the prettiest areas in the world.

Once we got to Interlaken, we had to take a 30 minute bus ride to Iseltwald, a little known village with absolutely stunning views [Picture Attached]. We got there around 11am and woke up the hostel manager, Deniz. Deniz, who we later found to be the best hostess, woke up grumpy and complaining since we had woken her up from her precious slumber which she doesn’t get much of anyway running a pretty busy hostel. In all fairness to her, the check-in time is supposed to be 3pm and not 11am She got nicer as she woke up and showed us to our room, a 4 bunk bed really nice room with ample closet space. Will post the detailed review of the Lake Lodge here later.

Having dumped our backpacks in the room we headed out to Interlaken to explore the local cuisine since we were famished. Of course the first restaurant we run into was an Indian-Punjabi restaurant called Shalimar. We were greeted there by the one man army: manager, cook, seating host and waiter who before we got there was trying to pacify his girlfriend who walked away in a huff as we entered the restaurant. Not to be perturbed by the little tiff with his lady, the one-man-army proceeded to cook us some really nice food, freshly prepared and to our expectations. It hit the spot perfectly. Raghav nicknamed the restaurant Kamadhenu since it gave us exactly what we wanted.

All that food deserved some good exercise and we walked around beautiful Interlaken for a bit. We then took the rail up to snow covered Grindelwald and walked around there for the rest of the evening before coming back. It was dark and icy and thoughout we kept thinking - this is really pretty but its cold man.

It was cold but little did we know that that word would take on a whole different meaning the next day. That will be in the next post.

In website hell !!!!

2007-12-29T15:14:00.000-08:00

www.sify.com has to be the worst business website that I have tried to get a transaction though. I have been in absolute user experience hell for the last three hours while desperately trying to book a domain name with them.

Numerous attempts to get my correct user infromation to be passed through to the credit card authorization request failed thanks to the fact that I have to put in addresses in three different places and I have no idea which one its using because it will not tell me ! I tried and tried and tried and have probably even locked out my credit card now thanks to the idiots who designed this website.

It will tell me that I have a bunch of pending requests with them but doesn't tell me what address is associated with that request. I can't cancel or remove them from my list of pending requests. All I can do is add and add and add. Now I have like 6 pending domain name requests with them with none of them going through. Absolutely fantastic isn't it !!!!

All this to try and get a .in domain name. How much more difficult can we make it to get these domain names? This process is supposed to be EASY !

Cleaning pains...

2007-12-26T08:48:00.000-08:00

Why is it that cleaning the house seems like such a pain to men and such a pleasure for women. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a clean house very much but I don't want to be the one cleaning it every 3 days if you know what I mean.

To me a house is clean when things don't look dirty. Granted I am not one of those people who looks really really hard either. If its visibly dirty, it needs cleaning.

Let me tell you a bit about yesterday though. It will put things into a bot of context. Today wasn't all unfair given that Anusha gave in (this is unprecendented btw) to my constant pleadings of living in nothingness for one whole day. Yesterday was all about doing nothing but sleeping, eating and watching TV. We woke up at about noon, ate, chatted, vegetated,
watched some TV, ate some more and saw 4 movies on the trot and went to sleep around 3 in the morning. So all in all a perfect day.

Anyway, today couldn't be more different. Today was just one of those cleaning days. We woke up around noon. Did nothing for the next hour. Spent some time chatting to Anusha's parents online. so far so good right? I thought it was just going to be a repeat of yesterday and just about then... BANG !!!! Anusha has that gleam in her eyes that she only has when she is thinking about her favorite pastime.... CLEANING ! I knew then that this was going to be a work day. Far cry from yesterday.

So far, today has been about sorting out my old papers that I have been accumilating for a few weeks, vaccuming the house, folding clothes that Anusha has been washing... :-(( and of course, my regular, cooking. Life just gets better and better. Things aren't exactly looking up.

NOW, I get to work on getting my tax filing in.

oh... life goes on...

Swiss Trip Planned

2007-12-25T11:26:00.000-08:00

Planned a trip to Switzerland for the new year. Should be a cool trip. Anusha and I are travelling with my cousin Smita and her husband Raghav. Should be an interesting new year and a good birthday present for Anusha.

Have the air tickets to Zurich, swiss rail tickets & hostel booking ready. Should be travelling to Interlaken and looking to spend the time around that area.

Should be fun. Will be posting the trips as it happens.

Starting Trouble...

2007-12-25T07:52:00.000-08:00

Looking at some of my older pictures, it made me realize what a non-camera person I am. I didn't know much about cameras and photography to begin with and then to top it up, I married someone who is even less interested in taking pictures. One thing about my wife though, she loves being photographed.

I bought my first decent digital camera (okay it was on a free offer with something else) just about the time i got married. We have been snapping away our trips with that camera but one thing that annoyed me time and again was the fact that I hated the crap 3x optical zoom on the camera.

This time around I decided to change that and bought the Ricoh R7. Its still a compact but packs in a good 8.1 MP and a 7x Optical zoom on top of it. In addition to the 7x Optical zoom, it has an additional 4x Digital zoom. So, I am hoping I would now be able to bring those distant things closer. Overall, it seems to take great pictures even in bad light and the anti-shake system is great for an amateur like me.

I am hoping to use this blog to post any entries from my trips and hopefully some decent pictures along with it.