Nature trip in Arizona Part 5: Horseshoe Bend, Sedona and back

The previous post in this series is here..

Day 3 was for the return journey to Phoenix. Given San's back and our attempt at being nice to my SIL we decided to drive to Phoenix but stay overnight near the airport and take the first filght back in on Memorial day morning to the bay area. 

First stop on way back was the horseshoe bend. It is a mile walk from the parking lot. San walked slow and steady. It was 8 AM and already hot. We should have visited this place during golden hour. The direct sun and shadows did not make for great pictures. The place was way too crowded. I tried to sit on the ledge and San starts screaming as usual. So doing yoga poses on the edge was ruled out!

 

A short video clip of horseshoe bend..

After the walk back from Horseshoe bend I was asked to "hit the gas"... and that I did. There was some volcanic crater on the way back towards Sedona. Just before going to the exit, we decided to keep driving .. lunch was calling. 

We took a good 20 minutes to find parking in Sedona. Then we had a nice Italian lunch at Sedona Pizza and Pasta. Excellent food and excellent service on a busy day!

Walked around a few stores along the busy street, the ladies did some "shopping" and we were on our way back towards Phoenix. 

We had an early but amazing dinner at a place 5 minutes from the airport and close to our hotel. Indian Delhi Palace food was mouth watering!

After stuffing ourselves we went to sleep early. We had to wake up at 3:30 to make it to the car return and catch the first flight out. The car rental place is not close to the airport. There is a train ride from there to the airport!

We made it back to the bay area and San was still in decent shape and declared her back was no worse than when we started. That to me was a success. The SIL seemed to have had a good time as well. 

This was a new place for all of us and it was a good trip overall given we took an extra nights rest.

We have so many places to visit that I doubt we will hit Page again anytime soon. If you have not been to Antelope canyon, definitely see it in this lifetime.. plan and visit!

Glad that this trip was captured in this blog finally, over the next long weekend! 

An eventful weekend - A year of college, 25 years of marriage, Father's day

This week marks 25 years of our marriage.. the original events happened between 10th June to 16th June.

Everything we did and are doing in this time frame is being called a celebration! I am happy with that. 

We also had the kids finish another year of college and celebrated Father's day!

On Friday both San and me had to take the day off to go vacate the little one from her freshman dorm. Thankfully she goes to live in an apartment with three friends starting next year. 

Given so many schools along the coast all having graduation ceremonies this weekend( as well as dorm vacation deadlines the same weekend), we expected 101 S to be a zoo.. and it was!

Started driving before 5AM, made it to Santa Barbara by 9 AM, got the kids room cleaned out and van loaded in under 2 hours. Most of the time was spent waiting for elevators on a 10 story high rise building where everyone has a cart with stuff loaded and waiting for one of two elevators.  The eleveatorshold two carts and two people max at one time, and serve a gazillion students and parents. 

Then the little one had to go study for her finals. We got her something from Chipotle, dropped her off at the library and had time to kill till she finished her finals. 

The kid suggested we go to Apna kitchen and hang out in State street. So off we went. The food and chai were excellent in this place. We also had some ice cream from a local ice cream place right near the restaurant that was downright yummy (McConnell's) . We still had time to kill.

Gandhiji providing some quality cognitive dissonance... 

There was a movie theater near the restaurant and we decided to sit down in air conditioning for two hours. My legs were killing me after that morning drive and I had to do the entire drive back. San was still recovering from her muscle tear!

We saw a Will Smith movie. I dozed off in the middle of the movie and it was too slow moving for a supposed action flick. Then I got a kick in the ribs right in time to see some action scenes. Apparently she loved it. At least one of us got paisa vasool.

Did I mention that we were the only two people in the theater for the entire movie!!! They ran a movie and trailers just for us!

We left the movie and literally picked up the kid right as she got out of the exam hall and drove back. Had a 20 min stop to eat the tamarind and curd rice that San had made. It tasted so good.. we had to gobble it up and start driving. We made it back by 11PM.

Legs are still recovering from driving 11 hours and walking around all day. That movie was a good decision!

Apna was interesting.. Gandhiji wearing coolers and endorsing beer... Kaliyuga is well and truly here was my thought. The bay area is overrun with "kudigara pappans".. something I tell my wife all the time. It is the times we live in. That is not the topic for this post.. so will leave it at that. The food was great! 

Jr. drove back from Irvine by herself without a stop! Was very worried but happy when she pulled into the driveway. The best 25th anniversary gift is that we are all in one place!

We went to an Italian place (Rollati in downtown San Jose) to celebrate this morning. The little one had scouted this one out. The food was delicious. Ate a full pizza and am in python mode right now as this post is being typed. Strongly recommend this place. Great food and great service! 

After this we decided (San did) to walk around SJSU as she was showing us where she went to school, her library, her cafeteria, where she had her graduation etc. etc. The kids have not seen this nostalgic side of San. Neither have I .. it was fun while it lasted. We did take a "bench photo" at SJSU. 

We wrapped it all up with a dinner at Sri's kitchen. The dinner was simple but great! Also ended up visiting my first ever job location which used to be a walk from this strip mall. The whole place has changed as have we over the years.

It has been a great week of "celebrating". Let's see what the next Quarter has in store for us.. 

In the middle of all this I did work on a collage for my dad to wish him.. not sure if he can see it properly! Pretty much all highlight photos of him (from the photo of his wedding) to the last one we took with him during our visit to Chennai in February on his 85th birthday. 

Spent a lot of time looking at pictures today! If anything, hope my kids keep taking pictures every now and then and store them!

This should go without saying.. but the credit for us rolling on smoothly for the last 25 years completely goes to Sangeetha. I was hired as the #2 employee of Sangeetha Inc. 25 years ago and the small startup has released two successful products and the company is still going strong under her leadership!

I lucked out big time in this birth!

A day and a half in Chennai

The last post on this trip is here...

Have to start becoming a live blogger to catch up on travels these days. New sights, new people.. 

So tend to forget things with a photo/video overload.

We landed in Chennai late on Thursday night and left Chennai Saturday afternoon. 

Within that time frame, we managed to spend a few hours with my parents, San's 95 year old grandma, visit three temples, eat out twice and meet a lot of relatives (leaving out the blog shy ones in the post)

The most special relative we met was the latest addition to the extended family. It has been a long time since I held a baby in my hands. We showed the picture to someone later in the trip and were asked why we decided to have a baby so late.

My father who is not his usual self saw us fall at his feet for blessings and wished us a boy child. We said something about our 25th wedding anniversary and maybe he heard things partly and automatically blessed. Somehow in his mind, us not having a boy is still a "lacking" thing, at least he used to keep telling me that according to my horoscope I am supposed to have female and male children. He would keep asking me how that horoscope could be wrong? We know the time and age he is from where male children are considered the representation of the gene pool. He always means well. 

My dad turned 85 that morning and he was not aware of his birthday. I seem to be the best at playing dumb charades with him and sadly am not close by. We both realized that, in the hour we communicated. He said bye to me as though he was losing his translator or least that was my perception. My only thought was "If by some karma, I end up in this same state with parkinson's, need to train San and some folks around me to play dumb charades regularly, starting now!"

If only Tantra shastra was spread to the masses, things would be different on this boy child business.. that is multiple topics all colliding in my head right now. So that discussion will be sidebared. When my dad finished his blessing in bits and pieces, we just thanked him for it. Told my mom that we are almost ready to have grandkids in a few years.. one topic led to another and we fished out the kids horoscope which my mom had saved all these years! 

Given the short time in Chennai, did I mention how my mom told me to go sit and do parayanam at the local Saradhambaal temple? She prioritized my praying for two out of the three hours! In any case, the goal was to make her happy, so I just went and met with all the familiar folks in the recitation group. They were all happy to see me. Many of them have seen me as a teenager. One thing I miss is this recitation group. Seriously thinking of starting one in Cupertino every Saturday morning. One of the folks even took a photo and sent it to my mom! The mama's are better insta bloggers than me.. and my mom was beaming with happiness that they had good things to say about me. Mamas happy, Mom happy, me happy..

e

The nights food at Geetham was still backed up with Upma my mom made me in the morning and still had to eat at Kamakshi mess... India trips are an exercise in stretching your stomach muscles way past what you think you can. 

then there was the first train ride of the trip.. on Rameshwaram express.. brought back so many memories of long train journeys in India.

"Kamalahasanukku porai eri irukkum!" was the thought as we saw this while standing at the door

we were going to see Ramanadhaswamy.. One picture from my aunt's place that stayed with me.. loved this .. all the stores in Mylapore which did framing were still not open when we went to the area.. so could not find it. Maybe on the next trip, will get a print of this!

Will continue the write up of Rameshwaram in a day, the next chance I get..

A different Mumbai after many years..

This is the first detailed post on the rushed India trip..

We had landed almost two hours late in the morning.

The last time I visited Mumbai and spent time here was 2017! After reaching Chembur, we had less than an hour to get ready to visit temples! It was all planned by MIL. There was some chai and fresh pav for us to gobble up before leaving the apartment.

We visited Mahalakshmi first. Was drooling thinking of fresh hot kunukkus behind the temple at Laxmi Bajiya house.. was told that things have changed. No more shops in the back.. No way to go to back either to see the ocean because of constuction. There is a freeway coming that has totally changed the ocean view.. 

Then went to Siddhi Vinayak. In spite of the crowd that pushes relentlessly, there is some peace that comes to me when visiting this place. Do not know why! We walked out and decided to eat right outside the temple. First rava dosa in Mumbai was amazing.. everything we ordered was amazing. Cannot beat food in India!

We spent the rest of the evening visiting San's cousins with her uncle. Her baby cousin (who incidentally was the oonjal kid in our wedding) has been married for years, but I never got to meet her hubby and in laws. Managed to meet him finally! 

We spent the next morning at the Chembur Murugan temple with San's uncle. Got to recite Rudram with him and watch abhishegam. Got to meet my collegemates and chat without realizing how time passed. 

we tried to recreate our first portrait but both of us were laughing and it did not come out as planned.. 

Ate at a few places like Arya Bhavan (which is okay given the hype) and Mani's which lived up to the hype on this instance(where we ate tiffin items) and did some shopping! 

we had to wait to be seated practically every place we went to eat.. every place is crowded! I came to the conclusion that Mumbai doesn't have enough restaurants for the local crowd.

Got to sample food at Sadhguru which was amazing and GuruKripa in Sion with my classmates and both places were good. However, there was no Chai at GuruKripa.. I was in shock. The samosas were amazing!

Was so happy chatting with my buddies. Was glad to see we are all doing good and are in decent health!

I also met a cat that does yoga in Mumbai..

and another cool cat that is happiest when in Mumbai..chillin.. this one misses the beauty parlours a lot when in the US. If San is sad and needs to cheer up, all she has to do is go to Mumbai, eat pani puris and vada pav and get some henna, facial , handial, leggial etc. and voila.. we have happy San again!

Just like that three days gone and it was time to fly to Chennai ...

A day tour of Rio - part 2 : Sugarloaf mountain

The previous post on this series is here..

After lunch we were picked up and the smaller group went to Sugarloaf mountain as part of the afternoon Viator all day Rio trip.

There is a stop in between from the ground level at another mountain called Urca hill with a visitor center in it. This place had some amazing shops with art work and some nice places to eat.

The views from the cable cars were amazing. We met a total of 9 desis on this entire trip, an all time low for our international travels to date! 

It was two different cable car rides, one to the hill and from hill to mountain.

Given the dark clouds, our guide took us straight to the top and said we could always spend time in the first stop on the way back. Urca hill is full of jack fruit trees!!!! San just went nuts seeing them!

Luckily the clouds disappeared and we got to spend a good 45 minutes there, eat ice cream and take more photos. 

We got spectacular views of Rio from both the vista points and the cable car ride was great! Apparently we went on the third generation cable car. The first two cars used were on display at Urca hill

 Vaugely remember the Yellow Santa being there on Urca hill in one of the Panetone bread stores.. Some pictures are already missing from my phone! Yet another reason to blog right after a trip! Summer Christmas in the southern hemisphere is interesting.. Almost 100 degree heat on Christmas eve is a different experience.

Then we were back down to a monument where we waited for our van and were dropped off near our hotel.

San and the kids decided to try a place called Que Quieres en route to our Airbnb..

They were very happy with the food. I steered clear off it for fear of allergies and made and ate grilled cheese sandwiches and thachchi mummum in the Airbnb and we called it a night!

A video of the afternoon tour..

We still had two days, two more beaches to see and nothing else to do.. but we decided to have those last two days as relaxing days. We had done a lot with this all day tour, thanks to Viator!