After visiting the Leo Carrillo Ranch, we moved on to Double Peak park. This was a beaufiful park with some play area for kids and a trail path for everyone in Carlsbad/San Marcos area.
Reminded us of Hunters point in Cupertino. The views were awesome and the kids had fun with a triple fulcrum see-saw! It was interesting and we have never seen a see-saw like this where 4 or 5 kids can walk up and down.
Then we took a short break and drove to Old Town for New Year's eve dinner, at El Coyote! Most of the shops were closed but we got to watch the window displays in this area.. some of them were quite interesting!
Then we watched ladies make tortillas at Guiness book record speeds.
The dinner itself was quite interesing with a couple of guys with guitars singing for the ladies! My three girls were either not amused or were embarrassed by the attention.
El Coyote has a separate "vegetarian menu" and they give it if you ask for it. It was good that our friends knew that and made ordering a breeze.
It was a memorable evening and we all slept well. On first we had the last stop on the trip. The San Diego Zoo!
First time visit for everyone in the family and there are still hundreds of photos from that day that have yet to be edited. Will take a break and post them next week. By far the best Zoo we have seen..
On a last minute whim, we decided to go on a road trip down south to the Los Angeles and San Diego area. We started off with a stop at Ventura, visited the Bonaventura mission, beaches and then went down to San Marcos..
Had a wonderful dinner with friends in Old Town, San Diego, a place we are visiting after almost 10 years!
We started 2016 with a visit to the San Diego zoo! The smiling faces of the friends, kids and our first ever sighting of live pandas made our day!
Here's to 2016! May this year bring you the best of health and wealth!
During the Thanksgiving week, which seems like ages ago, I got to visit India. First stop was Varanasi for our class reunion for two days. Then I got to spend the next 4 days in Chennai.
The trip was interesting from start to finish. When we landed in Chennai from Varanasi, the airport had 600+ stranded passengers with the access roads to the airport being closed and a "no taxis" sign greeting us. Luckily my friends dad who had started 6 hours earlier to get to the airport made it past the closure on one side. We went through waterlogged roads and a very interesting route to get back to my brothers place.
But a miracle happened. It had rained for 17 days before that. The next 72 hours saw only slight drizzles. We did not even use an umbrella. And on the one day San and the kids came to visit Chennai, the sun came out!
They are really lucky angels.
We jumped from one auto rickshaw into another and were pretty much on the go that day. It also happened to be my star birthday and the previous night we had celebrated Kaarthigai deepam! You can see the contrast between celebrating this in Cupertino and Chennai.
The highlight of the trip was to see my grandma, who is not doing well after her surgery. I was glad that the kids got to talk to her, sing for her and get to take a selfie with Grandma.
I also got to spend 4 days with my parents after almost a year and a half. It is very difficult to see my dad's physical abilities deteriorate over time. His hands are constantly shaking and so are his lower jaw. The docs say "it is part of old age"... I was quoting Bikram and saying "never too old, never too sick..." but don't think it registered with my parents.
We also got to visit San's granparents. They got hit with the rains a lot worse than my brothers area. It is amazing how resilient they are. Hoping some of that resiliant gene has transferred to our kids in case they need it some day!
This photograph was taking on Kaarthigai deepam.
The one day that the sun came out, the schools reopened. We asked my nephew to bunk school on that day to be with us and he obliged. The next day he did make it to school but what happened after that was epic rains and the city was badly hit.
A day after I left, there was so much rain that the airport was flooded and shut down. There was some real luck guiding me through this trip!
Do not know when the next trip will be, so till then we look back at memories.. here is those 4 wonderful days crammed into 7 minutes of video!
Still missing everyone in Chennai, more than ever after editing this video!
It has been a month since this trip already. We have to make it to India on a more regular basis for longer times. Maybe we will have a better shot at it in 2016?!
