The Windy City

(Write up, July 2007. I was in Chicago for 5.5 months; Jan mid 2007 to June end 2007)

Chicago. The city of jazz and blues. And the city which was my temporary home for a few months. I stayed in a suburb of Chicago called Hoffman Estates (borderside, so almost in Schaumburg). It was bitterly cold and and it was snowing. But it’s beautiful. The white blanket covering the entire area…Some lovely houses all around, that look like fairy take castle with the snow on them…

I was back in the US after more than a year. It’s such a stark contrast, from Scottsdale (Arizona) to here. Poles apart in almost everything…especially in terms of weather!! How do I feel…hmm…not happy, not sad, just normal. Not excited, not really anything much…it’s like “you have to do what you have to do”. Seeing my project deadlines, it didn’t look like I’d get to travel much. I was mistaken thankfully, I did get to travel! Ha, knowing me, that shouldn’t be a surprise, now should it? :-)

Living in Schaumburg is almost like being in India.

Scottsdale

(Write up, December 2005)

When I first heard I was going to the USA on a project from work, I was thrilled to bits. Also very nervous and excited. Forget being abroad, I hadn’t even flown in a plane ever! Then I found out I’d be in a place called Scottsdale in Arizona (AZ). What? Scottsdale? Huh? The maximum I knew about Arizona then was that it was a desert (the Sonoran desert) and it had Grand Canyon. Period.

 This was back in December 2004 when I landed there. I lived in Scottsdale for 10.5 months (till October 2005) and I’ve enjoyed every bit of it.

SFO

(Travelogue, August 2005)

San Francisco is in a league of its own. My friend lives in San Jose, so it was a good opportunity to catch up and tour the city. The drive from San Jose to Frisco took about an hour. On the way we stopped by my friend’s office and then left the car in the bart (bay area railway) station and took the bart to Frisco. It was love at first sight. Downtown is a delight. All the narrow, super curvy and winding roads, the beautiful landscape, the culture, the food and the people are just fabulous. Take a deep breath, enter the city and be conquered!

Mackinac Island

(Mackinaw city and island, travelogue, May 2007)

After debating for hours (since there were 10 of us for this), we finally decided Mackinac Island in Michigan to be the Memorial weekend getaway destination. The drive to Mackinaw City was great. You know how it is when a whole bunch of people get together, there’s bound to be a lot of fun and noise! We would have loved to stay in the island, but there are specific timings for the ferry that would take us there, so we didn’t want to risk reaching late and then not having a place to sleep. So we reached Mackinaw city quite late in the night (after a speeding ticket on the way!) and found our tiny cottages just by Lake Huron, with the view of the island and the Mackinac bridge. The bridge is a suspension type one, similar to the Golden Gate in San Francisco.  This bridge connects the lower and upper peninsulas (connects Mackinaw City to St Ignace). One side of the bridge is Lake Michigan, and the other side is Lake Huron.

The first day, we took the ferry and went to the island. There are no automobiles in the island. Only bicycles and horse carriages (horse taxis!).

The Smokies

(Vacation in the Smoky Moutains and Charlotte, April 2007)

The great smoky mountains, I finally went there last weekend! This was one of the places that was in my must-see list when I was in the US the last time, but somehow things didn’t work out and I didn’t get to go there. Being given another chance, I of course jumped at it. Another reason being, one of my close friends lives in Charlotte. So it was a good proposition to spend time with her and also see the Smokies with her (she being pretty much the authority on it since she’s gone there so many times owing to the proximity). I left it all to her to plan our trip.

     Landed in Charlotte on a bright, warm and sunny Thursday evening. Trust me , it was a sight for sore eyes to see so much greenery and pretty flowers in bloom all around. Charlotte’s a lovely place…winding roads, a small downtown, oops sorry uptown as they call it, not too many skyscrapers. It has the perfect blend of a city that’s in harmony with nature. Queen city is the right name! Being treated to good home food was one of the added pleasures of the trip.

The Big Apple

(NYC travelogue, March 2005)

People, seriously New York is THE place to be in…I totally love the place! I’m groping for words here, you cannot capture the city with just a few sentences! Now where do I start from? No, begin at the beginning does not work here! I don’t want to talk about the usual places here like the Statue of Liberty or Empire State Bldg or Times Square or Rockefeller Centre or Central Park or Wall Street or the WTC site or Macy’s (one of the largest stores in the world, and they have this pretty flower show inside that changes every season), the Brooklyn Bridge, you can see all this in any book/movie/pics. I’m not even going to explain how tall the buildings are, ‘coz well, they ARE skyscrapers which means they’re really really TALL and you all know it’s an overcrowded place and the buildings are spaced soooo close to each other. One thing I noticed, most of the apartment complexes there are sooo similar (I kept remembering the apartment in ‘Friends‘)

I felt like a villager coming from Scottsdale to the big bad city

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!

(Vacation in Las Vegas, February 2005)

Vegas Vegas Vegas…<sigh> <sigh>
This is easily the BEST trip I’ve had so far…what a place!! The energy, the glamour, the crowd(boys, believe me, you’d all go mad, the boys I went with sure did…hehe), the concept more than anything else…and the main thing, the MONEY…
It’s the ultimate city of entertainment and it defines the meaning of sin, aptly  called the Sin City it can totally pull you in its web and not let you go…There are just too many things to do here,  all between 6pm and 4am (you sleep and eat during other times!!)…you can gamble of course and there are so many choices there too(poker, blackjack, roulette, slot machines,craps etc), you can gamble in any of the tens and tens of casinos spread over the Strip (that’s a single lane of road that has all the casinos)… Most of the casinos double up as hotels and entertainment centres (as in where shows are held or they have these rides).
Most of the casinos are built on a theme

City of dreams

(New Year, Jan 2005 travelogue: Los Angeles)

I went to LA last weekend after 2-3 plans being cancelled…so when we finally left home, I was more relieved than excited!! Setting foot in California is so different from going anywhere else in the US (I suppose, ‘coz I haven’t been anywhere else ), more so if you are going there from Arizona!! You’re just sitting peacefully listening to music n the talk happening around you, suddenly you look out and SIT UP! The whole view’s changed and it’s sooo beautiful…

 

LA has everything, pleasant weather, beaches, mountains, snow and most importantly the extravaganza and flamboyance of being the capital of cinema…A walk down Sunset Boulevard is such an experience, seeing the Hollywood sign makes you feel, oh so this is it!…it’s about reliving what you like about what entertains almost the whole world week after week after week…

The Grand Canyon

(Here’s my next old travelogue. I’d been to the Grand Canyon in the last week of December 2004, Christmas to be precise, I’d arrived in the US first week of that month)

The Grand Canyon had me spell bound on Saturday, it was fantastic to see a creation that is beyond description…245 miles of naturally formed rocks of different hues and the Colorado river running in between…more like a gorge actually…

The first glimpse of it is the best, it cannot compare to how you feel later on…you just want to ask nature/god one question, HOW? I mean how? (Of course there is a proper geological process n all, but when you see it for the first time, you don’t think about scientific processes now, do you?)