Sunday, December 07, 2008

Vacation Miscellany

At San Fran BayWe had about fours hours to kill at the Grand Maratha. The girl discovered all the complimentary chocolates, cumin sticks, and fruits in the room and declared this was a great hotel! We had dinner at the Dum Pukht. The Kakori Kababs were as good as ever; I also tried their Chandni Murgh Tikka for the first time. The Sheermal, Taftan, and Dumpukht Biryani were all excellent as usual.

Chandni Kababs at the Dum PukhtThe check-in at Mumbai airport was quick but the wait at the lounge seemed very long, especially since this is (right now) the world's worst airport lounge. I think the common seating areas outside are more pleasant than the crowded, unclean Business Class lounge.

In one of the magazines on-board, I read about users complaining about Cathay's new business class. The new configurations provide excellent privacy between seats which is good when you are alone, but if you have a companion (or more importantly, a child), you may not like the way these cabins are designed. Thankfully, we didn't have too much trouble in the new business cabins of Singapore Airlines. The girl loved all the attention (and toys) she got from the friendly cabin crew.

A building in downtown San FranciscoWe arrived in San Francisco an hour early and the hotel got us a room immediately even though we got in very early. There were school-children marching past and a band playing right in front of the hotel; I have noticed many such festive weekends here during past trips too. The procession on this day consisted of some Philipino war veterans, bike riders, and even some Chinese Falun Gong groups.

Old Cars in procession at SFO
Falun Gong procession in SFO
Chinese procession in SFOWe dropped into Chevy's for a quick lunch but I was disappointed when they served us Fajitas that lacked the sizzle and had gone a little cold. The rest of our day was spent at the Westfield Mall - with the girls accompanying me this time, I guess this was inevitable. :)

We woke up at 3:30am. The little one happily got engrossed with Disney channel on TV which was good since it gave us time to relax, sip on hot chocolate and wait for the sun to rise as we planned for the day. Dinner at Osha's was good as always. This time, the wife decided to go down memory lane by eating at Denny's, Taco Bell, and the many fast-food places we frequented when we first came to the US - we couldn't afford fancy restaurants then.

Dining at Osha in Downtown SFOOn another day we took a cab to the Ferry Building and bought tickets for the ferry to Sausalito bay. The girl happily chased pigeons and seagulls while we waited. We strolled around, shopped for some local art and hungrily finished a large dish of Icelandic cod - fish and chips tastes particularly good when the it's cold and you are ravenous! I entered a Taco Bell after ages; a long time ago, this used to be the only option for my vegetarian friends from India.

Sea Gull
The Ferry to Sausalito
At Sausalito
The girl in SausalitoAfter three days of lazing around in this beautiful city, we took a midnight flight to Miami and caught our connection to the Bahamas. During the flight I realized that American Airlines has better legroom than Singapore Airlines does in their coach class cabins. The small aircraft flew low over the blue-green waters as the sun shone brightly, giving us an early teaser of Paradise!

8 comments:

priyadarshan said...

Enjoyed the post as always

priyadarshan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lakshmi said...

its indeed a miscellany..you seemed to have had a blast..:)

Anonymous said...

@priyadarshan, Lakshmi: Thank you for visiting! I have been rather busy and need to catch up on my (blog) reading this week.

Unknown said...

HR......

Wow..what a nice post.thank you so much for posting.I really like all photo that you post.I know all people will liker it too.




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Anonymous said...

Not only you, your daughter seems to enjoy it equally if not more !

Need I say we too enjoyed it ?

Anonymous said...

@cuckoo: Oh yes! She loves travelling too.

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