Our Passion -- Travelling!
The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
Its real luck when two people have a common interest of travelling like we do. Travelling is our common passion and something we really enjoy. The joy comes not just from the sight seeing, but it starts from the moment we begin our planning. Well we cant say that its easy to agree on planning when two people are as different as we are.....No sir, No way! But its all the little differences of opinions that makes the planning so much enjoyable. By the time we do concur and get the trip planned we are already in our vacation spirits. Its a blessing in disguise that we have families ( you know-- his side & her side) who also love to travel, so you can say that its in our genes! So its not a big surprise that our darling Michelle is already showing signs of a born traveller.
We read somewhere :
In America there are two classes of travel - first class, and with children.
Boy! he must have been some very bad planner or a person who did not enjoy kids. Most people may disagree with us on this but travelling with kids is not the problem. The problem is not planning your trip to accommodate the kids. Honestly we have travelled more with Michelle than without her.....maybe because we had her so early in our marriage. What we have learned is kids do make good travellers when we plan accordingly. More of this in our parenting page...but the simple trick is to plan activities with ample time overlaps so that you dont miss out on activities and also take lots of patience (in a bottle, jar or bag!) when travelling with the little ones.Our travels can be summed up simply as:
"Like all great travellers, we have seen more than we remember, and remember more than we have seen."
The space here is sort of a journal for Michelle to read when she grows up ans starts reading......we want to show her what she saw and experienced through descriptions, photos and interesting anecdotes!
So, lets begin the journey....Bon Voyage!
California Visit -- March 08
One of our totally impromptu trips......but a totally memorable and successful one too!. It started with spring break in the horizon and two unused tickets on South west which forced us to take a vacation. California or rather the Pacific Coast Highway was top on the list since the time we had seen some pictures of the PCH on a AAA book. We finally decided to (after a lot of different permutations and combinations.....not to mention disagreements!) to fly into San Diego and drive to LA and then take the drive along the PCH and route 1 and drive to San Francisco with lots of stops on the way.
Its kind of hard to write about a trip after a while, but our itinerary for the trip went like this:
Day 1& 2: San Diego
We still remember how different San Diego was compared to Austin. We had never seen so many "senior citizens" at an airport at the same time. The welcoming palm trees outside the airport made you feel so relaxed. It may be stretch but it kind of reminded us a little bit of Kerala! After picking up our rental car (which was a Prius...how environment conscious we are!) we officially began our vacation.
Our first stop was the world famous San Diego zoo; it was Michelle's first visit to a zoo and was so worth it! Since the zoo closes around 5 pm one needs to reach well in advance to see the zoo....it’s a maze rather and a very large one at that. We started with the flamingo trail and then continued all the way till the Panda forest and completed the visit with the Polar bear home. It was wonderful to watch Michelle's expressions as she saw all the animals’ even though for her all the species were either a "doggie" or a "birdie". The zoo lives up to its reputation and is a must see if you are in the San Diego area. Since we were already there, we took a very long walk across the beautifully designed Balboa park.
From there we moved to the to the old town part of the city, it is a Mecca for food lovers who swear by authentic Mexican food. We had a late lunch at the Casa Rosa, you need to try their strawberry and chocolate tortillas. It a treat! In the evening we took a drive through the Gaslamp quarter and moved on to the seaport village. Now that’s a beautiful place, next to the sea designed beautifully with unique shops and eateries. We finished our first day of the trip with a delicious authentic Greek meal. It was a good start!
Day 2 started a little early with a drive to the Spanish Harbor, we had watched the sunset there last evening and just wanted to see the sunrise! It was an awesome scene…worth a watch! Then we were on our way to the Cabrillo National Monument, from where you get to see the San Diego coast. A nice breakfast and coffee later we were on our way to Long beach, where we were hoping to see the Grey whale on our whale watching expedition.