We decided to go to India on a last minute decision. We covered a lot of ground in 11 days. Also it has been some time since we went to India and jet lag hit us hard. After 6 days we finally got over jet lag, thanks to Maha Shivrathri.
This weekend we decided to start hiking up hills again.. baby hikes.. 5 miles on Saturday and 8+ miles today..
Some pictures to commemorate our getting back to the usual. Our sincere thanks to the hiking group leader, who is becoming an expert at taking our bench photos.... At this point our "bench photo" collection from local parks has crossed a 100..
The weather was amazing this weekend and that also helped!
we also saw some deer, coyote, turkeys and jack rabbits ..not everything made it to the photos..
There are a lot more benches in bay area trails that we are yet to visit..
Wife is already getting tired of this tradition!
The india trip was interesting. Hopefully I get to blog a small piece of it everyday and will be done before Christmas!
After a hectic all day tour of Rio which ended in Sugarloaf, we were all tired. After our Europe trip in 2018 when the kids made a new rule that there will be a "rest day" within the trip if we walk more than 6 miles a day for a few days in a row, San had put in a rest day.. Hell, she put in two rest days before we flew out as that was what was available ticket wise..
So we ended up spending Christmas eve and Christmas day in Rio before flying out on 26th morning.
We were told that the city shuts down by 1PM and most places close. We didn't care. Our plan was to go see two more sunsets from the two other popular places in Rio.. the first one was the Arpoador rock, the second one was the Copacabana beach and area.
San had made friends with a lady who worked for the city of Rio on our flight into Brazil from Argentina and she had suggested spending time at a local mall.. eat at a famous Vegan place called Teva..
So we woke up late, took a cab to Teva (we had made reservations) and sat down pretty much as soon as they opened. I ate the pita bread with some side but the family ordered a lot of items and seem to finish everything with relish.. I am allergic to Jackfruit, so had to skip a lot of stuff, but San and the kids said it was mouth watering.
After the lunch, we went to the mall and walked around for a good 2 hours. The stuff there was at least 50% to 100% more expensive than similar stuff in US malls. We also got the location of the mall wrong at first and ended up being dropped somewhere else.. so we walked around the local tiled streets before finally making to the actual mall location. After enough window shopping and having some ice cream there, we wanted to walk to the carnival area near the lagoon.
We never found the right spot and tickets were all sold out anyways. So we decided to just walk along the water front and took an Uber and came back to the Arpoador area. Got a nice vantage point on the rock to watch the sunset and headed back to the Airbnb.
We did get great pictures that evening..
There was a photo by Jr. of the little one taking a photo of me taking a photo of San.. that photo I cannot find..
Here are video clips of our chilling in Rio..
the entire area was cordoned off by cops to local traffic for some reason..
had used this picture as the Happy New Year card for 2024..
It was time to make some pizza and thachchi mummum.. The kids made it after getting all the ingredients from the local supermarket which was still open! We also got stuff to cook for the next day..
Christmas was a laid back day.. we lazed around in the morning and did laundry! Then in the afternoon we decided to visit the Copacabana beach. We were clearly over dressed for this beach as the videos will show. The rain clouds rolled in and there was no way to see the sun set, but we got beautiful family pictures.. and startred walking from there all the way to Ipanema area. It was a long walk and the rains hit before we could walk back. We got cursed by the kids for not taking an uber. We were flying back the next day and wet clothes on the night before was going to be tricky.
Rio is full of tall trees with wide leaves on all the local streets.. Chennai (Madras used to be like this when I was a kid.. not anymore) .. these streets brought back a lot of great memories..
we saw another painted step as we were going from Copacabana to Ipanema.. we stopped by a pastry store to get some stuff to eat as well..
This was my last shot as it started raining all of a sudden..
To date I have not washed and wrung clothes the way I did that evening. They were almost dry by morning and I ironed the collars and waistbands of what was not dry and got them to dry as well.. one of Daddy Narayanan's proudest moments! "There, see... all dry!!" and all I got in return was some eye rolling from the women.
We got to see the Redeemer one last time on our drive to the airport (you really cannot miss this guy from anywhere in Rio!) and took off.. We got to see a beautiful Panama city skyline and had a 3 hour stop over before heading back home.
Jet lag for a +5 hour time difference was interesting to deal with. We have. never been to a place 5 hours ahead till now. It wore off in two days though. The fact that we went on a break before the rest of the folks went on break was a blessing.
On a whole we enjoyed the trip to Argentina and Brazil.. We definitely all agreed that Argentina was more welcoming than Brazil but we did have fun in both places.
Have managed to finally finish blogging about a Christmas trip in early March! That brings me to the next trip..
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!
The previous post in this series on our travel in Buenos Aires is here..
For some reason, I decided to use iPhone photos for the most part, that too without any processing and my FIL promptly told me that my photos are usually a visual treat and my standards are going down.
Given few people still read this blog, decided to use nicely cropped, edited photos for this post. It is still mostly iPhone photos. Hope it gets the bar back up again..even if slightly..
After the cemetery visit, we drove to La Boca, which is not an upscale neighborhood but is one of the oldest places in Buenos Aires that was populated, mainly by waves of immigrants. There is an old world charm in this place that is very unique! Parts of it, the walls, the doors and windows reminded me of walking around old neighborhoods in Mylapore. In fact one of the steets brougt back memories of TSV Kovil street. My brain does a number on me when in new places and connects random things. So walked around in a daze absorbing the sights, sounds and smells.
one of my favorite shots on this trip!
Caminito was interesting.. with the center piece being an ice cream shop. There was a long line so we skipped the ice cream. We were also on the clock for the private tour.
this photo courtesy of our tour guide who was trying to direct folks to be out of the shot.. he did a great job!
Then we moved on to San Telmo area and the market. The entire place was full of antique shops. Old books, LP's, cameras that went extinct, Simpson's bobble head dolls, crazy stuff that used to be in the last bottom row in Navarathri golus when I was a small boy.. it was amazing!
we went into a lane that had these umbrellas.. it had more of a French vibe to it than the Spanish vibe we expected.. the place started getting crowded, given there were offices there.. we managed to take a few photos
Once the crowd saw what I was doing with the next shot, everyone was trying to copy it.. was telling the family that I take it as a compliment and am not the least bit offended.
After the family decided to eat some empanadas at one of San Telmo's hottest places, we made a move to see the Obelisk and what is dubbed the Times Square of Buenos Aires.
There was no parking, so our guide stopped the car on the road side and said "10 minutes is all I can wait if you want to run across and take pictures".. and we did manage to do that and get back, jump in the car and go back to our hotel area.
this whole obelisk thing was weird. It was in the middle of the busiest part of the city and the barricades and barriers around it made it less appealing. There were too many walking signals around and the pedestrian and car traffic was a disaster waiting to happen. Also there is no way to get a decent shot of us and the Obelisk given the short distance in front of it. The locals seemed to be very happy with the monument.. we were all wondering how it fit with the rest of the area.. it stuck out like a sore obelisk!
the kids never share their pics with me.. and I am definitely not allowed in their social media circle.. but I do have these type of memories.. watching them grow into confident young women!
we stopped at a few more places to take photos of monuments (our time was up and I made a request.. so it was nice of our guide to do this!)
we even stopped by the area where all the big hotels are.. the lobby decorations in Buenos Aires are interesting..
We thanked our guide who was a really nice person and ate leftovers from what we had packed for lunch at the hotel. Had to finish the food anyways as we were to check out. We had two hours to spend before our ride to the airport. San and the little one stayed in the hotel restaurant after checking out. Jr. and myself decided to go back to the waterfront to get a taste of the famous Luciano's ice cream. It was a 40 minute walk one way but we made it, had ice cream and got back in time to catch our ride to the airport... only after coming back to the US did we realize that this ice cream is from California but has become very popular in Buenos Aires!!
the dulce de leche here is apparently a hit.. so we had to get a taste of it. It was yummmmmmmmmyyy!
we walked past the boats (which were museums .. didn't realize it the previous evening!)
We made it in time for our flight.. but it was late. So we ended up in the crowded airport for an extra two painful hours before finally boarding for Porto Iguazu..
A video for the last part of the city tour. We covered a lot of places in 4 and a half hours!
Would definitely recommend this private guided tour of Buenos Aires through Viator. Our guide was Martin and he was a really sincere guide! Not sure if you can ask for him through Viator tours. . .
We said bye to Buenos Aires as there was not going to be any more walking around the city.. we had no idea..
The whole trip was all about Iguazu falls. Have way too many photos and videos to process from the next day of the trip. The next post on this series will have to wait..
On our second day in Santorini, we had booked an all day tour of the island. If you have only one day in Santorini, just do this tour. Apparently this is not news. There are cruise ships that dock in Santorini. The tourists get off the ship and go straight to this bus tour.. almost a 1000+ people. Puts a huge surge in the population at breakfast time as some of them try to grab food before getting on the bus.. (same thing happens when you get dropped off!).
So to beat that, we went for an early breakfast and waited for the bus to pick us up. They were on time and off we went. Viator really rocked this tour! Recommend you book this well in advance like we(San) did! She got 110/100 for booking this!!
My own Blue Angels.. they all looked so pretty and happy that I was glad to be at their bidding for anything they asked for..
We started with a ride along the rim to see the caldera to the ancient city of Akrotiri.
This is one of my best clicks of San on this entire trip.. so including it in the blog as it will get printed as part of the blog book.
There were two options given the time we stopped there:
a. walk half a mile to the red sand beach and walk back (part of the path to the beach had caved in and was dangerous)
b. walk right out of the bus stop and see the excacation site of what was probably Atlantis before the volcano covered it.
We decided to go to the beach with half the group. The other half of the bus went to the site. There is also a nice cafeteria outside the site and good restrooms.
It was already hot and bright. So me and Jr. bought blue sunglasses to match everything else..
we learned that all buildings had to be blue and white in Santorini or they are fined!
Spent 15 minutes in the beach which was really nice.
I went from "not getting the memo" to the Bluest guy from head to toe over the two days!
this is the caved in section of the walk.. you have to cross this to go to the beach. if you are not able bodied, don't risk it and block the rest of the folks trying to make it into the beach below and back!
Even the locals were proud of my blue at this point!
A pretty girl I saw on the beach..
Then we walked back. We still had 30 minutes. So I decided to make a run for it and also see the excavation site while the rest of them walked back.
The run wearing wet Bata chappals paid off. Rushed to get tickets and walked through the entire site while clicking pictures of the boards and the site and made it back to the bus with 1 minute to spare. The rest of the folks were giving me the look, but once I explained that I saw both.. they were impressed!
The excavation site deserves a post in itself, but given that my blog backlog is growing.. have added a slide show of this massive complex. This is mind blowing. 2 storied buildings which date back 8000 years ago. Someone is doing something wrong in our history books.
Look at the pictures and you will start wondering why our timelines are messed up!
A video clip of this segment of the trip..
After this we were off to our next stop.. this was a 10 hour thing which ended up being much longer including the pickup and drop off. .
As the day went by it just got better and better..
Sunday, March 10, 2024 at 7:45PM ;)
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