Wah Guru Wah !!

Watched

Guru

last night with my MIL at the Sion CINEPLEX..

You cannot beat watching a great movie in a great theater with the right ambience..

Still cant get "tere bina beswaadi.." song out of my head..

don't want to!

ARR rocks !!!

This experience more than made up for not watching Hindi movies in the US with all the babysitting duties. Go watch this movie if you get a chance..Worth every penny!

India has come a long way.. the movie watching experience here is a lot better than watching it in an AMC !!

You order tickets online and a delivery boy gets the tickets to your house !!!
You order snacks and coffee online and it gets delivered to your seat in the intermission !!
The theaters are absolutely clean and the sound quality is near perfect!
and the audience is well behaved !!

Hats off to Mumbai Cinema !!

Of Jasmine flowers and Mike shoes

San Francisco

Hong Kong

Bangkok

Mumbai

Goa

Ahmedabad

Chennai

Thiruchy

etc.

etc.

Baby doing her business after a 15 hour flight in Hongkong amidst a beautiful backdrop!!


Fill up the blanks to be done by : Daddy Narayanan

Jr. enjoying Jasmine flowers..


Daddy's new Mike sandals. Purchased from a street corner vendor who probably sells more shoes and sandals than all the shoe stores in Santa Clara put together !! Price : 5$ !! Keebok, Adibas were available as well !!

Currently enjoying the land of Jasmine flowers and Mike Shoes..

Will catch up soon..

In other news, Jr. who has never killed an insect in her entire life (thanks to me teaching her that killing innocent spiders or ladybugs is wrong), came to me today and said
"that mosquito came to bite me again. I swished one guy away and I killed the other guy so he wont bite me again!". Two proverbs need a rewrite..

Hell hath no fury than a girl bitten!
Once bitten, twice:you die !

A ____ is worth a 1,xx,xxx,xxx _______

A picture is worth ~ 1000 words
A video is worth ~ 400 pictures (my typical 30 second clip that is!)

As a tribute to the lazy, I have compiled a video of the recent trip..

Warning : This Video must be worth approximately 75,000 words !

Things seen in video that were left out in photoblogs..

There is a store in downtown Solvang called Del Sol. All products in the store are made with a special compound that changes color under sunlight.. T-shirt logos, bangles, hairclips, caps, you name it !!

There is a wonderful Chocolate factory that sells home made ice cream .. must have when you go to Solvang!

The road to happiness (aka Route 1) with screaming kids + ARR hits + Ocean wind noise.. only the video captures it best..

We really enjoyed this trip. Hope you enjoy the video..

Better, hope you actually get to experience this someday!

The original posts can be found here:

Intro to trip
Sisters at play
Coastal highway
Solvang downtown
Lake Cachuma
The Santa Ynez (Saint Agnes) Mission
Morro Bay
Limekiln State Park

In other news, the Digital Rebel XTi has been VETO'ed !! Apparently, this video is so good!! inspite of being shot with the S30.. so it is "Dream on, camera boy!!" for Daddy Narayanan..

LimeKiln State Park..

And now for the grand finale on the Route 1, Solvang series photo blogs..

Limekiln State park !!

We decided to go back on Route 1 (after stopping at several vista points along 101 and tossing and turning -- either go home before 6:00 to feed the kids or wing it and go back on Route 1 and catch some sites)

Finally route 1 it was.. the men pretty much voted for this. Balaji had already scoped out Limekiln, as a sure bet!

So, off we went without realizing that to get to the 100 foot falls, we had to cross the creek at four points, two of those without any sort of bridge.. just cross the rocks..


Needless to say, my shoes were wet after doing multiple trips across every crossing to ferrry the kids back and forth !


But it was all worth it..


There was this rock at the edge of the creek and baby wanted a break.. so I put her on the rock and stepped back to take a picture. I was reprimanded for the act (but it was deja vu for me...I had put Jr. on top of a wooden post at 8000 feet in Rainbow point, Bryce canyon two years ago). Luckily baby did not misbehave and was absorbed on some insect she found on the rock.

One "baby on the rocks" coming right up..


Finally, a picture of sunset on the way back ..


Being a metallurgist, I was disappointed that we never made it to the kilns, but that can always be done another day, when the kids can cross the creek on their own..

Here is a video of Dora the Explorer's at Limekiln state park..

I am working on a large video of the entire trip. Will post it later.

Morro Bay

Just before you reach Pismo Beach, you cross Morro bay. What appears to be a quiet little fishing town.

There is a huge rock that stands out, called the Morro Rock. There is an esturary and the calm sea water that stands between the sand bars and the highway are a treat to watch..


Here is the Morro rock from the viewpoint..


The smokestacks added another dimension to the backdrop..


There was also this weird looking plant on this corner house facing the bay which was worth capturing..


There is an anchor on display at the bay which weighs a few thousand tonnes. It was a gift to the city of Morro Bay.


We were there Christmas morning, so the town was pretty much shut down. We still managed to have fun with the kids. Stopped by a few vista points further down as well.

Another day, another time, we will visit Morro Bay and make a longer stay.

ps. This was part of a series of photoblogs on our Christmas long weekend trip to Solvang and other sites on Route 1 in California.