I'm back

Just a quick post to say I'm back, if you haven't read it on The Wagon. We reached on Sunday, and I started work on Tuesday. Mehul has some serious Jet-lag. He woke up at 2:30AM on Monday night and 3:15 last night. He is having a bit of trouble adjusting to the school as well. They started transitioning him to the next class today. I hope he adjusts well as he always has a bit of trouble in the beginning.

Here are a few of my favorite shots of London.

Big Ben/London Eye

London Eye at night

St. James Park

Ah, the fun has ended

I was on vacation for the last week. Went to Niagara Falls and New York City with mummy papa. The whole trip was so much fun, but it was lightning fast, specially in NY City. We had a flat tire 30 minutes away from our hotel while arriving that threatened to spoil the vacation, but we hadn't planned on driving in the city anyway. We took the local train couple of blocks from the hotel while the car was at the dealership. All in all, it was a fun, memorable trip. (Luray pics are from August. I just hadn't posted them yet. I also have tons of DC pics to edit. Statue of Liberty island pics are missing from here too.)

Now back to reality tomorrow. A new set of enhancements begins tomorrow so I assume I'll be very busy for the next couple of weeks, but I enjoyed the break so can't complain.

I've added the pictures in my Flickr album. Click on the pictures to see the entire albums.


Niagara Falls Album

NY City Album

Luray Caverns Album

In other news, I picked up my Angel of Love today! Last time I made any significant progress was in May. I have no idea what I did the entire summer!!

Part 2 (contd..)

Sunday July 1st, 2007 - Canada Day

We slept in this morning as we were still tired from the previous day. Had a late brunch and decided to go to Niagara Falls to watch the fireworks at night. We wanted to go to the CN tower as well so thought we'd do that first and then go to Niagara at night. Plan sounded good at that time not realizing that EVERYONE will be going to see fireworks at Niagara that night. It was Canada Day, afterall. Gawd, the traffic! A 1.5 hour drive took 3 hours. Anyhow, the CN tower looked good :) Visibility was excellent that day.


Taken by Sony DSC P73


Taken by Canon Rebel XT


Taken by Canon Rebel XT

I found it very disheartening that there was a Starbucks but not a Tim Horton's at the CN Tower. That just isn't right ;) Anyhow, we had tea and snacks there and hung around for more time than we should have. We had used our 'Express passes' to get past the crowd downstairs, and were confident we'd be using those. Not so! The passes are only for the first floor. Here, we had to stand in the queue for 1 hour. Crap. Anyhow, more pictures -





We went down to the Glass Floor while Arjun was holding our place in the queue. I JUMPED on the GLASS FLOOR at the height of 1,122 ft. Eeeekkk! Girish didn't even walk on it. Just put his foot there to take a picture. Mehul and I were all over it. LOL!


Technically, that isn't my foot but that's a better picture with someone else's foot. The floor is made of 2.5 inch thick glass. No way it would break :0

Anyhow, more pictures were taken from the Sky Pod, which is at the height of 1,465 ft. I'm sure they're mixed up with the photos above. By the time we came downstairs and met Uncle and Massi, it was 6:30.

Karan had gone to work in the morning and was back home by this time. He had called and upon learning we were still in Toronto, he wanted to go along with us to Niagara as well. We went back home to pick him up and Mehul stayed home with Uncle and Massi. No way it was appropriate to take him with us now, since it was so late. So we went and sat in traffic for hours. Watched the fireworks from the car. I think we finally reached around 11PM. Had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe at Niagara. We have been to the one in a mall at Boston but Karan and Arjun were there for the first time. They LOVED it. Wish Mehul was there with us. We have one in Tyson's mall here in VA that we'll be taking him to very soon. Girish's birthday is coming :)

I hadn't charged my camera battery the previous night. Crap. I was not letting anyone review the images on the viewfinder. We got out of the restaurant at 12 and checked out the area around. We FINALLY went to see the Falls at 2 AM. The lights were OFF. Damn. I didn't take a single picture of the falls that night. Too depressing LOL! Surely we'll be coming back next day in daylight and staying till night.

We went to the Casino after leaving Arjun at the Arcade. He's underage to go to the Casino. I lost money at the slot machines. Girish and Karan made double at some table. It was a lot of fun. When we went back to the arcade, Arjun had won so many tickets. I think he had something like 1,200 tickets collected. He got some cars for Mehul from the loot.
We reached home at 4:30 AM. Mehul was sleeping in Massi's bedroom with them. He'd pushed uncle to the side of the bed. LOL!

Monday July 2nd

Woke up late as usual. Mehul was already up and playing with Uncle. He slept well the previous night and asked for me one time only after he woke up. That makes me feel good. Both that he asked for me and that he was distracted soon after. Hehe After shower we (Karan, Arjun and me) dressed him as a punk. Complete with the gel in his hair. Alas, the hair was too wet for it to hold up. Look for yourself -


The clothes are 3T hence they're oversized and long. Adds to the punk look we were going for. The waist was altered to fit him.

Ok. The first picture I have of the Falls was taken at 6:30PM. I have no idea we were that late.

American Falls view from Canada

Canadian Falls (also known as Horseshoe Falls)

I love this closeup of Horseshoe Falls

.

Girish and Mehul

And finally, one more time because it's so cool.

Falls at night

I love this picture. I took it by setting the camera on a surface. Hand holding the camera was making the night pictures blurry. I took a ton of bad shots before I realized exactly what was going on. And I realized the same thing had happened in the Aquarium at Zoo. I love that there isn't any noise in this photo. That can happen in long exposure situation.

Tuesday we just took it easy and didn't do anything. Just rested, roamed around the local area and had chinese food for dinner. Back home on Wednesday.

Trip to Canada, June 2007. Part 1.

I've put off writing about this trip for almost a week. Let's see if I can still remember the details. My memory isn't good with these. I tend to jumble events up so it's good to write it down when it's still fresh.

Friday evening - June 29th, 2007.

We went and got the rental car. Having sold our Honda Civic 2 weeks prior and not wanting to take the gas-guzzler MDX for such a long trip, we had decided to get a rental. We got the Volvo sedan. It was nice, easy to drive. I was supposed to drive when DH got tired, however, I only drove the Volvo for twenty minutes from the rental place to home on Friday. Girish drove it to and from Canada. Yes he did! He said he wasn't tired but I know he was.

We were supposed to get to bed early and start the morning early, while Mehul was still sleeping so we could cover some distance in peace. I was afraid of him throwing tantrums every 2 hours. But we didn't go to bed until 12 that night. Mehul was showered, dressed for the next day (Yes, that was the plan), and in bed at his usual time. We kept the suitcases in the car at night. Snacks were to be packed in the morning.

Saturday - June 30th 2:00 AM.

Mehul started stirring in his bed. We have been transitioning him to a separate bed in our bedroom. We have kept it in the adjoining sitting room so it is easy to get to him as needed. Eventually, he'll be transitioned to his own room. So he started to wake up. Girish and I woke up. Girish went and calmed him down. Repeat at 2:30. And then at 3:00. I got up and said I'm wide awake. Can't go back to sleep. What's the point anyway? Plan was to start at 4AM (though we were sure that was just on the books; never to be actually carried out). Let's just get ready and go. He concurred and goes off to get ready. By 4AM we WERE on the road! What an achievement LOL! Mehul was sound asleep for the next 3 hours until his usual waking up time. We covered a little less than half of the distance by 8:15AM. We wanted to stop for some breakfast at 8:00. Made a mistake at the PA turnpike. We were on the toll road, Girish tried to take an exit but it had a toll plaza (and the toll was steep) so we turned around from the plaza and accidentally took the road back, which made us go back 13 miles before an exit was visible :\ So we took the exit and came right back. Anyhow, we had breakfast after crossing the PA Turnpike. Funny, we had made the same mistake on our trip 5 YEARS BACK. Think we'd learn?

I had taken 'Private Practices' by Stephen White along for the trip and managed to read about 200 pages the entire trip. Reading in car makes me sleepy so I tried to do very little of it. Mehul kept himself entertained with the 'Cars' DVD though I had packed some puzzles, writing pad with eraser thingy, books, crayons for him. Never touched any of those. Next time, I'm just packing the DVDs. The next time would be very soon. I love Niagara Falls.

Incidentally, no pictures were taken on the way (or back) which is unusual for me. I usually keep the camera out but didn't for this trip. Anyhow, the rest of the trip was pretty much uneventful. Mehul nodded off at some point and woke up when we stopped by the duty free shop at the border to get some liquor (For uncle. Girish doesn't do hard liquor). I think we reached their place around 2:30 and were hungry as anything. Massi (his aunt) had prepared lunch and they were waiting for us. After lunch they shoo'd us to our room and kept Mehul to themselves. He wasn't sleepy but we were! Had a good nap and went to Downtown Toronto at night.

And it was COLD on June 30th in Toronto! I was thinking will I ever experience any hot weather in Canada? Do they have such a thing? Last time I was there, it was -22C and this time it was about 15C. Not that cold but still! DH's cousin said it only got cold this week, last week was perfectly warm. Ofcourse it was :( I had to borrow Massi's jacket and Girish borrowed Karan's. Thank goodness I had packed Mehul's sweater and jacket. On the trip 5 summers ago, I had to buy a jacket at Niagara gift shop. Never trusting Canada's weather again.

L-R: Arjun, Massi, Karan, Me, Girish, and Mehul

A Red and White CN Tower for Canada Day!

I had taken the Canon Rebel DSLR for this trip and discovered 2 things why it's not a good idea to just take that one.

1. I didn't know how to take good night shots with it. There is a night shot auto setting but without critical knowledge of light conditions and exposure, it was useless. I took some really crappy pictures (as seen above). Eventually, I realized what was happening and was able to take exactly ONE good photo (the one shown here in an earlier post of Niagara Falls at night). But that was towards the end of site-seeing. Boohoo.

2. One day the battery wasn't charged. It takes proprietary batteries so there was no recourse. I just took very few pictures that day.

Man, this post is getting long. I'll have to break here and recap the rest tomorrow. Hope you'll be back to read the rest of it :)

Back from Toronto

We reached home around 6:30 last night. Had a great time. Took lots of pictures. I'll be writing a detailed post with pictures soon. For now, one of my favorite shots of the Niagara Falls at night.

Pictures!

We came back last night and had the BEST time despite the 2 hours of Thunderstorm that snuck upon us Saturday afternoon. The pictures tell the whole story ;)

5/26/2007

Took a rest stop on our way to Ocean City. They had this cute little play area next to the Dunkin Donuts. Mehul just wanted to stay here and actually cried when we had to leave. He had enough of the car ride already! We stopped here again on our way back.




Mehul was seeing the ocean for the first time ever. We hadn't taken him to the beach yet. He loved it.


Another family had gone with us. Their son, R, is 3.5 years old. They became best buddies.



We had fun as well :)


Can you believe there was a huge thunderstorm around 2 hours after this was taken? They emptied the beach, we walked around the boardwalk a little and entered a restaurant for an early dinner when it started to rain. And stayed there for about 2 hours. The rain stopped but it was too cold to go back on the beach so we explored the area a bit and then went back to where our friends were staying and chatted until midnight.

Looking at cars outside the window at night..


5/27/2007

The cottage we stayed at had a huge backyard with trees and flower & vegetable patches. Mehul loved the swings.


We went to Rahoboth Beach today. It falls in Delaware (which is a state without tax, btw, so I thought it made perfect sense to do some shopping. Didn't get time for that though). This beach is less commercialized than Ocean City and I definitely recommend going here.

More playing at the beach


And a lot of cheese puffs


The water was COLD!


We decided to look for food after this and kept the camera and all the stuff in the car. 10 minutes later I was wishing I had it with me as we found FunLand on the boardwalk. We bought $6 worth of tickets (20). Mehul took most of the kiddie rides twice and we still had tickets left over. So I went on a ride and finished them off. Gosh, they were really very cheap. Boardwalk fries were more expensive than ALL the rides we took. LOL!

While returning back, another thunderstorm caught us (don't know if it was the same one. Couldn't be) at the worst possible place. Over the Bay Bridge. That was really scary. I don't wanna think about it now that I've seen this picture.

Picture from roadstothefuture.com

I'm sad that I'm not on the beach as I write this, and already planning our next trip . Next time though, we'll just drive early morning and come back same day. It's only 3 hours away.

Ocean City!

We're going to Ocean City for the weekend. I just reserved a B&B - The Garden Cottage. It's a charming little private cottage, 12 miles from the boardwalk, but it's PERFECT. I just needed something different from a regular hotel and this looks great. I am so excited! Both of us have been quite burned out by work recently and this is just the right time for it. We're about 4 hours away but we've never been to Ocean City. I will be sure to take a lot of pictures, ofcourse.

I got new sun glasses, sandals, 2 sun dresses and a small handbag for me. Mehul got flip flops (see below), couple of swim shirts, swim shorts, and a new cap from Old Navy. DH even got some things.
Mehul hates wearing the flip flops because he's not used to them, but I think they'll be useful on the beach, specially when the shoes get wet. He does NOT walk bare foot. At all. He hates it. We're taking them.


We had planned on watching Shrek 3 on Friday night, but I still have to do packing. Even if we'll be away just one night, there's a lot to pack with a toddler. I wish he was completely potty trained by now but he's not. I'm tempted to take work from home day tomorrow so I can straighten up the house a bit and pack. I'll see after the daily 9AM meeting (which I plan on doing from home, it's just a conference call).