Day 3:

Day 3 started as a lazy day, we got up late and by the time we got ready it was almost lunch time. Our desi taste buds had started craving for Indian food, after 2 days of deprivation. Plan was to cover Empire State building and Time square etc, so we searched an Indian restaurant near Empire state building and headed there. It was a bit difficult to find, we found it just when we were about to give up looking for it. The food was okay, but I got to eat pani-puri, that I was carving for it for don't know how many days. So I was happy with the food.

Empire State building was couple of blocks away, and when we reached there the crowd was as expected on a weekend. I really could not imagine, so many people would come to get to top of that building to have a view of NY city. And I would not think a lot of New Yorkers would come here on a normal weekend, to spend 20 bucks and wait 2 hours to see the very city they have been living for ever. So, that meant they were all them tourists(!). On any normal weekend, day time! I would guess the city looks much lovlier on the night and crowd would be much more during that time. Well we had to wait in the unending queues for the ticket, then for the lift and then to get to the balcony of 87nd floor. It was a long and tiring 2 hours wait before we could get to the top; actually the top floor is 102nd floor, with probably another long queue and another 15 bucks to dispense. But we were not quite in a mood for that. All this waiting and the crowd at the 87 th floor made us loose our interest in viewing the lovely city. The skyline, high rise buildings and the water bodies were adorable from the top though. But the central park was not as green as I thought it to be; it was silly of me to expect a green park at end of winter . We stayed up there for about 15-20 minutes and came down, luckily that was quite fast.

We saw a Macy's store when we were about take the subway, and that was the world's largest Macy's (found that out later taht evening) and some flower festival was going on there. Looking at the mannequins clad in gorgeous dresses made of flowers, enticed us to get in there and take a glimpse inside. It was worth the visit; the entire 3 storied shop was decorated with fresh flowers, it looked more like a florist's shop... a huge one.

Next on our list was the Time square; seemed half the city's people were there. Probably that was the normal weekend crowd in time square. Huge billboards, hoardings, neon lightings, and shop... shop... shops everywhere. Well I was really excited to be there, it was my kind of place. We roamed on the streets for a while, and then we went to Ripley's Believe it or not; the museum of the odd, the unusual and the unbelievable. We bought the ticket, got inside and browsed through all the weird stuff that was in there; shoes of the smallest and largest feet (on the world!), a head-less chicken that survived for several years, a two headed calf, a white giraffe, a happy man statue made up of shredded $500 bills and other stuff of that kind. The section that interested me the most was the one where the artifacts of treating prisoners in 17th-18th century was exibited. Another amazing (scary though) section was of the shrunken heads; which is specialty of the Jivaro clan and it probably had some religious significance. Once we were out of Ripley's, Madame Tussuad's was just next to it, but we had already visited the one in Las Vegas and not very much in a mood for another museum. I would recommend to visit this though, if you have not been to one already, and becasue the one here is one of the largest Madame Tussuad's in the world. We were tired already and planned to go back to hotel to take some rest before planning anything for that night.

After couple of hours of rest, we had the famous NY style pizza at a nearby pizzeria and headed for Rock feller center. It is the commercial and business center that was built during 1929's US stock market crash. Today it houses many top notch business centers; GE building, Radio City music hall, the fine art auction house Christie's just to name a few. Our main interest there, was the ice skating rink. We reached there very late (10 pm ish), but were really happy to ifnd out the last slot (10:30 pm - 12:00 am) for that night was still available. We rented the skates and got into the rink all enthusiastic and excited. Ah! did I mention it was first time for all of us. Boy! that was one tough job... slippery, hard, cold ice and you have to move on a pair of blades... huh! It took me about an hour to let go of the railing, I could not even remember how many times I fell (luckily not flat on my face even once). My friends were doing much better than me though, but then it really did not matter, neither were the tricks other amateur skaters were doing in the rink. But at end of the day (it was really end of the day.. 12:00 am in the morning), I was just happy that I could let go of the railings and was able to move over the ice. When we got back to the hotel, none of us knew how many muscles and limbs were sore and what would be the condition when we wake up next morning. But we all knew, it was hell lot of fun we had that night.

Day 4:

This was our last day at NY, and none of us were in a very good shape thanks to out previous night's adventure. We had to check out at 11 am from the hotel, so we packed our stuff and got ready. The plan was to visit Central park and the famous Metropolitan museum of art or the Met (I still could not figure out why they call it that though). It was a cloudy and lazy Sunday afternoon, and believe me, when we got into central park... with all the people jogging, or came with their pets for a walk and the kids with their parents or grand parents.. it really seemed like about 8 am in the morning. For the first time in NY I finally saw some trees (even though not green) and pools of water (lake... that's what they called it here), I could imagine how much the people of that busy city needed this park. Whoever planned to build that in heart of Manhattan, needs to be thanked for that.

We had started to get hungry when we reached the Met, and I had heard the canteen in there is quite good. So we got our entrance tickets, browsed the Egyptian section and headed for the cafeteria. Food was really good and price reasonable; we had a hearty meal with dessert (a yummy chocolate cup cake). The museum is really huge, I don't know how many days would it take someone to cover up all the exhibits. And we had just few hours before we had to catch the cab to get to the airport. So we checked out the map and decided to cover some of the art and photography sections. That took us good 2-3 hours and after that we had to get out of the museum. The modern art section was pretty interesting; we could not figure what most of the paintings were about and what message they intended to convey. But it was fun, going through all those paintings and trying to figure out what the purpose of that painting is. Also we troubled a friend asking him all these paintings and art pieces, who is little bit into art. So the Met was our last stoppage in NY city and it was time to go back home.

The trip was quite satisfying and we had tons of fun. And even though we went back with sore muscles and tired limbs, it was an experience that would be in our memories for a long long time. Well, anyone who is a planning a trip to NY for the first time, just a piece of advice, plan your trip before getting here; that would make the trip much more enjoyable.

New York : the city of lights, tall old buildings, bridges, subways, suits and dark glasses, and fashion on the streets. This never sleeping city also has narrow crowded roads, honking yellow taxi cabs, roadside vendors. After a continuous work week of about 45-50 days I really needed a break, planned for the NewYork trip. Though this could not the ideal vacation when you want get away from everyone and everything (probably I needed a vacation in a beach)...but it worked out pretty well. Came back tired but yet rejuvinated.

Day 1:

We started from Denver in the evening and reached New York La Guardia airport at about midnight. The view of the glimmering city below from the airplane was awesome. It was a neverending canopy of light. Funny thing was though when we tried to identify the Brooklyn bridge from the top, we really got confused.. all the bridges looked beautiful , huge and covered with green lights and all of them looked almost the same. Finally we let go of the curiosity of ours, and decided to wait to see the bridge in the daylight. We checked in our hotel, which was in the center of Manhattan; the room was really small and clumsy even though the hotel was a four star and I had read a pretty good review. I knew New York and especially Manhattan would be costly and clumsy, this was a bit too much for my expectation. The room was neat though and the service was pretty good. Another boo was, there was no free internet.. later turned out that was a blessing in disguise. Life without cellphone, pager and internet ... now that is a vacation!! However we paid about ten bucks and took internet on the last day, when we needed to check out online for our flight to denver and needed some help from Google map. Well that night, we did not worry much about the room and internet and the next days plan and just dashed into the bed.

Day 2:

Got up at about 8:00 am, got ready, had some quick breakfast and Statue of liberty was on our list first, as it was a friday we expected the crowd to be a bit less on that day, and that turned out to be true. We checked with the hotel consigliere, and he suggested us to take the subway to go to the Battery park from where we can take the ferry to Statue of Liberty. The subway was just outside the hotel, we bought a one day unlimited metro pass each, and boarded the metro train. And yes, we took a map of NY and toutist guide from the hotel reception, which was very helpful during our entire trip. The metro train was pretty crowded, which was expected, it being a work day and ofcourse peak hour. My first impression on the NY subway, it was old and unclean (when things get so old, it really difficult to keep them clean - that was my friend's logic), there were grafittis all ober the underground walls. But I have to admit, subway makes the commute in NY so much easier and convenient. It is like an underground grid, which covers almost the entire city. And you can find metro staions every cuple of blocks, especially in the busy areas.

Well, lets get back to our trip. We could find Battery park quite easily, got the tickets, and stood in the queue for the ferry. The crowd seemed quite a lot, but when we saw the ferry we realized, it really not one of busiest of days. Just after one hour of reaching battery park we were in the ferry, security checking time included. It was cold, cloudy, foggy and a bit windy. But have survived Denver cold, we really did not care for the weather in NY. And the sun kept coming out of the clouds once in a while, making it quite more pleasant. We got to the top floor of the ferry, and finally we were able to see the real Brooklyn bridge . And ofcourse Statue of Libetry and Ellis island; which relates to the history of US immigration. It took us about 15-20 minutes to reach the Liberty island. We could get into the monument; the pedestal of the statue. There was a small museum inside, with the history of the statue and how it was designed, built and assembled in ths island. We climbed about 300 steps to reach the top of the pedestal and just below the feet of the statue. That is how far the visitors can get to, there are steps within the statue to get to the crown of the statue.. but thats closed for visitors, probably only the maintenance crew can get to the top. We could see the entire island and Newyork skyline from the top (of the pedestal), the view was lovely. The best part was it was not too crowded, thanks to our plan of coming here on a weekday.

We spent there couple of hours and took the ferry, which has another stop at Ellis island. We decided not to get down there, as we were getting hungry and were not really in a mood for another museum on the very first day. Another reason was we did not have much to do with US immigration history.. none of our forefathers came to US and setteled here. We took the ferry back to the city and went to Wall street, the financial district. First thing and probably only thing you would notice there is.. its all black. Limos, suits, dark glasses everything was black and people were in such a hurry as if the entire world's operating machine runs from here. Streets were narrow as usual and buildings were tall; sunlight could barely touch the ground. We walked past those busy bustling street and went to the WTC site, now which is just a construction site for the new WTC; which is being planned to be built in a bigger and more vibrant fashion than the earlier one.

I had always wanted to try the street food in New York, but most of it being meat was a real constraint. While roaming around near the WTC site, suddenly the aroma of hot and yummy falafel distracted us. Without any difficulty we found out the mobile food station, and we ordered some falafel combo. The order and delivery was fast, and we sat on the marble chairs nearby under the open sky (whatever piece of it was visible from the concrete jungle) and enjoyed our late lunch. Ah! the food was heavenly (some contribution was of our very hungry tummys). With our stomach full, we roamed around a bit.. did some window shopping and started for the Brooklyn bridge. We had to walk a bit more this time to find out the bridge...but streets of NY
would never let you get bored. The bridge was evidently very old and the had a rustic and romantic feeling about; I still could not point a finger at the exact reason of my feeling so though. We just took a walk along the bridge, while sun went down; and I could feel the bridge is so serene and peaceful even being inside one of the busiest cities in the world, and among the bustling traffic over it.

It was getting dark when walked back from the bridge, we were quite tired to visit any other places. We just went to 5th avenue, the shopping district and did some window shopping on guess what.. some jewelery stores (which none of were are even remotely in to). But it just happened that we got down from the metro and ended up in that jewelery street and really did not put much effort to get out of there. So we just roamed around for a while and got back to hotel. After getting freshened up and taking rest for could of hours we went out in search of some good food. Did not have to go too far, just below our hotel was a Greek restaurant. Food was okay, but I could not get some proper dessert as it was too late and they were out of stock (dessert ). All I could get was chocolate ice cream, which was not so bad either.

So there ended the second day at NY, it was a day well spent, though tiring. We all went to bed to gain back our energy for the next day..............

I moved to Denver couple of weeks back, reason being relocation of my work.  Moving from East Coast to this city in central US, almost a mile above the sea level, had been quite a change. A change in climate, a change in culture, and a change in work atmosphere as well (this one strictly applies only to me).

Denver- to describe it in couple of words, it is high and dry.  But it has got a homey feeling, the huge green lawns, small wooden houses with tiny but pretty gardens gives a cozy feeling.  Denver is surrounded by Rockey Mountains, so if you are a nature lover, this city and its outskirts have plenty to offer- food for your mind, eyes and all other senses. Bon Appetit! And yes, this town is pretty infamous for its cold.  In winter the temperature can go as low as minus 40 F. One feet or above snowfall is pretty normal. 

From the posh yet historical and arcane DC area, to this homely small town- had been quite a change for me.  But I love both the cities; they are beautiful in their own different ways.

Now it is summer here and the best time of the year to go around and see places.  And then suddenly I realised, the place where I stay is one of the best and most important tourist spots of United States. No need to say I live near the capital of US, Washington, District of Columbia.  This place is of utmost importance; historically, culturally to the people of US, and literally this is a treasure for tourists.

So we planned and covered many of the places in few weeks(read weekends);

a) White house
b) Washington Memorial
c) Lincoln Memorial
d) Korean War memorial
e) Arlington National Cemetry
f) Capitol House
g) Museums- Air and Space, Natural History, Art museum, National Sculptures

I would be covering these places in individual articles or may be couple of them in a single article.  So wait and watch out for a virtual tour to the riches of the nation, called United States of America.

Situated in Arlington county, in state of Virginia, spread across 264 acres of land from Potomac river to Lincoln Memorial is this national monument; Arlington National Cemetery. And it has Pentagon bordering one of its sides. Arlington Cemetery's lush green slopes shelter the war veterans of almost every war this country has gone through.

This place is well connected to the entire city by the Washington metro rail facility, entrance to the Cemetery is 5 minutes walk from metro station. Cemetery is open for visitors from 8 a.m - 5 p.m in winter (Oct through Mar) and 8 a.m - 7 p.m in summer (Apr through Sept). A tourmobile facilitates guided tour. But one can always walk around and see the place, the map and details about the gravesites is available in the information counter at the entrance. Maps in larger boards are also present from place to place, with 'you are here' signs, so that people like me and my friends wont get lost.

Enter the Cemetry and a calm, serene and yet proud atmosphere welcomes you there. Lush green fields with trees, some very old some planted few years back many be, and scores of tombs in granite and marble aligned in a proper Military disciplined way. About 290,000 serviceman rest in this land, and an average 24 burials are done every weekday. These gravesites reflect the ups and downs of American History, beginning with the Civil war. The Spanish-American war in 1898, World War I and II, Vietnam War and many other such historical moments are captured in this Cemetery. The most visited site is, the gravesite of President John F Kennedy, where Cape Cod stones frame the eternal flame and "with history the final judge of our deeds..." quoted from his inaugural address.

This huge piece of land was once an American gentleman, Robert E Lee's family property. During Civil War, the then General Meigs proposed 200 acres of Lee's land to be taken as Cemetery. But by the end of the war graves filled space close Lee's house. Heir to the property Curtis Lee sued the Government disputing his claim to ownership of his family land, and Congress ended up paying him $150,000 for the land.

The Memorial Amphitheater and Tomb of the Unknowns and another couple of most visited sections of the Arlington Cemetery. Memorial Day is celebrated in remembrance of the dedication to country and patriotism of thousands of war veterans and the Memorial Amphitheater is the setting for the observances. Flags adorn the arches around the marble benches and the podium where tribute is paid. Each gravesite is decorated with the national flag on Memorial Day.

In east of Amphitheatre visitors can attend the timeless rituals at the Tomb of Unknowns. A sentinel performs the rite around the clock, he paces 21 steps down the mat in front of the tomb, pauses for 21 seconds and returns. When we reached there it was almost 7 pm, the silent steps, clinging of metals in the boots in the backdrop of the setting sun, filled me with warm patriotic feeling. As much as I hate war and the bloodshed and loss of so many precious life caused by it, with the same amount of passion I revere the brave soldiers who fight for a country, die for a greater cause.

We could walk around and cover most of the important sections (or so we thought) in about 3 hours, and this time includes taking the wrong path and getting lost couple of times on our way to the Amphitheatre. But the trip was good, it left us with a warm patriotic feeling even though this is not my country, or they are not my countrymen who died bravely in Wars and buried here. But a courage, endurance and spirit of service that great could not be stopped from being revered just by physical boundaries or political differences.

It was a nice sunny afternoon, and me and my roomie decided to step out of the house and go roam around. A search in internet, 'tourist spots around Washington DC', brought up Georgetown in the first few results, and we decided Georgetown it is.

Took couple of print outs of the map, camera, two coke cans and we were out of the house. We took the metro rail and got down at the nearest station, and decided to walk. The map helped a lot and we could visit most of the places around (both of us are terribly bad at directions, so this itself was quite an achievement).

My first impression about Georgetown was, it was very different from other places in Washington DC area, amazingly different. It was like a small British colony, right beside the capital of America. Founded during mid eighteenth century, and named after both the founder's first names, this was initially a British colony. More than 250 years, and it still has that arcane, cozy and rather sleepy feeling; among the residential buildings, small parks and by lanes. Even the tourists must see and shoppers paradise M Street and Wisconsin Avenue sporting all these high-end shops, restaurants have that small town look and feel. You can just walk on the street, and the puny shop entrances with wooden or glass doors, the picturesque rusty lamp-posts having creepers with tiny red and violet flowers articulately planted (yes planted!) on them, would leave you dazzled.

Georgetown is of historical importance as well, featuring homes of some of the high and mighty Americans; John F Kennedy and Graham Bell to name a few. The famous Chesapeake & Ohio canal which was used for internal transportation, connecting to the main port in Georgetown set in Potomac river. There are many small parks which were built in memory of some or other historical moment. The never to be missed Old stone house, which is as old as the town itself, this is an unassuming building, built and dwelled by commoners, stands in the midst of the flashy shopping street, celebrating the lives of people who built this town and the entire nation for that matter.

If you live near Washington DC, or visiting Georgetown is a place not to miss out. Take a stroll by the Potomac river or go for boating across it, take a walk on M Street even if you have no plans of shopping, and the remaining of Chesapeake & Ohio canal and the Old stone house. This visit is going to be quite a memorable one. Just do not forget your camera.