Visiting US after 2 years

I went for a one week business trip to US (San Jose) during the second week of June. It was almost 2 years ago, I returned from US after a good long stay. And it was my first trip to the west coast.

I flew by Lufthansa. Not the greatest of the experience, but not bad. At least better than Northwest and Air India. I had flown by Lufthansa before when I returned to US after my marriage. The travel time was less with direct flight from Bangalore to Frankfurt and then to San Francisco. There was only 1 hr 40 min gap at Frankfurt.

I reached SFO (San Francisco Airport) on time at 12:15pm. Since I was told that the best way to get to San Jose was by taxi, I hired one. Taxi was pretty costly. There are other modes which are cheaper and more interesting (like the local train). I would have rather rented a car which would have been cheaper and convenient. But I was not sure if I can drive in US after the gap of 2 years. That was proved wrong when I ultimately decided to rent a car during the end of my trip.

I was staying in Staybridge Suite. Not a big brand, but it had pretty good facilities. It was a kind of full service Suite with complementary breakfast, dinner, laundry, Internet with all other amenities one would expect. The complementary dinner is something I have not seen anywhere else. The hotel is walkable from Cisco campus building 24.

It was spring time in US and the evenings were long. The Milpitas Ranch area was near to the hotel and it had all those shops I used to visit when I was in US. I went to Walmart, Ross, Best Buy, Micheals and refreshed my memories. It is true that in this part of the world every city looks same and very little difference I could feel between Charleston and San Jose when it comes to shopping and restaurants. Did some purchases and also had Chalupa (one of my favorites on the road) at Tacobell. I did not get chance to eat outside since the hotel was serving dinner and we had business dinners the other days.

By Friday when the business meetings were over, I rented a car with Hertz. I booked a compact (to be environment friendly) but they gave me a mini van. After a brief familiarization drive within the city, I drove to San Francisco. The car had "Hertz never lost" GPS system. It is the first time I am using one and it turned out to be a very good experience. It had voice prompting and is very precise in giving directions. It made the trip like a cake walk. Indeed you would never get lost with such a facility. I went to the Bay area and visited Pier 39. The Bay bridge was good. City was less crowded compared to what I had expected it to be. It was very cold there, bit different from San Jose. I wondered how the climate could change so much in 60 miles. The climate was dull and not a good day to take photographs.

On Saturday, I drove the car to SFO airport and caught the flight back home. It was good to be back home.

July 4th Fireworks

This would be my last July 4th in US before returning to India. The fireworks as part of the Independence day in US is a marvelous occasion to be part of. This is held in all major towns and cities in US on the evening of July 4th.

I had been to this even few times in Charleston and once in Myrtle Beach, SC. We went to Mount Pleasant to witness this. I had taken my camera and tripod to capture some fireworks photos. I had never tried to capture one before and did do some homework on how to do this. There were lot of people assembled for the event. This is one of the few times you will see huge crowd in US. It is like a mela we have in India with all kind of bands, small food shops, entertainment events etc. A very colorful and entertaining event.

Sometimes I wonder, why we do not celebrate ours like this. US is independent for more than 300 years, but still you see the enthusiasm and public participation in the way July 4th is celebrated. I seldom see this in India and it is mostly a political event celebrated just as a duty than anything else.

I did take some good pictures of the fireworks and surprisingly they came out very well. So I can say I learned how to operate a camera now. Few tips and tricks. Thanks to the internet where as usual there were lot of resources on how to picture a fireworks.

See more photos here

Strawberry farm visit

Last weekend we went to Boone Hall Plantation, a Strawberry farm near Charleston. It was nice to pickup your own strawberries and blackberries. We need to search between the sea of strawberry plants to find a good and ripe one. Blackberries were more generous and cleaner. Cost was also 50% compared to grocery stores.

This is a very good way of spending time and getting some fresh and healthy fruits. There are many strawberry farms around Charleston at a radius of 5-15 miles. Once you reach there, they have a set of baskets for the fixed price of $2, $5 etc. You can choose one and fill as many fruits as you want. The one where we went also had a nice garden with different types of flowers. We took some photos there. There is also a large sunflower farm. It was good to be in the middle of so many sunflowers.