Sydney trip part 2

The second week in Sydney was as much fun as the first one. I figured some interesting stuff to do on the weekdays after work while weekend was full of activities.


The Monday night I went to the Salsa Party at Pump House near the Paddy's Market, which turned out to be a majorly LA Style salsa place. I didn't enjoy it as much as I am more in to the Cuban style and hardly know enough about LA style. Its mentioned to be one of the best LA style salsa dance parties in the town and did look so to me but the number of people present.

Then I came to know about La Cita which had Cuban salsa stuff on both Wednesday and Thursdays. I dropped by on Thursday and was excited to hear some cuban tunes as I went to first floor after being confused abused the place from Pop music on the ground floor.

One other out of town Rueda folk from Brisbane.

The Cuban dancing scene at La Cena

The floor has a Advanced class going on and they won't let us try :( Anyway I figured we would wait for the class to end and then enjoy some Rueda. Guess what, the group only does Rueda in class or for performance practice and even that they don't want others to try. Boooooh. I would expect any group dancing cuban salsa in a lot of place to try Rueda and have others from outside the group join them in casual runs but not this one. They should come down to Bay Area see how much more fun and social Rueda groups can be!
The crib with the group notwithstanding the music was great. I noticed though social dancing is not so common here and people will dance with just one partner song after song.

The party got much more fun later with the pretty awesome live band and DJ on the ground floor, and though we were about to leave around 10:30 or so, we stayed dancing Rueda and Reggaeton for good 2-2.5 hours. So definitely a party to go to.


Saturday night the CS group organized a Pub Hopping and we went to couple of pubs of which I remember only Cargo Bar's name, as it was a great place. The music was electronica/House and ambiance and setup was all great. No doubt its one of the highest rated ones. Of course drinks were costly mostly ~ 7 - 8 AUD. Oh In one of the bars I gave first try to Caipiroska and it loved it.

Sunday I went to the famous Torango Zoo, the best (only?) way to reach is by a ferry from Circular Quay terminal. Interestingly the ferry is part of the MyMulti pass for unlimited weekly travel. The Zoo is vast and pretty well organized. Besides the local animal from Australia they have a big presence of animals from other countries. They also have good shows I attended the birds shows but only got a glimpse of the Seals show which looked interesting too.

The zoo is worth spending a full day specially they close by 5 PM so earlier you go better it is.

I also visited the Sydney Aquarium the same evening as its open pretty late (8 PM) and I had to agree with what others told me about that place, its one of the best things to see in Sydney. The colorful fishes and other aquatic life like corals was as beautiful as it gets, I decided on the spot that I was going to try Scuba diving, something which didn't interest me enough earlier. BTW, they have a separate exhibits for Sharks too.

]

Sydney Trip part 1

Unlike usual travel posts I am trying to live-blog my Sydney trip so that I don't make a super big post at the end.

I have been in Sydney for 5 days now, my experience and liking for the city has increased drastically since when I arrived here. I guess the first day was dull because of the long haul flight from United which was a terrible idea (departed 1.5 hrs late, flying time 13.5 hrs and No internet/Personal entertainment system) and the second day the Jet Lag was showing its effect.

I arrived on Friday and fortunately the evening had a CouchSurfing meetup at a nearby hotel, Pyrmont Bridge Hotel for watching FIFA match of Brazil vs Netherlands (sad story Brazil had lost). Amid the match I went out to check the international Fifa Fan Fest stage nearby which was nice. Multiple projected displays along with one FIFA cup shaped one.

Saturday started late partly because of the late night Fifa match watching and may be because of fatigue. I decided to take a walk along the Darling Harbour which is pretty beautiful and a very popular hangout spot for all ages. The evening I walked on the Harbour bridge and realize you can't really get any good shot of the bridge from anywhere nearby unlike Golden Gate bridge. You would get the best shot from Circular Quay area.

On Sunday I started exploring city with the "MyMulti3" pass that I bought for 57$ allowing me unlimited travel in 60 KM radius around city center. I figured I was to head to Bondi Junction and turned out it was too close and I didn't have enough of train journey so I head towards Cronulla beach. Almost near Cronulla but not sure where I was, I figured I was better off going to Bondi Beach again for its famousness and so I did.

Bondi beach is pretty. There were lot of people on the beach but the weather didn't encourage so many of them to try the waters. There were few brave surfers in wet suits though. The waves seems pretty good for surfing but I better not comment on what I haven't tried. :)

I spent the evening going to Circular Quay area. Which definitely has some of the most beautiful views of the city specially in the night.

New York Trip

I went to New York on the Memorial day weekend, where I was joined by Priyam on our 2-3 day exploration of the Big Apple. I had a great time and the delay in composing this post shouldn't give any wrong idea about the same.

I absolutely loved few things about the city which include the Public transport and the busy well lit streets of the downtown and all major tourist attractions. Besides the weather was pretty good at that time much more pleasant than San Francisco city (its pretty hot by now though.).



We took the New York city pass for 79$ as we liked everything in the pass and wanted to try doing as many things as possible.

The city has some amazing Museums. We spend one full day covering just about half of the Metropolitan museum of arts (MeT), which is definitely the biggest Museum in U.S. Turns out that Loovre in Paris is the among the biggest in the world but I spend a much shorter time most likely because I didn't understand much of Art etc. and didn't have company of someone who did, which in this case was Priyam.

My observation at the MeT was that for up to 19th century the complexity and intricacy (details) etc. in the paintings were increasing as time progressed and then came Modern Art.


In the evening we went to the Empire State building, the line for which took about 2 hours after getting in the building at sunset time. Definitely missed the sunset view and wondered if coming may be around 10-11 pm would have made it easier. The view was definitely great though view we had next day from "Top of the Rocks" tower was far better.



The next day was for American Museum of Natural History which had a Planetarium show. The show was okay but the Museum is again impressive. You can definitely spend as much time as you want seeing all the exhibits which include life size imitation of many biological species, Meteor rocks and lot of chemical compounds. They have pretty interesting coverage on evolution and movement of ppl around the world in early days.


After the museum we went to Wall Street and took a tour of the Island by ferry

In the evening we went to Top of the Rocks tower for the Panormic view which I felt was better than that from the Empire State Building probably because you can see the Empire state building itself from this view :). After we took a stroll on the famous Broadway street and the times Square area which makes you feel like you are in Vegas with its similar lighting and billboards along with big displays and tickers.

Next day Priyam went to see MoMa but I had already had enough of art Museums and I decided to visit whatever beach was possible by public transport, that turned out to be RockPort beach. The easy connectivity by the Metro train makes it a popular destination as was seen by the big number of people on the beach.

The water was pretty cold but unlike California there were people in the water. So I decided to try it out, a little girl who was swimming with her father told me how it would be easy after few minutes and it was indeed so. I would have spent next 1-2 hours in the water, when I was initially fearing to soak my knees.


What happened next was interesting. Suddenly at about 5 PM or so everybody started leaving the beach at once. I could figure it was something to do with safety on the beach in the evening so I followed everyone. We all walked to the station and were to figure out that the station was closed and there was "Police, do not cross" ribbon everywhere. Anxiety! Fortunately people and cops spoke English and I learnt that we were better off walking to next station which was about 10 or so blocks away as this station was closed under the fear of overcrowding and it was not easy to determine when it would re-open.

After about an hour or so of uncertainty we were finally on way back to the city. The train was as busy as the busies subways I have seen in multiple cities (though not close to Rio's new year rush at all) and this was a Sunday evening.

Once I was back in the city I rushed to the Brooklyn bridge a photo on/of which was required to complete the trip to New York. Thankfully the Sunset was at late as about 8:30 pm giving me enough time to take photos of the bridge before and after it.

The year that was

Here comes the look back at the year post timed around B'day. Last year I delayed writing this post so much that I never did. This time around I will start with something and try to append it over time.

New Things:
1) After a long long time I finally took the change of moving to Mountain View, California. The first time I ever relocated out of my country.

2) My first vacation to a country in South America. I spent 15 days in Brazil for the Christmas and New year break.

3) Bought my first Road bike in December and have been enjoying biking ever since completed about 1600 KMs in 5 months after a relatively poor 300 KM in first 3.

4) My first trip to United Kingdom: Britain and Scotland.

5) First Couchsurfing experience being hosted by Maira in Rio De Janeiro amazing experience

6) First shot at running a half marathon and completing it successfully.

7) My first ever multiday treking experience in the Uttarakhand (65 KM hiking in 6 days).

Old Fun Stuff that continued
1) Attended the second Salsa Rueda Festival in San Francisco in Feb 2010.
2) Learned many more interesting dance forms including Lindy Hop/Swing/Cha cha.
3) Interest weekend trips in California, Death Valley, Las Vegas, Mt Shasta and to other places: Crater lake in Oregon.
4) Language learning continued. I am much better in Spanish now though my French and Japanese didn't get any attention
5) Visited Malaysia on a team offsite.

Looking Forward in next year:
1) Triathlons
2) Visiting (more) countries in Central and South America
3) Scuba diving
...