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Showing posts from 2008

Visited Monterey Bay Acquarium

As my parents just recently came to visit us in USA , I took them to Monterey Bay Aquarium in July 20th. We had lunch in Ambrosia Indian Cuisine nearby before entering the aquarium. We saw all the creatures there, took photos and videos. This time we were lucky to catch the session of feeding the fishes in afternoon. There was around half an hour demonstration that we enjoyed a lot and wondered why the sharks are not attacking the lady who was trying to feed them despite her skuba diving materials and masks. We covered 17 miles drive, Pebble beach and the gold course where Tiger Woods come to play. It was a 216 miles drive the whole day and no one seemed overwhelmingly tired including little Ahyan.

Top 10 Cities Travel & Leisure Awards

Well, I work in the 10th city in this list. :-) http://www.travelandleisure.com/worldsbest/2008/results.cfm?cat=cities Rank -> In 2007 -> Name -> Score 1 -----> 3 -----> Bangkok -----> 87.61 2 -----> 2 -----> Buenos Aires -----> 87.24 3 -----> 10 -----> Cape Town -----> 86.59 4 -----> 5 -----> Sydney -----> 86.49 5 -----> 1 -----> Florence -----> 86.24 6 -----> None -> Cuzco, Peru -----> 86.15 7 -----> 4 -----> Rome -----> 85.12 8 -----> 6 -----> New York -----> 85.03 9 -----> 8 -----> Istanbul -----> 84.61 10 -----> 9 -----> San Francisco -----> 84.42

Independence Day Fireworks and Shopping In San Francisco

This independence day long weekend, I along with my Shusmita and son Ahyan stayed overnight in San Francisco to watch fireworks and to shop in Union Square. My friend Nitol joined us at 4th July noon when we started in a relax mode. We reached Club Quarters in San Francisco (in Embarcadero) and parked my car in a nearby garage. Then we caught BART for shopping in WestField . In the evening we came back to Ferry Building to watch fireworks, but we couldn't watch well from there. So we started walking towards Pier 39 with Ahyan in Stroller. There we could watch the fires very closely. Ahyan was scared of the sounds and hence started crying loud. We finished our dinner just opposite to my office in market street and then Nitol went back to Fremont while we headed towards our hotel room. http://picasaweb.google.com/nitol.shabbir/4thOfJulyAtSanFrancisco The next morning we went to Naan N Curry in O'Farrell Street. Shusmita did a lot of shopping from Union Square and we returned

TavelMuse - Suggests Where To Take The Next Vacation

This is what I have been looking for a long time - a site that suggests me where to go in my next vacation trip and also help planning the trip details. http://www.travelmuse.com It allows me to create a list of trips and track each of those separately. Whenever I find a new page while surfing internet, I can attach that page, article or link to any of the trips I have in my list. This way now I have more than a dozen trip plan in progress right now. I hope this service remains free once they come out of beta stage.

Memorial Day Weekend Trip to Fort Bragg/Mendocino

We didn't want to loose the long weekend for memorial day and hence had a quick trip to Fort Bragg, Mendocino which is 200 miles drive from San Francisco Bay Area. Nitol joined us in the trip and we took his car as it turned out to be a good driving experience for him in his first long trip in his new car. The idea to choose a less tourist-crowdy place was because as my parents are coming within next few weeks, we will anyway go to many tourist places in California. So we picked this area where our chances to go more than one is very less. Here are some of the pictures of our trip - http://picasaweb.google.com/shusmita/FortBragg http://picasaweb.google.com/nitol.shabbir/FortBraggMendocinoDriveThroughTree We started at 9 in the morning of 24th May Saturday. The drive through the Highway One was amazing. Ocean and Beaches in the one side, hills and trees in the other side. And every half an hour the road and sceneries change. That evening we went to Glass Beach from our hotel. We had

Booking Hotels Online

Here are few good sites to find hotel deals. Hotels - www.hotels.com Hotwire - www.hotwire.com Orbitz - www.orbitz.com Expedia - www.expedia.com Find Trip Deal - http://www.findtripdeal.com Smarter Travel - http://www.smartertravel.com

An Amazing San Diego Trip

Last weekend of April was one of the fast ones when I, Shusmita and Ahyan went to a 3 day trip to San Diego. It was a great trip in all sense. We had a little more than one hour flight in United Airlines from San Francisco at 25th night. By the time I got a Toyota Avalon from Alamo and checked in Holiday Inn Quality Suites in San Diego it was almost 2 AM there. Here are some of the photos of the tour. http://picasaweb.google.com/shusmita/SanDiegoTripApril25To28thPril2006 The first day (26th) we went to Sea World. We watched the Shamu show in the noon and again the late evening. I would not believe a Whale can show such kind of gymnastics with other whales and it's trainers if I would not see with my own eyes. We also saw the dolphin show, Elmo's 3D show and many other booths. The second day we spent in San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park which are about 45 miles apart. As I had the 5 day unlimited entry ticket fro us, we didn't have to worry about the queue or any additional

Top Travel Destinations in California

Go these Top Travel Destinations List for California in travel.nytimes.com while surfing a little earlier. http://www.destination360.com/north-america/us/california/california.php Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Berkeley Big Sur Carmel Channel Islands National Park Death Valley National Park Desert Hot Springs Eureka Fort Bragg Half Moon Bay Healdsburg Huntington Beach Joshua Tree National Park La Jolla Laguna Beach Lake Tahoe Long Beach Los Angeles Malibu Mammoth Lakes Mendocino Mojave Desert Monterey Napa Valley Oakland Ojai Palm Springs Pasadena Point Reyes National Seashore Sacramento San Diego San Francisco San Jose San Luis Obispo Santa Barbara Santa Catalina Island Santa Cruz Santa Monica Santa Ynez Valley Sausalito Sonoma Valley Yosemite National Park

My 4th Yosemite Trip

Last weekend my friend and ex-colleague Emon (Sazzad) and Saiful came from Atlanta to visit us. My friend Nitol rented a Pontiac G6 the Friday morning we started for Yosemite at 1:45 PM. I booked a 2 bed room fully furnished resort in Bass Lake (15 miles from before Yosemite) via my trial time share for the weekend. Yosemite is one of my favorite places in California which is couple of hundred miles from Fremont where I live in. The roads to Yosemite are a little curvy and so my wife Shusmita was anxious thinking of our 16 months old son Ahyan while we were driving at night. The first night's stay was full of playing cards (29), random chats, so we woke up late in the morning. After having breakfast in the restaurant near the lake we reached Yosemite at noon. Here are some pictures from Nitol on the trip. http://picasaweb.google.com/nitol.shabbir/Yosemite This is the 4th time in last 3 years I have visited Yosemite. It's still the same beautiful El Capitan rock and Yosemite fa