Scribbles Dinus: Around the world in eighty ...er sixty days

Yep.. Completed a full circle around the globe last Friday when I landed on Raleigh Durham Airport. Last November, I returned from Raleigh via San Francisco and Singapore to Bangalore. This time my trip from Bangalore was via Germany. So that makes it a complete circle.

Visited a lot of airports on my way. Waiting on some airports was a pleasant experience, especially in Singapore. On some others, it was quite painful.

Raleigh Durham
Washington Dulles
Los Angels
San Jose Minetta
San Francisco
Hong Kong
Singapore Changi
Bangalore
Frankfurt
Chicago O'Hare
Raleigh Durham

It was a journey with lot of hops, with stop overs at some places from 2 days to 2 months :-). Met some friends and visited some places nearby when I was in those places. Did some shopping as well.

One of the places, I liked was the Lick Observatory, Hamilton Hills near San Jose. It was only an hour's drive away from San Jose. The place was pretty fogged up when we went there. The visibility was only 10 feet. Ramji did very good job of keeping his Kia Amanti on road and not going into one of those chasms on the sides of the road. The below photo shows our pic on top of
Hamilton Hills.

From Lick Observatory

The city that impressed me most is Chicago which has lot of big and old building and and the beach. Sabarish and Meena were my hosts in Chicago. The best view of the city was from top of either John Hancock or Sears towers. It seems you can see the neighboring states from those towers. Could not go on top of Sears as we got a little late. Below picture is from John Hancock.

From Chicago

Another nice view is from the Navy Pier in the night. All the building were lit up brightly and they were getting reflected on Lake Michigan.

From Chicago

It was very chilly in the windy city. I struggled to hold the camera steady to take this picture. :-)

Another city where I spent couple of days is Washington. Went to lot of Museums in the Capitol Hill Area. Spent an entire day in Smithsonian Museums catering to subjects like Aeronautics, Biology, American History etc.

From Washington

The places in Research Triangle Park (RTP) were in stark contrast to other places. It is a peaceful countryside with lot of vegetation. My office in RTP is inside a forest and I got scared driving to that place on my first night there. November was the best time to be here in RTP. You could not find two trees of the same color. There were difference shades of orange, red and yellow all over the place.

From Research Tria...

Now, all the trees have fresh leaves and they are all green.. :-(

That almost covers my trip in US. oops.. missed one place.. San Francisco.. How can miss it.. Drove from San Jose to SF on a weekend with Rohan and Family. Drove through the still-being-painted Golden Gate Bridge. Went on a boat cruise around The Rock (Alcatraz Prison).

Tried to do a Magneto Act (You have to see X-Men: The Last Stand :-) ). Oh man, that thing is real heavy !! :-)