Work trip to Paris

After 8 years, I was back in Paris for a business trip. Outside of work, I went to the Eiffel tower and watched the sunset. That was a unique experience! Getting an advance ticket was really important as it was still very crowded even in late Oct on a weekday. I also went to Fontainebleau to see the beautiful palace. The paintings and sculptures inside the palace were nothing short of spectacular. And one of my colleagues took us to a live performance by local artists as well as a rooftop bar with views of the Eiffel tower. It was a productive and fun trip!

Boys trip to Napa

With a close friend visiting from India, a bunch of us spent a couple of days in Napa. The highlight was playing pickleball for hours and going to the Black Stallion Estate Winery where we hung out among the vineyards in beautiful weather! The dinner in Napa downtown was nice as well!

Glacier National Park

I have visited many popular national parks like Yosemite, YellowStone, Zion, Great Canyon and Rainier, and Glacier was top of the list but somehow a trip never worked out. This time, after saying goodbye to our cousin in Calgary, we drove down to USA entering Glacier from the east side. We were wowed by the natural beauty and going to the sun road is totally worth the hype! We stayed inside the park at the Rising Sun Motor Inns and Cabins, which had a non-luxorious but beautiful setting with a view of huge mountains. We covered the entire park from there. We can't pick a favorite part of the park. The boat rides from Many Glacier took on Swift current Lake and then on Lake Josephine after a 0.2 mile hike were surrounded with beautiful vistas. From Lake Josephine, we hiked to Grinnell Lake which is about a mile out. We saw a huge deer literally 20 feet from us and a moose in the distance. We also went on a guided hike to the beaver pond loop where we saw meadows with beautiful wildflowers. On the last day, we went to Two Medicine which was another beautiful lake with mountains around it, straight out of a postcard!

Calgary, Banff and Yoho National Park

The larger area around Banff is one of my favorites in the world and yet we have explored so little of it. This time, we decided to explore Yoho National Park starting with Emerald Lake, then Takakkaw falls followed by a stay 20 miles from the town of Golden in the woods by a river. The next day, we did the Wapta falls main trail and the hike to falls as well as the view from the bottom was stunning! We again went to Emerald Lake for lunch as we clearly hadn't gotten enough of it. On the way back we went to Peyto Lake and Bow Lake each with their tremendous beauty and turquoise waters. We skipped rocks in Bow Lake which was fun for the kids. The icing on the cake was that my cousin who has moved to Calgary was with us with their family. Driving their big GM Escalade was also a lot of fun!

London, Cotswolds and Seven Sisters

I have been to London just once when my sister was studying for work. At the time, we really enjoyed visiting Cambridge and Burton on the water in Cotswolds. I fell in love with the quaint English picturesque villages. So this time, we decided to make Cotswolds as the base for part of the trip. We stayed in Cirencester at the Old Brew House which stood the test of time from the 1700s when horse carriages were prevalent. Then we went to Stratford upon Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare and visited his parents house. They enact plays there and I got to play the bystander that gets stabbed :). On the way back we visited Stow on the Wold and Bourton on the water, both really picturesque towns. The next day we headed to Stonehenge and Bath, each with their own historical significance. You almost felt like living through different times in history. On the 4th day we checked out and visited Bibury, another beautiful Cotswolds town. From there, we headed to Oxford. Support for Palestine was high with flags and they had fully occupied Radcliffe Camera. The campus is beautiful and the school was in session so we got to see the real deal with lots of students around. Then, we headed to Cambridge where we did punting on the river and saw the various colleges with their significance. It was quite the experience seeing Kings College and a bunch of other colleges. 

We went to London for the last few days. First day, we went to Seven Sisters National Park in Eastbourne. The pebble beach with white cliffs is really unique and I haven't seen anything like it! The town of Eastbourne is a beautiful quaint town and the train ride was a lot of fun as well. We saw all the key sights in London like Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Tower Bridge with opening and it was great. The only thing that was stressful was the Change of Guard ceremony with the crazy crowds. The shopping at Oxford Street was great for the family with Govindas being a highlight for vegetarian satvik food. I attended a Kirtan in the temple while the family shopped and it was really soothing. We also ate at Chokhi Dhani and Dishoom which was good too!

There was one major coincidence that I must talk about and that is meeting my sister in East London University when we were going to meet her the next day. It was really serendipitous and great to see her university.

Here is the itinerary for the whole trip.

June 1 - Drive to Cotswolds + rest day

June 2 - Cotswolds/Stratford upon Avon

June 3 - Stonehenge + Bath

June 4 - Go to Oxford + Cambridge

June 5 - Come to London from Cambridge

June 6 - Seven Sisters Eastbourne

June 7 - London

June 8 - London

June 9 - Fly back

Tennis at Indian Wells

Until this time, I had only seen Tennis live once, and that too a charity match for Africa where we saw Federer and Bill Gates in 2018. It had been a long desire since to go watch a tournament live. Six years later, the stars aligned for us to go watch the Indian Wells Open. It was a blast! We watched 7 full games and many parts of games. The games that stood out were Sabalenka nearly losing to Stearns in a hard fought match and Monfils beating Norrie.

Here are the full games we saw live

Mar 9

Sabalenka vs P Stearns

Medvedev vs $ Carballes Baena

Mar 10

Tsitsipas vs Tiafoe

A Kalinskaya vs J Paolini

A Kerber vs V Kudermetova

Zverev vs Griekspoor

Haddad Maia vs Pavlyuchenkova

The added bonus on this trip was spending half a day in the Palm Springs Air Museum which had planes from WW2 to the more recent B2 stealth bomber. It was amazing to see so many planes of yore and the museum is right next to PSP airport allowing you to see planes landing and taking off from a short distance.