Trip to London - Part II

Couple of tips when planning for a trip to London, UK:


1. London, UK unlike most of the cities in USA is very well connected and public transport is just awesome. For planning trips, I used the Transport for London website. Another tip for people who end up staying near Heathrow hotel, you don't have to pay for the Hotel Hoppa (about 5 pounds) to go to the airport. There are a couple of free buses that go to Heathrow Airport and you can take them to the airport or the nearest train station (Hatton Cross).


2. For traveling using Tube, make sure you buy an Oyster card if you are on a longer trip. Else, take the day pass (about 8 pounds) if you intend to tour Central London for just a day.


3. The long-distance/overground train ticket prices fluctuate a lot. I use thetrainline.com and it's accompanying iPhone app to plan my trip to Durham, Cambridge, etc.


4. A trip to England is incomplete if you don't visit Scotland. Most of the time, the train ticket is almost equal or more than an air-ticket. 


5. When planning a trip to Scotland, look up the different tours offered. I ended up taking the Loch Ness, Glencoe & the Highlands tour by Timberbush. 

View of the Scottish landscape during one of our pit-stops

6. Also, an excellent tour to take is the Royal Whisky Heritage tour. Hint: Don't buy Whisky, as it's very expensive, instead pick a bottle at the airport duty free shop. You will get the same brands (Balvenie, etc) a bit cheaper.

World's largest Whisky collection - 1

World's largest Whisky collection - 2

World's largest Whisky collection - 3

7. Use the Traveline Scotland website and iPhone app to plan your trips in and around Edinburgh. Hint: Keep some pounds change (around 1.5 pounds) for the bus fare.

8. The Wi-Fi in most of the hotels were very expensive (about 15 pounds per day). You can opt for a Mi-Fi rental from XCom Global (if you are traveling from USA). The rental rates are very reasonable and allows unlimited internet access. XCom's Mi-Fi service has been recommended by EnGadget and I rented the Mi-Fi for my entire trip. I also rented an extra battery pack and took the insurance as well (Since I rented for a month or so, the rate was around $13.90 per day).

Thanks to Sushant Jeurkar for helping me with the Scotland trip planning. Thanks to Ameya for taking the time and showing me around Central London :)

Posting some random snaps:

Durham Cathedral

Random Cherry Blossom @Durham, UK

College @Cambridge

King's College @Cambridge

Westminister Abbey

St Paul's Cathedral @London

London Eye

Big Ben

London Bridge

Piccadilly Circus @London 

Lord's Cricket ground 

Match in progress @Lord's Cricket ground 

Sherlock Holmes Museum 

Regents Park - 1

Regents Park - 2

Trebuchet @Fort William, Scotland

Scott Monument @Scotland

Scottish Parliament @Scotland

Interesting Chess Whisky set @Whisky tour

Crown Office @Scotland

Church/Cathedral near the Assembly @Scotland

Oldest Whisky :)

Tower of London bridge @London

Guard

One of the Towers of London

Parade at Buckingham Palace

Memorial in front of the Buckingham Palace

Trafalgar Square

Trip to London - Part I

In Feb, I was asked to send my abstract to the AO workshop being held in Durham UK. I fervently started googling to find out the visa process in case the abstract was accepted. The UK visa application process (when applying from USA) is submitted online. It's very detailed and at the end of the application, you have to go for a biometric scanning. After the biometric scanning is done, send the documents by courier to the UK embassy. Two grouses: (1) the visa application website does not say the charges for the visa until you finish everything. Perhaps, it would be easy if we know the charges for a 6 month multiple entry vs 1 year multiple entry upfront. (2) the application instructions mention that you should send a confirmation of your travel plans including air ticket. Another paragraph says that tickets should not be bought unless the visa is issued. This is misleading. 


So I sent all my documents without booking an air-ticket. The UK visa was approved and I received my passport in 5 days :)


One thing that I forgot was getting an US to UK adapter plug. I suggest getting that adapter in US before travelling. My itinerary involved trip to London-Durham-London and back. But then the trip turned out to be longer than planned.


To be continued ....

Jan 14th 2011

D-day. Status updated from single to married. 


Note to myself: I want to see when everything will return to normalcy. If yes, how much time will this process take?

10 things about 2010 - my perspective

2010 just whizzed by. Here's my perspective on top 10 things that 'happened':


10. Traveled a lot this year. 4 more trips and I will reach Gold status with AA.
9. Flat panel LED TV- internet connected finally. (Mansi & Neeraj are aware of my failed boxee attempts :P)
8. Trip to Atlantic City :)
7. Upgraded to the new iPhone4 that helped the long distance relation with FaceTime. But the alarm SUCKS !!!
6. Meeting friends after 10 years - priceless :) 
5. Spending Diwali with Meher :)
4. Moving to a new place is tiring but it is something to look forward to. Sunspot is an amazing place and this movie captures what I felt initially !!!
3. Winning 2 research proposals. Conducting independent research and collaborating with a group is awesome :)
2. I always wanted to buy a manual transmission car and I finally had that dream come true. Traded in the good ol' Pontiac for the new Accord :P
1. My first job :) 

2010- Movies and Music

2010 has been a mixed bag in terms of the movies I watched. Though I haven't watched LSD or Guzaarish, my opinions are based on tweets and posts by different critics (Rajeev Masand, Raja Sen and Anupama Chopra) 


Movies I liked/loved:
1. Flipped : If you are a fan of Rob Reiner's classics like "When Harry met Sally", "A Few Good Men", "Bucket List", chances are that you will like this movie about two children growing up in the 60's in N America.
2. Inception
3. Udaan
4. Do Dooni Chaar
5. Tere Bin Laden
6. Band Baaja Baraat
7. Phas Gaya Re Obama
8. Raajneeti
9. Ishqiya
10. Dabangg

3 years and counting

It's been a wonderful 3 years with Mansi and this year we decided to celebrate our anniversary at Atlantic City. AC is more popular for it's casinos and so we ended up staying at Trump Taj. We took an early morning stroll along the boardwalk behind the hotel and it was awesome. Lunch was an excellent kabab sandwich/gyro platter at Bill's Gyro & Bar. This place has the best reviews for Greek food in AC and I looked up the reviews on Trip Advisor, Yelp, etc. 

This was followed by coffee at Starbucks, located inside Trump Taj. Coffee@Starbucks is usually accompanied by some random discussion. Every couple has their specific coffee place, I know some couples who prefer Tim Hortons or Dunkin' Donuts or Panera as their preferred location for airing opinions. ( I am not suggesting nagging, but I think women have lot to talk and guys prefer to listen most of the time). 

We had dinner at Hard Rock Cafe followed by a gambling session. We tried our hand in Roulette and that was an exciting game. The probability formulas were tested and we ended up with some winnings. Mansi was the book-keeper/cashier and ensured we made a profit :)

We started early for DC the next day (as per Indian time) and reached home by evening. We barely managed to get ready and leave for Rinu & Jaimy's X'mas party that was preceded by a sit-down dinner at Bangkok Joe's. I think the food was just ok and the service was really terrible. But all that was compensated by the White Elephant game hosted by Rinu & Jaimy at their place. Each gift had a price limit of $20 and could be stolen only thrice. Yours truly was randomly chosen (chits) as the first person to open the gifts. I ended up opening three gifts and all of them were stolen from me. I ended up stealing Mansi's gift (tool bag with no tools) and she stole a box of wine glasses. This was followed by a photo shoot thanks to Saif :) Excellent evening to top off the anniversary celebrations :) 

My song dedication for Mansi: 

Zamaane Ko Chod Dein 

Riwajon Tod Dein 

Toote Na Sapnein Kabhi 

Hai Nazuk Yeh Sapnein Sabhi ........

Mansi’s Dad is Flip’ped

Mansi’s parents visited us in March. Now since SD’s birthday falls on March 1, she decided to buy a gift for her Dad. Choosing a gift is difficult, but reasoning how useful the gift will be is even more tedious. Considering that Meher’s been running around, etc Mansi decided to get (1) camcorder (point and shoot type) or (2) fitness monitor+music player (iPod Nano).


After a lot of consideration and deliberations, she decided to finally get the Flip UltraHD Camcorder, 120 Minutes (Black). Mansi’s dad was very happy with the gift. Why ? Ease of use and easy to download the videos. As mentioned previously, he uses a Dell Inspiron with Ubuntu goodness. Now the Flip records HD quality video which means 1 minute video takes about 140 MB approx. Looking at the easiest way to transfer/share huge files,  I setup a DropBox account on his laptop, so that he can share his video experiences easily. Flip connects through a USB port and mounts as Flash Drive on Linux (open source goodness). Copying the files is just Drag and Drop :)


Everyone’s happy !!! 


(PS: Thanks to Aditya for buying this first and recommending it to me !!!)