My Day out in San Francisco

It was a bright & sunny day yesterday. I havnt explored outdoors for a while, so i decided to head to the city and make use of my new DSLR. After a long time , this was an excursion i was doing alone on my own and I had a gala time! I took the BART from Fremont to Powell Street. After getting down i walked to the Union Square. It had pretty Xmas decorations. There was a bagpiper playing there, that was fun to watch. From Union Street i walked through the Chinatown exploring the city on the way on foot. After walking about 2 miles and using my extremely precious streetwise San Francisco, i reached Ghirardelli Square. It was fun climbing and descending the hilly roads of the city. The city was bustling with crowd because of the holiday season. At Ghirardelli Square i saw another Xmas tree and a super long queue at the Ghirardelli Ice Cream shop. I clicked some pictures and asked a guy to take a picture of me. The only issue with travelling alone is taking pictures of yourself. You either mount your tripod or request someone. I had a hot chocolate at Ghirardelli and took a short break from walking. It was quite refreshing to sit down after such a long walk. My foot journey began again towards Fisherman's Wharf, and i saw more and more crowd. I walked all along Jefferson and Embarcadero stopping at Pier 39 . The xmas decorations here were the best among all places. Here i tried the self timer mode of my SLR for the first time and took shots of myself. Finally i reached the Ferry building and by this time i was pretty hungry. I went to the other side to Embarcadero Center and had a crepe which was yummy and along with that also had another sit down break. Now i could feel the brunt of my 5 mile foot exploration during the day on my legs :-), but it was fun. I was so determined to walk the entire distance yesterday from the very beginning that i thoroughly enjoyed it and completed it with more energy inspite of the slopes of the city. I was now waiting for it to get dark so that i could use the manual mode of the SLR to take some night pictures. Once it was dark, i walked to Pier-1 to click the Bay bridge. Overall a fun filled day spent with myself. I totally loved the experience of travelling alone without a plan with a Streetwise San Francisco map as the best friend.

Travelling Retrospection 08

2008 is going to come to an end. Looking back, one of the resolutions i had for this year was to travel a lot. So now logging the places i visited...let me think...:

1. Big Sur (February) - Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur River..
2.Palomarin Trail - Point Reyes National Seashore. (May)
3. India- Delhi, (June)
4. Mount Shasta, Sisikyou lake, Burney Falls (July)
5.SF Bay Bike Trip (july)
6. Camping - Big Sur, Elephant Seals (August)
7. Yellowstone National Park , Wyoming (September)
8.Eastern Sierras, - Bishop, Mammoth Lake (October)

Thats all I can think of, so how did i perform. Probably better than 2007 but still could have performed better in doing more overnight trips. So thats the new resolution for 2009 :-)

There was snow, white snow!

It was a long and dark December..There was snow, white snow. It was Madison, it was 2007. It was University Avenue. There was no bus no 2. I was walking behind my tall friend M, to shield myself from the snow flakes falling from the sky. I was also being shielded by the wind walking behind my friend M :-)..Winter in Madison truly rocks!

Lesson..

We start enjoying things only when they are about to come to an end. Its human nature followed by a majority of this human race i believe. We tend not to realize this fact. While we are in something, doing something, with someone, we forget to enjoy the goodness, pleasant things in that situation. For instance you might not love your job but still you might be enjoying plenty of things in that job which you forget to appreciate while you are in it. Or you might be with some one as a friend/house mate/ any other relation but you might not see the goods that person has to offer. When you are just about to be parted you might suddenly start enjoying being with that person. There are myriad examples. The only lesson which we should learn and try to follow is that we should try to see the small things and enjoy which typically get overwhelmed by other things. Maybe i am writing but not making sense :-) , maybe! Although i am trying to learn my lesson , hopefully!:-)