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Published: August 7th 2007
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March 6th -11th 2007 So finally our bay area trip happened! We had multiple reasons to be excited about this trip- not only was it Prema chithi (aunt’s) son
Upanaynam (Poonal) function that we were able to attend, my parents also were coming from India. Apart from that we had plans to meet some of our old friends, which I was really looking forward to. Anitha & I left for San Jose on March 6th and Karthik joined us on the 8th. I flew on United and Anitha on Southwest. After arriving at 1 pm, and a quick lunch…we went to the airport to pick up our parents who were arriving at 4 pm. It was great to see them after 1 and half years. They had a relatively uneventful flight and were glad to be here. It seemed to me that they had never been away from US after their 2004 visit and as we headed home they remembered quite a lot about the routes and interstates from their previous trip.
On March 7th my aunt had arranged for a
Sumangalai Prathanai function, which is an auspicious event, performed before any big function in Hindu custom. The family
that performs the function will feed 5, 7 or 9 sumangalis (married women) and 1 or 2 kanya girls. My mother and I were two of the five sumangalis who were participating in the function. A typical palghat-iyer style menu was prepared from 4 am by my aunt and mother. All I did pretty much was get up; take a shower, tie madisaar for my aunt and her friend and then sit down and eat a sumptuous lunch. As self-appointed event co-coordinator for Nikhil’s poonal I had some tasks to take care of that afternoon getting things ready which I did by putting Anitha & Nina (my cousin) to task. That evening I had planned to meet my senior from school Meera Jaishankar and her husband Ganesh who lived at Sunnyvale, CA. Had a great time at their place reminiscing about our high school days and things since then. Did not return home until 1 that night.
The next day Karthik was coming and in the evening we had planned to meet our friend Narayanan (Gaja) from BITS, Pilani. Had a great time with Gaja, Part2
and Koushik from Pilani. We all went to
Saravana Bhavan for dinner. My cousins Nikhil and Nina joined us too. It was Part2 birthday that day (March 8th). After dinner we spent some time at their house before returning home.
On Friday (March 9th) we decided to visit San Francisco City. My parents, Nikhil, Nina, Karthik and I went on this trip. My aunt and uncle gave us their new 2006 Honda Odyssey for the trip. We were really excited, as this was our first experience using a GPS system. It was a lot of fun. Nikhil and Nina had visited SFO many many times, I had visited twice I think, my parents once. Karthik was the only one who had not been there before and it was exciting for him. We all loved San Francisco city. Our first stop was
Crooked Street or
Lombard street which we drove down, stopped at and then took some pictures. After that we drove across the
Golden Gate Bridge , and then stopped at the viewpoint and spent some more Kodak moments. Our next stop was
The Ghirardelli Square , which was mandatory for a family of chocoholics like us. After sumptuous sundaes, we drove to
Union Square . The
place was amazing with stores that stretched for a whole street. We went to a Nike showroom with 12 or so odd floors. There was a Macy’s that panned a whole side of the square, a Disney store, Off Saks to name a few. We had originally planned to ride the cable car but were running short of time and decided to go to
Fisherman’s Wharf and
Pier 39 . Since it was a working day and we went quite late there were no fancy shows like street acrobatics that are usually a part of that place. We walked by seeing the fun stores and the bay on the other side. A trip to Pier 39 would be incomplete without sampling a crepe from the
“Crepe Café”, a cool store that allows the patrons to watch the chefs make the crepes. From there we returned home. To finish off the day we had dinner and a really nice time with our friend Sriram from Texas Arlington at
Tirupathi Bhimas .
On Saturday afternoon (March 10th), my other Aunt Lakshmy and her family were coming from Fortwayne, IN to attend the poonal. We went to
Livermore Temple to do the decorations for the stage
and the hall for the poonal. In the evening we had the
Udhaga Shanthi Function (an alternate to the traditional Nandhi function), a preliminary event to the poonal to invoke the blessings of the forefathers and elders. We met many of our relatives at the event. Prema chithi had catered very good food for the guests.
On Sunday (March 11th) was the main event- Nikhil’s entry into Brahmanhood ! The function started at about 7 am and ended at 11 am. It was a grand ceremony with a lot of friends and relatives gracing the occasion. Breakfast and Lunch were from
Swagat. We all had fun and then returned home at about 4 pm after packing and clearing the hall. We were quite sad our trip was ending.
A great trip had a sour ending due to really bad service by United Airlines. Our flight was supposed to leave at 8 am from San Jose reaching Nashville at 6 pm that evening (Monday-March 12th). We reached the airport to find our flight was canceled due to a mechanical failure, were re-routed through a flight leaving SFO at 11 am, which never took off till 2 pm. As a result we
missed our last connection flight out of Washington-Dulles at 9:40 pm and reached Nashville only at 10:30 am the next day. My serious advice to all you travelers, please don’t fly United if you can help it!
Until later, Take care y'all 😊😊
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Vijay
non-member comment
another good 1
A trip to bay area without describing much about the awesome food that you guys tasted here :( - very surprising......Expected a better version of your Atlanta food festival trip :) photos were really nice - probably, UA flight photo at the end would be good too :)). United Airlines is considering to give a complementary RT ticket for you both after reading this blog entry, do u want me to mail it to you ;)