Merseyside

Welcome to Liverpool, home to the Beatles, scouse, a Tate and a football team that apparently never walks alone.

One of this year's European Capitals of Culture (the other being Stavanger in Norway), the city seemed to be gearing up for a summer influx of tourists with scaffolding everywhere and road works being undertaken in earnest.

The city, is compact and the city center can be easily traversed by foot. We spent most of our time exploring the waterfront and the docks. They have shopping centers and several restaurants serving a variety of cuisines ranging from Indian to Mediterranean. The waterfront also houses the Tate Liverpool. We visited one exhibition - the Twentieth Century and how it looked - which was sponsored by DLA Piper. I particularly enjoyed the figurative sculptures which involved representations of lives through artefacts - a bed, kitchen implements, soap dishes etc.

Liverpool is also home to two big cathedrals - the Anglican cathedral with one of the largest organs and heaviest bells in the world, and the other the Metropolitan Cathedral. Rather appropriately, the road connecting the two churches is called Hope Street.

While the Anglican church is a beautiful building, the Met. cathedral was a touch too modern for my tastes. Altogether too much steel, glass, and fluroscent lighting.

A keen reader will notice I'm omitting all mention of the Beatles. Obviously they are one of Liverpool's prime attractions, but there are only so many tacky yellow submarine buttons I can look at, so will leave that alone. Suffice to say that for any die-hard Beatlemaniac, there is enough in Merseyside to amuse and entertain.

Check List

1. Neat shopping list with bullet points - Check
2. Misplacing said shopping list - Check
3. Emailing everyone I work with to make sure they have everything they need so they will not call me for the next fortnight (one hopes!) - Check
4. Hectic shopping a few hours before my flight, desperately trying to remember WHERE I saw that particular item I wanted for S - Check
5. Call my bank to let them know I am travelling so that they don't block my Credit Card - Check
6. Online check in to make sure I get an aisle seat - Check
7. Out of Office Auto Reply - Check

Good night London, Good morning Chennai!!

Moorish Escapades

My only knowledge of Morocco comes from the movie Casablanca, which I later learned wasn't even shot there.

Before we left, I had mental images of Oriental splendour and deep dark intrigues in narrow alleyways. I wasn't disappointed.

The Riad - A home away from home

We spent most of the five days in Marrakech, in Southern Morocco, a couple of hours away from the sea. We decided to stay in a riad which are old Moroccan homes converted into guesthouses.

They usually have 3-5 rooms each and the owners or care takers stay on the premises. You get home cooked meals, a flavor of Moroccan life, and a chance to meet other tourists as well.

Riad Ghallia - on Derb El Khemis, Place Mokhef

Our riad was in the heart of the Medina (the old city) with streets so narrow that taxis had to drop us off on the main square. Maps aren't really reliable amongst the tiny unmarked streets and its best to orient yourself well during the day so you don't get too lost.

The Square and the Souks

Djemma El F'na, the central square in the Medina at the heart of the old city is a designated UNESCO world heritage site. With snake charmers, dancers, mini boxing rings and story tellers, the square buzzes with life.

While a lot of tourists do visit, a large percentage of the patrons are locals for whom the story tellers etc are a nightly entertainment.

The square also has innumerable stalls selling freshly cooked cous cous, calamari, dry fruits, juices, pastillas, snail soup and more.

Djemma El F'na - the main square in the Medina

Just off the square is the intricate maze of the souks. We spent hours browsing here for knickknacks from intricately worked baboushes (shoes) to spice holders shaped like tajine pots. Bargaining is elevated to an art form in the souks and we learnt that a good bet is to quote 20% of the salesman's initial figure, and expect to pay about 30-40%!

The Souk

A Gastronome's Paradise

The one great thing about travelling from the UK is that things are invariably significantly cheaper ever where else. If NY seems affordable, Marrakech was like paradise. We ate at some truly exquisite restaurants including La Trattoria and Pacha Marrakech

La Trattoria is an Italian restaurant in the heart of the new city (Gueliz). They have a beautiful bar and a delightful restaurant by the poolside. With warm fires blazing in the winter and excellent seafood, it was a great evening.

Pacha Marrakech is the newer, younger sibling of Pacha in Ibiza. Apart from a world renowned club, they also have two restaurants with luxurious decor and decadent indulgence all around.

The Ruins - Palace El Badi

At the southern end of the old city is the Palace El Badi, next to the Mellah (Jewish enclave). This 16th century palace was built by the Saadian king Ahmed El Mansour based on the design of the Alhambra palace in Granada. Much of its splendour was lost when it was stripped by a subsequent king, Sultan Moulay Ismail, to decorate his palace in Meknes.

El Badi Palace

Essaouira

After a few days in Marrakech, we decided to head to the seaside, and went to Essaouira. Earlier called Mogador, Essaouira literally means "well designed". And well designed it is! A beautiful tiny seaside town on the Atlantic coast, its white walls and buildings give it a very Meditteranean feel. We lunched here (you do notice the amount of eating we did!) at Les Alizes - which served up some delightful Moroccan fare, including the inevitable tajine.

We spent most of the afternoon sitting in a cafe in the port, facing the sea, enjoying the sun and reading our books.

All in all, a wonderful way to spend Christmas!

A Whale of a Time!

Over long travels far and wide, I have come to the great realization that I am a city person. I love the huge metropoli, with their sky-high real estate prices and crowded streets.


Ever so often... usually when I'm stuck in traffic for about 45 minutes on a Tuesday afternoon, I claim that I want to run away to a more pleasant environs. Where there are rolling meadows and clear air and clean water and... well... pretty much nothing else.



About 20 minutes into 'sitting quietly and contemplating nature' and I want to run to a coffee shop, take in a movie and shop at my neighbourhood grocery for everything from instant rava dosa mix to olives stuffed with pimientos.


As I said, I'm a city girl.


But on a recent excursion into more pristine environs, I had the luck to catch some of mother nature's truly outstanding creations.

Picture taken by Appa during Whale watching trip in Junea, Alaska. May-Jun 2007

Night Riders Inc.

The distance between Vastrapur and Gandhinagar is roughly 30 odd kilometers. The roundtrip took us about 1.5 hours and 74 km on an open highway. Before you do the mental math, let me clarify that its true what they say - The average man will sooner have a body part waxed than ask for directions!

My personal sense of direction has always been a little, shall we say, off. K. is, if possible, much worse :)

We left campus at 2 am and immediately proceeded for 10 km in the wrong direction. To give us some credit, we went in exactly the opposite direction. No mean feat that!

There's something about the wind in your hair on a cool morning, an open road, and no destination or timetable in mind. For as far as we could see, the road was ours.

As Sally says, in Cars

Well, the road didn't cut through the land like that interstate. It moved with the land, it rose, it fell, it curved. Cars didn't drive on it to make great time. They drove on it to have a great time.

And we ended with piping hot parathas at a roadside dhaba..

A pic of me at a sign saying Gujarat Tourism welcomes you

Go Goa!

Before we left, we tried to understand the term susegad. From a variety of travel guides and internet resources, we gleaned the following :

Susegad, is a way of life in Goa. It's roots lie in the portugese word socegado which - loosely transalated - means 'laid back'. A less charitable reviewer even called it 'indolent'.

What is true however, is that the pace of life in Goa is slower, much slower than anything I've ever experienced.



In our quest to have a 'real beach holiday' we scouted around for a quiet, non-touristy beach. We finally hit the jackpot in South Goa near Palolem where we found a piece of unspoiled coast. For as far as the eye could see, we were the only ones on the beach. Four days with no cellphone access was a completely new experience for me. I'd never been so 'out of touch'.

Most shops open only at 10.30, only to promptly close again at 12 for 'breaking time'. At breakfast one day we ordered something called a 'transcendental juice' only to be told that the cook hadn't managed to go shopping that day. Something that would've elicited some frowns anywhere else, seems perfectly reasonable in Goa.

One afternoon we went shopping in Palolem and I sighted a pair of bamboo slippers that I wanted to buy. When I asked the shopkeeper if I could try them on, he said (with a smile) "er.. No Ma'am, I have only one pair..".

I don't think I have an accurate definition for what susegad is, but considering how happy everyone seems - I think they may have hit upon a good thing!



On the whole, it was four days of lying on the beach, getting sun, napping all afternoon, staying up till 2 am talking, reading on the deck and lazing around. On our last day we finally roused ourselves to go to a more commercial beach and managed to jetski, parasail, and fall off a contraption called a 'ringo' boat into the deep blue sea.

I can't wait to go back!