25th May 2010, 20:19
| #16 | |||
| Senior - BHPian  Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: cincinnati, jabalpur,chennai
Posts: 1,264
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| Hey, I just got back from my florida vacation and saw this. nice plan. I have uploaded some pics and videos on my facebook. Quote:
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PS: DSCN7472 has a lot of red. picasa warmth? try reducing color temeprature and saturation. Last edited by vivekiny2k : 25th May 2010 at 20:21. | |||
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. Is there anything else worth visiting Atlantic City?
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25th May 2010, 21:10
| #17 |
| Senior - BHPian  Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: City of seven islands.
Posts: 2,877
Thanked: 231 Times
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26th May 2010, 11:00
| #18 | |||||
| BHPian  | Quote:
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 . The rain sensing wipers - I cannot shut them off. Some of these automatic things can beat you to death. I remember going to the Christmas lights show in Sharonwood and they had a advisory to switch off lights. My car has auto headlights that can't be switched off in Drive mode. Everyone thought I was crazy to drive with headlights on.Quote:
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 . And IMO we should go and enjoy at Niagara at least 10 times before even thinking to waste time in shooting pictures.P.S.: Folks sorry for not being able to update this log. NY is getting hectic. I just returned and it is 1:30 AM now. | |||||
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26th May 2010, 13:57
| #19 |
| Senior - BHPian Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: City of seven islands.
Posts: 2,877
Thanked: 231 Times
| Sad because I did the mistake of not carrying a tripod too.  After 8 years, all I have of the falls is faded memories and shaky photos of the lights! |
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3rd June 2010, 09:53
| #20 |
| BHPian | 5/22 – Day 2 – Niagara Falls (Part 1) The forecast for the day says – rain; lots of rains. It doesn’t sounds very exciting – isn’t it? It was a beautiful day except that the sun was behind the clouds.  Our hotel was just couple of hundred meters from the entrance to Niagara Falls State Park. And the street in the picture above is called Old Falls Street. It has been recently closed to vehicular traffic and renovated. Today is the grand opening of the street by the Mayor. And there’s going to be live music – preparations were on. We didn’t have time to attend the gala opening though.  Tip: If you are visiting Niagara Falls for the first time and are planning to dedicate one entire day to Falls, don’t think twice before buying Discovery Pass. It will save you almost 30 to 40 USD per head. But if you are a seasoned Niagara visitor and would like to only visit couple of attractions then forget it. We were to meet our gang at the Park office. The remaining 3 families have travelled from Chicago and are joining us there.  Two of the three guys have bought new Canon Rebel DSLRS (I was the odd one out with the Nikon P&S) and we look all set for the day. Just that we need to buy our Discovery Passes. The ladies are having fun time with children while the men stand in the queue.  All set, we first head to the Observation tower. It is a good location to start with. We can see the view point from where we had enjoyed the illumination and fireworks show yesterday night. The people at the bottom (in blue ponchos) are the on their way to their first rendezvous with the mist from American Falls. People generally decide to walk up there after taking their Maid of Mist tour. And the mist on the top right corner is from the Horse Shoe Falls (read Niagara Falls). Of course yesterday night when we saw the American Bridal Veil Falls, which itself is so magnificent that it never clicked to us that we are only seeing the Bridal Veil Falls. But the amount of water that flows from American Bridal Veil Falls is just 1/10th of what flows from the Horse Shoe Falls. You can imagine.  Here’s another image of Horse Shoe Falls from the observation deck. I hope you are able to notice the two Maid of Mist ferries. The observation deck gives an awesome perspective of how big (and deep) the gorge actually is – carved by the Niagara river.  Customary Kodak moments and time to proceed for Maid of Mist ride.   A nice view of the Niagara river – and that traffic jam on the bridge will not move for next 4 hours.  Note: I didn’t waste any time in taking pictures on the Maid of Mist tour. I will strongly recommend taking Maid of Mist tour once in your life time. There’s nothing like Horse Shoe Falls that you will see in your lifetime. It is an experience to live. And America literally lives up to its reputation of everything big. The Falls are big bigger biggest. And no amount of reading or photograph viewing can prepare you for the outright grandeur of the Falls. And if you think I am raising the expectations for the folks who have not visited yet, I can promise that you will be pleasantly surprised no matter how huge is your expectation. The best part is the falls make you feel humble (even meek) but they challenge you at the same time. After our Maid of Mist tour, we took the customary walk to feel the mist of the American Bridal Veil Falls. It is a lot of stairs but a lot of fun as well.   And it was time for lunch – we decided to lunch at Hard Rock Café which is just outside the Niagara Falls State Park. There’s this interesting tidbit about belief in Ganesha by the folks who started the Hard Rock Cafes. The beautiful lady who served us the food also told us the story including the fact that the Ganeshas in Hard Rock Café (if the café has one, not all have) always face north. I was impressed.  We enjoyed the food. Except Ganesha, after a long time I felt I was dining in Bangalore…    After lunch we took the shuttle to Aquarium.  The aquarium is average. After seeing some beautiful exhibits in Cincinnati Zoo, there was not much to explore. But yes there were few aquatic species from the Lakes that may interest some. I loved the poisonous dart frogs’ exhibit. These frogs spit venom (IIRC) and there’s no antidote. They are among the most poisonous species on earth and are endangered now. They belong to Central/South America. I remember watching a National Geographic episode on these frogs. Sorry no pictures but here are couple of them from the wiki article on dart frogs.   If you happen to visit aquarium at a time when Sea Lion show is within the waiting parameter, then you may like to enjoy one – in case you haven’t seen any Sea Lion shows before. I heard they have a similar show in Bronx Zoo as well (and there may be other places as well). It was a new thing to us and so we decided to wait 20 minutes for the show. We also had three kids in the gang who we thought may enjoy the show. It was actually paisa vasool. Here’s an excerpt. As we came out, my son was hungry. I am not sure if he was planning to play some trick on the ice cream from what he learned out of Sea Lion show.  And this is what happens when you have a new camera and you are all enthu about taking pictures…   My friend was still busy with his camera as we waited for the shuttle.  And finally it comes.  To be continued… |
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3rd June 2010, 12:57
| #21 | |
| Senior - BHPian Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: City of seven islands.
Posts: 2,877
Thanked: 231 Times
| Here's three of my photos to go with your points. Posting with your kind permission. Hope you don't mind it. Quote:
 Maid of the mist. I sure look like an idiot. But at 4 deg, when you are drenched, more with excitement, you can't control your expressions. I was thrilled to the core.  Walk up the Bridal veil falls. Having mastered the art of posing getting drenched in the Niagara, here I present a more relaxed, "come on baby" kind of a look. But it wasn't easy considering the temperature and the awesome force with which the bride dropped her veil! The others in the pic clearly show the effect of the force of water!  At the end, one always realises, that forces of nature are too powerful and have a humbling effect on humans! I'm no exception. | |
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3rd June 2010, 16:23
| #22 | |
| BHPian  | Quote:
 after watching drenched & drenched again.I bet you should have enjoyed a lot. | |
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3rd June 2010, 19:49
| #23 |
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4th June 2010, 01:51
| #24 | |
| Team-BHP Support   | dark rainy day. Great travelogue! Sure had a lot of driving to do. How many miles on the car now? Quote:
 Don't the rain sensors switch OFF when you turn the wiper stalk to OFF? How about the Twilight setting - does that reduce the headlight intensity? Also, when you drive with only parking lights ON, the headlights shouldn't be ON. If you're tired of the auto headlights, there's some fiddling around you can do to disable them. Might simply involve removing a fuse or splicing some wires here and there - lots of info on GM specific forums. Also DRL's aren't required by law in the U.S., as opposed to in Canada so you can disable them too if you wish. | |
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4th June 2010, 06:06
| #25 | ||
| BHPian | 5/22 – Day 2 – Niagara Falls (Part 2) Everyone decided to watch the movie (45 minute movie and all of them gave a great review) while I decided to take a stroll in Niagara Falls State Park. As I crossed the pedestrian bridge that goes over the American Rapids, the number of Indian tourists suddenly dropped.  When you are in Niagara Falls State Park, the map below will be of immense help. If you buy the discovery pass they give it to you for free. You can also take it from the visitor center for free. If someone wants to do advance planning, please order a brochure on the website below. I did order, but a little late. It came after I left for Niagara.  Order your brochure here When you are in Niagara (NY), don’t miss the below attractions…
You get a beautiful view of American Falls from this point north of Luna Island. You can see that the Luna Island divides the American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls (not visible).  The water as it flows to become Bridal Veil Falls. Perspective distortion – the river in the gorge is flowing 17 meters below this rapid.   From Luna Island you can feel the American Falls just slipping beneath your feet. It’s a great view and feeling.   You also get to see the Cave of Winds – those people in yellow ponchos are all having a time of their lifetime.  Then I walked up to the Terrain Point. Terrain point lets you view Horse Shoe Falls up-close. At least you get to view 70% of the Horse Shoe.   It looks like anyone who goes down, is going to earth’s crust. The huge mouth of Horse Shoe Falls  Please note the Maid of Mist boat – that is the farthest the boat goes.  The Top of the Rocks restaurant is visible in the distance.  The mist coming out of the falls goes thousands of feet above the ground. The otherwise tall buildings just disappear in the mist.  But as I walked back the buildings were visible from a different angle. If that Konica Minolta building is an office building, I will not mind joining that office .  Niagara Falls has seen a lot of science and its application – right since it’s early days to recent times. The world’s first Hydro Electric project that transmitted electricity was built at Niagara in the early 20th century – the electricity was transported 20 miles to the city of Buffalo. Today Buffalo is the second largest metropolitan city in New York State. It is only apt to acknowledge great people behind scientific inventions.  If you are travelling alone, you will always have a seagull for your company at Niagara Falls. They add so much to the magnificence.  By now the gang was back with me. We now took the Cave of Wind tour. I thought the regular tour ticket of 21 USD is just a rip off as all they do is take you down a long (really long, like Maid of Mist) elevator and then you are on your own. But to compensate they give you shoes to change and shoes that you can carry back – that if you wish to. You get this majestic view of the Horse Shoe falls as get out of the elevator tunnel  Time again for some Kodak moments  Of course we were tired after such a hectic day. But all this tiredness is going to go away as we walked beneath the Bridal Veil Falls. My camera’s battery died at this point but thanks to MX6, we have a picture of Cave of Winds. I don’t have words to express the Adrenalin rush when you are at Cave of Winds. If this is the kind of thrill that the shortest and the smallest Fall can have on you, you can only imagine. The Bridal Veil Falls are the shortest at 17 meters and separated from the larger American Falls by Luna Island. Picture borrowed from MX6.  Quote:
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…. Dinner was nothing special. Some of the people in the gang wanted to have Indian food and I am not much of a fan of having Indian food here. We then crashed to our beds hoping to get up early to leave for New York. Niagara concluded... To be continued... | ||
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5th June 2010, 08:07
| #26 | ||||
| BHPian | Thanks everyone for your comments. Quote:
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5th June 2010, 09:53
| #27 |
| BHPian | 5/23 to 5/24 – Drive to New York and Rest Day (Day 3 & Day 4) 5/23 We woke up to a beautiful sunny day in Niagara. The streets looked less crowded and more inviting. But we had to leave. As lazy as I am, we were ready to leave only at 11:00 in the morning. We took a quick ride to Terrain Point so that my wife can enjoy Horse Shoe falls up close (yesterday she was watching the movie in the adventure theater while I was strolling the Niagara Falls State Park). And true to its reputation, the Horse Shoe Falls were wrapped within a magnificent rainbow. I had left my camera in the car and was in no mood to walk back to the parking lot and then walk back again. Sorry. But here we began our journey on this colorful note to New York. The time was noon and the GPS showed some 400 odd miles. With sun playing hide and seek and overall natural beauty of I86, the drive was a breeze and one of the most enjoying of my life. My wife was having good time with the camera…      We stopped for lunch in one of the service areas and had Sbarro pizzas and Dibs Mint Ice Cream Snack (my favourite). And then continued our wonderful drive. The only ugly sights were of Police Patrols intercepting vehicles for speeding. Unusually large numbers – we would have at-least came across 35-40 incidents – mostly with Toyotas and Hondas. I may be wrong or it may be just a bad day for the drivers of these cars or may be it was by design. I have my doubts.     Then my son wanted a break. So we entered this rest area – on the banks of river Hudson.     We walked up to the river   And then again continued…  New York (we are staying in Yonkers) was around 120 miles when we left the Rest Area. As we merged with I87, the drive became difficult. There were a lot of firsts for me since I left Ohio and entered New York State. Tolls, unusually high number of speed tickets, highway sign language (intimidating at times) and general mannerisms. But as I neared New York the rowdy road manners took me by complete surprise. People were speeding almost 30 miles over the speed limit – no patrolling, people changing lanes like crazy, impolite passing, etc. And all this while I was still on I87. Welcome to New York – I told myself. We reached our friends’ house at 8:00 PM. They are hosting us for next one week. We had delicious Pav Bhaji as dinner and it was good night time for the day. Both our hosts have office to attend early morning next day and the kid has to go to school. 5/24 We had kept this day for restitution as well as planning next 5 days. My friend came back early and helped us plan. He is in New York for last 5 years and provided with some good insights. Simple things like vertical roads in Manhattan are avenues and horizontal roads are streets can also be of great help. Reading Metro maps, finding directions/bus connections from home to subway and back. Things like this apart from overall planning. I and my wife had planned to make Dum Arbi (Toro Root as they call it here in US) for our hosts that night; turned out to be a good preparation. Tomorrow we start our New York leg. To be continued... |
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16th June 2010, 03:28
| #28 |
| BHPian | OT - Two Hours at The Capitol (6/11/2010) Owing to an urgent travel request, I had to be in Richmond all of last week. Couldn't continue with New York. However one good thing that came with this travel was my short - really short - trip to Washington DC. As I had just visitied a few museums in NY and also the Air Force museum in Dayton, I kept museums out of my itinerary. After looking at Chevelle's photo log on DC, the Capitol building was the only thing that interested me. And so it turned out of 7 hours of driving (due to heavy traffic) for spending less than 2 hours at the Capitol. But was it worth - it was absolute fun. Note: I thought I had everything mapped out - except the most important thing - parking. If any of you decide to drive to the Capitol, like I did, it may be useful for you to know that there's no public parking at or around Capital. There is some metered (two hour limit) parking on the west but then don't forget to carry quarters. After running circles for an hour, I finally figured out that I need to park in Union Station Public Park facility - which is just a block away. So here's the off topic Washington DC post for you all...  I had many doubts in my mind like - if they will allow me anywhere near the building, if I will be able to spend time, etc? And it turned out to be a chilled out visit. With so many people (crowd), I felt at home. Another thing that made me feel at home was the presence of Police personnel. You don't get to see them much - they were not in that many number as compared to any high security site in India, but they were still in quite a few number. But all that matters at the Capitol is the Statue of Freedom - that reminds you how America has shaped up in last century.  After basking in the sun and the glory of the Capitol, I decided to visit the Visitor Center. As I was walking in, they had airport like screening and I was wondering what's that all about - well I only wanted to visit the Visitor Information center. But as I walked in the main hall - Emancipaiton Hall, the world around me became clear. There were hundreds of people - students, professionals, and tourists like me.    I collected some information brochures and as I went thru them, one thing that striked me was the amount of transparency. They even have a transparent roof for one to visualize the location of Emancipation hall - no this is not a bad joke, it is their in the information brochure as well . If you decide to take a tour, you will start right behind that plaster model of the Statue of Freedom.  One can even watch Congress in Session (both Senate and House Galleries) - when they are in Session of course. Special pass is required and can be taken at House and Senate Appointment Desks on the upper level. The plaster model is the original model that was shipped from Rome (in 5 pieces) and has been restored now. This was the model that was used for casting the one that's on the dome of the Capitol building.  At the gift shop, I found this plate -  this saying is beatifully articulated by this picture at XLRI campus (without credits, but wise words travel great distances)  I was having fun but it was time to leave...  Not before I spend a few more moments basking in Sun and the glory of the Capitol building  A self potrait with the timer - my friend in NY told me don't just take pictures - take pictures with you in them as well so you can tell you were there. Well it is obvious, but this is one of those places where I would like to have my picture...  As I walked towards Union Station, I walked pass thru the Supreme Court. I have seen this building in the popular television series Law & Order (which also happens to be one of my favourite shows).  At Union Station Americans decided to pay tribute to Columbus - the man who gave Americans the land to build their America...  The Union Station is one great place. The food court (the picture below is not of the food court) was busier than any busy food court in India. The people are what make the place what it is. No wonder Washington DC is a over populated (relatively).  I drive back to Richmond and take my flight to Cincinnati. I will be shortly continuing with my New York log. Last edited by akbaree : 16th June 2010 at 03:42. |
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16th June 2010, 08:39
| #29 |
| Senior - BHPian Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 1,891
Thanked: 42 Times
| Great travelogue akbaree. Fantastic pictures of some of the world famous locations. You have also narated it extreemly well. Personally i liked your hanging from the rope by a knot as well as your son's picture with the icecream. It appears he is thinking "abhi main ise kaise khaoon ?"  Last edited by StarVegabond : 16th June 2010 at 08:41. |
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16th June 2010, 10:36
| #30 |
| Senior - BHPian Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: City of seven islands.
Posts: 2,877
Thanked: 231 Times
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