Down the Memory Lane.. My trip to Los Angeles

After seeing the topic as down the memory line, I remembered about a long email that I wrote to my sister couple of years back explaining my trip to Los Angeles.. I am going to edit it here for this blog with pictures... This may not be a contest winner, but I felt Participation is more important than winning as it gives me an opportunity to write on my own about something...
I was one of the chaps in the group of four luckiest people from my ELT batch who got a chance coming to United States. The good thing is we were known for 2 years and a project at onsite with the buddies whom you know well, can't ask anything better than that.. And, to add more to it.. We got a new cool buddy Manju joining these group of 4 from Georgia.. She is the coolest person that I have seen... The project that we worked helped us in planning for all the fun activities that we wanted to do in United States. And, we planned for every weekend on where we want to go and we orchestrated the trips in the best possible manner.. Here comes a email writing to my sister explaining about our trip to Los Angeles...

We were living in Jersey City, NJ in Candlewood Suites (initial stay) and the story starts from here.. We started from our hotel on Friday evening to the Airport. None of us knew driving and we were dependant on Cab to go from place to place and on this day we had booked a limousine to take us to the Airport.

After our security check-in, we went into the flight.. We had a dream to travel in all the airlines.. And this was the first time I was ever gonna fly in United States.. I always thought they would give snacks whenever you travel in air. But for my dismay they did not give anything special.. Only in the name it had Pride of being called American Airlines.. But the service was very normal. When the flight was on air, asusual Pavi slept off and Reshma accompanied her.. When Ashok and Sarath started to watch movie.. it was me and Manju left with putting mokkais.. 6 hours of journey wasn't accompanied with snacks.. that's bad right... We were only served with Cool Drinks.

So far, I had only seen flight traveling on a bridge in email forwards, to my surprise the flight that I was travelling was running on top of a bridge below the automotive vehicles is crossing without any interruption. That is when I realized that we have reached Los Angeles. It was fascinating to see and I couldn’t stop appreciate the engineering.

We had this trip booked through gotobus.com and I had this reserved for all of us on my name and when we reached, there was a guy standing there with my name plate in his hand waving at the passengers coming out of the flight. I had a little pride as I saw someone holding my name to receive me.

That guy took us to hotel and we had food nearby to where we stayed. Those were the days I used to hate American foods. It was a get together for all our batch mates planned to enjoy our labor day weekend at Los Angeles. So, a group of 6 more people joined us at the hotel. Now, we became a group of twelve to roam around. As usual we had guys chat until 2 AM and went to bed.

Day 1:
The next day morning we went to Universal Studios where we had fun roaming around to different themes and rides. We started off from Van Helsing theme which was supposed to be scary, but as I said, it was not that scary or that interesting. Then we went to several other shows in Universal Studios. I was always afraid to go on a roller coaster ride and I was forced to sit with my friends in the Mummy ride and that was a stunning ride where the roller coaster went in reverse with full speed and we were not able to speak any word except to shout from the pitch of our throat.

Universal Studios was interesting because of the fact that I got to enjoy what I saw on pictures like Jeans in real. After our lunch, as usual we started to take pictures in different poses.
From Universal Studios we started down to Kodak Theater, to see the place where the prestigious academy awards are given. We took some more pictures after witnessing the finger prints of the famous Hollywood actors. At hotel, we enjoyed spending time in Swimming Pool and Jacuzzi, accompanied with hot and cold drinks on the pool.

And again after our dinner, we had guys chat until 2AM where we explored one of the guy’s college love story. College love stories are always interesting to hear and talk about. Even after an eventful day with full of roaming around rides and shows, we were up until 2 AM to hear about his interesting story.

Srini and Balaji were trying to persuade asking him to go back to his College Mate to propose her. I did nothing but to listen this interesting conversation.

Day 2:
The next day we headed down to San Diego sea world, though the drive was for two hours it was very good as on one side it had mountains and the other side was Ocean. It was a scenic extravaganza. On our way to the sea world, we took a break at a shopping place and I took a photo as a cow boy and I am still searching for it. It was a funny picture; I will try to post it in here, if I get it.

From there we headed on to a ship on the Atlantic Ocean. Again, I witnessed a man made wonder; a bridge construction on the sea connecting two different places.

At San Diego sea world, we watched shows like Shamu, Dolphin shows etc., I liked those shows a lot. Two hours ride back to hotel was fun as we started chatting about our ELT days.
After reaching hotel, as usual we ordered pizza, but we did not have chat on that day and unusually everyone went to bed early that night.

Day 3:

Disney Land was a dream place for me, and as usual we had fun in roaming around the theme park. We had the guide getting fast pass and ready at the exit where we came out and we covered max at all the places we visited. He was rushing us in helping us cover most places.

I still remember the Space Mountain ride as it was the first roller coaster ride, for the first time in a roller coaster, I had my eyes wide open, looking for turns and twists. The track of this roller coaster was in the dark and when you anticipate it to turn left; it would turn right and vice versa. It was awesome and made us feel as if we were dark in the sky with stars all around. One of the best rides ever. Of all the three days that I spent in LA, this is one of the best rides that I would remember forever.

From there we gathered at the main entrance by catching a train that runs through Disney Land. After three days of fun and fun, we were sad to get departed from one other. But, as usual tough moments and from there we headed back to Airport.

In our whole night of Journey in heading back to New Jersey, we slept. And the next day I was in the office at around 12 in the noon and for the whole day at office, I did nothing other than composing this big email to my sister.

If you are wondering if I am getting to do such things at office now..
I should agree to the fact that I am not lucky anymore and the days will never return…

Valkailayum VCR la irukara madhiri oru rewind button irundha evlo nalla irukum !!