Hmm… It is a mystery why I never wrote a post about my first ever trip to the US of A considering that had been my first ever foray outside the country too. For five decades of your life you never step out of your country and then one fine day, just like that wheeeee…. you are on the other side of the globe. That was how it happened back in 2010.

Well, actually it is not such a mystery why I never did write anything about it here at my Nest. You see the First Born looks squiggly-eyed at meeting people I have only known online. One can’t really blame him though. Being a non-blogger he does not appreciate the difference between bloggers and people-one-has-met-on-the-net. Yes, I have found that non-bloggers are biased that way, having absolutely no clue about this strange breed called bloggers, or the camaraderie and the bonds that exist between such as them.

It is certainly not that I have the habit of consulting my kids on who I meet or not, but being on his turf so to speak, I decided to humor his wishes (or should that be his fears?) and so kept the news of my travel plans well under wraps. I did not want someone or other I really knew to find out and say ‘Hey Shail! You are in my neighborhood? Let’s meet up!” and being gobsmacked to find I had no plausible excuse (well I can of course offer a lie, but then I am honest, remember?) to offer as to why I wouldn’t be meeting them after all. That is just one reason that I never wrote anything about my first-ever trip.

There is of course another more weird reason. I believed (still do to a half-hearted extent) that I was no good at writing about my travels. Now don’t you go snigger-snigger. Yup, I have some fancy ideas about myself. I can’t do this, I can’t to do that, I don’t know to write a book review, novel writing is beyond me… There are many more. But this will suffice to give you a general idea. But strike me pink if I hadn’t been to Bali since then and written posts after posts (link) about it, not real travel posts in the real sense, but my own spin on the trip. That’s when it struck me, Hey! Why is there nothing on my first-ever trip abroad? Now is as good a time as any for a quick run through, as I am back in the US on another holiday.

First of all I relaxed big time. I went for walks with the son, the First Born. Well actually he ran and I walked about clicking the ducks, the trees, the sky and the rest. Each evening he took me to a different place to taste new cuisine. So one day I was tasting Mongolian fare, another day Thai dishes (I love the Thai tea!), one evening I tucked into Pakistani Biriyani, yet another day it was Mexican food which was followed by Greek. Okay, that is enough, methinks. This is starting to give the impression that all I did was eat, eat and eat some more. It definitely was not all about eating.

We went to the Monterey Bay (link) and had a look at all the fish at the aquarium, went to Fisherman’s Wharf and enjoyed the antics of the seals on Pier 39, saw the Golden Gate Bridge, roamed the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, drove through 17-Mile Drive (link), saw movies, went shopping. Then there was my birthday when I got a cake and an iPod. Yay me, for getting the best ever gift being a music-crazy someone! It is a wonder we managed all this because the FB was extremely busy in the office. Each time we went out he would sit up even later into the night to finish his work. In fact one of his colleagues joked that it was good I was visiting just then because soon they were going to be so busy that they were thinking of moving to the office full time.

The FB was worried of Mom getting bored being alone at home most of the time. Bored and 1? They are not words that go together. I went for walks, surfed the net, read, clicked and within no time, one month was up, and it was time to go back.

Below are three videos I made, two of them from some of the pictures I took (with Sony Cybershot W-150) on that visit.

The first part of this one shows pictures from Monterey Bay and from time-stamp 2-05 onwards, those from 17-Mile Drive.

Sea-lions at Pier 39

Pictures taken on the many walks on the trail