After a late crash it was quite a struggle to get up in the morning.. Last to sleep and first to wake..Now you understand the pain dont you.. After a quick sprint to the bathroom, there i was, ready at 5.45 AM. The rest followed suite and we were all ready by 7 AM. Pretty cool... I happened to notice this rather unusual bathroom on the ground floor. It had the look of a victorian bedroom. Yes, it very much was a bathroom. It was bigger than any modern lounge you would find in London. So could not resist taking couple of shots in that (dont look at me like that we were fully dressed)...It had a huge wash basin at one end of the room and the closet at another corner. It had a bath tub (rather small for the size of the room though).



Back in our rooms, had hot Idlys (of course we had a microwave in our ammodation !!!) and vacated our accomodation. with our backpacks on our shoulder we proceeded to the very same beach in Sandown we had been the previous night. Had a cup of hot chocolate by the sea side restaurant with flapjacks and almond pastries.. Spend some time with cold breeze filled with a gush of droplets in the air. Oh what a feeling it was...



We then took the bus to Shanklin (another good sea front) and spent some time enjoying the sea front and the old village around the place. The roadside train took us around the area of Shanklin and by mid day we were off to Ventnor an another facinating sea side town full of action.



We has exhausted all our packed food by then. So we made a quick look around for some decent vegetarian restaurant in the town center. And be believe me, not one could we find. Thats when we finally decided we shall enjoy the beach first and cross the bridge when it comes. Back in the beach, you could see a whole lot of people doing para gliding and wind surfing on the sea. It was pretty windy too. So Naresh and me took some Keanu Reeves kinda shots with the wind blowing on your face.. There was a fantastic pool with the map of the IOW and a nice looking and decorative small water fall near the beach which were promptly covered by us in our cameras..



By then, the temporarily dormant hunger benag to raise again. We decided not to venture out looking for any more desi restaurants and decided to have sandwiches and vegge burgers. We were in for a surpise as we got a better food than we had expected. By London standards, it was far more less burdening on the pocket too. By now we were almost on the fag end of the trip and packed our bags to the Bus station in Town center to move back to Ryde. We were lucky to have a ferry starting immediately from the port to portsmouth. The ferry back was more pleasant as the rains had completely stopped and we had clear view of the channel we were crossing.

Took the National Express again back to London and the tube back home...

Though all of us were quite exhaused, we still felt it would have been all the more fun had we stayed a day longer...

Labels: Outings

This weekend went rather funpacked with a facinating trip to the Isle of wright. It was actually pretty quick planned as we were still not very sure till 2-3 days before the trip. Though the decision was taken with very few days of notice, we were pretty quick in getting all other things organized.

We had 2 teams preparing food for the trip (The last we wanted to have was searching for good Indian food). Team one (the 2 ace bachelor samayal experts Naresh & Me)prepared the all famous puliyodharai (Tamarind Rice) and team 2 (My Mom & Eashwari) prepared idly and Chapathi/Subji in the night before the journey. Contarary to popular expectations, all parties got together in Hounslow east on early saturday morning and thus started on the initial long tube bound journey towards Central London (Victoria). From there the team took the National Express to Portsmouth. We had a non-stop marathon chat session throughout the journey till we reached Portsmouth by some section of the team while another section choose to rather conserve energy by going on to the Power-Saving mode.

Though Portsmouth port was very welcoming,the climate there was not so (bit of drizzles). That did not spoil our sprits though and we then took the FastCat ferry to Ryde (Isle of wright - IOW). This is where the drizzles played its first act as villain. We were unable to enjoy the full fun of a ferry across the english channel (i hope so..I am not very strong with Geography..More so the english geography). The ferry went whoosh across to the isle in matter of 15 - 20 minutes..



On landing on the Ryde port, we noticed some cinema shooting.. The typical indian excitement took over us and we did the classic crowd peeping act in a rather professioanl way. It was indeed a shooting for a Tamil movie starring Sham.. After a casual glance of him, went near the coffee vending machine to have a cup of hot chocklate. That was when i noticed a good looking girl dressed in white. I initially thoughtit was his wife since she was sitiing rather cut off from the shooting spot. That's when i was enlightened by Eashwari that it was actress Sandhya. With a sense of uncertainity, asked her if she was Sandhya to which she replied with a small yes in her lips and a big YES in her eyes. Armed with the initial success of breaking the ice, aked her if i can take a snap of her. Was a Yes this time too. By now my mom had begun her conversation with her. Both were excited to know that they went to the same school (of course with a huge gap in years). Came to know that she was a mallu too. After bidding adieu to her, we moved on to the Ryde Bus terminus via the long Ryde Pier (Its the 2nd longest pier in the South England).







We then took a 2 day Rover ticket (allows travel throughout the island for the weekend) and took the bus to Needles - the top attraction in IOW. Sure was a long journey and we had a quick lunch in between the journey at Newport. We were longing for some good break and what more can you ask when we have some delicious home made Chapathi & Subji. We had all along been surviving with few Bananas till then...



When we reached Needles, it was heavily windy. My fears grew more as we had some ultra thin gang members. These a quite a few occasion where being on the other side helps. Nevertheless we did manage to stroll around in the heavily windy and deserted pleasure park in Alum Bay and could have at most of privacy we could not even imagine. All others who had come prior to us had fled the place fearing the wind but for us and a few more...



When we felt we had enough of fun, we started our journey towards Sandown (the place where we had booked our accommodation for the night).Back in our rooms in Sandown, we relaxed for sometime, had a good dinner (Puliyodharai) and some brave members of the gang took a stroll around the sandown beach which was a stones throw from the place we stayed.

While most of them decided to end their tiring day, the die-hard movie buffs like me saw for the nth time "Behind Enemy Lines" which was broadcasted on the TV in our room. So ended catching a glimpse of sleep well past mid night.

Atlast what a day it was....

Labels: Outings