Road Trip
Yes, finally graduated and was ready for something other than the mundane life. Needed to travel very badly. Considering the fact that i had graduated recently and was now in the job hunt mode, A reallocation to the silicon valley seemed to be the logical choice. After lot of thinking, which lasted for one phone call, i decided to move to California. But reallocation to California is not what this post is about. This post is about the journey to California. Some of the perks of getting an internship in big companies is that they take care of your reallocation charges. A friend of mine had got into one such company and he wanted to drive to California. So things fell into place and there we were, on our way to California in a 2003 Toyota corolla.
Left Arlington, Texas on 05/21/2009 and headed to El paso, Texas. We decided to drive about 400 miles a day which makes each of us to drive about 200 miles and for 4 hrs.
Route details.
05/22/2009 El Paso, Texas
El Paso is a city which lies in Texas and the border of Mexico, the country and New Mexico, the state. You can sense the influence of mexico at this place. Spanish is what is spoken more often that English. from this place you can actually enter mexico and re-enter usa. there are about 3 bridge which connects el paso with mexico. The movie "No Country for Old Men" was filmed here. While on I10 you can see the border . the tall wall separates the nations. Generally we used to do site seeing this afternoon and have lunch and leave to the next city in our trip. so we had about half a day in el paso. so we went to a church and then headed to the city down town. as usual you can find some of the photos of the city below. I would suggest to take the scenic drive to see the entire city and the other side of the border. the market place near the border is also a nice place to walk around to experience a nice atmosphere.
The church
The border.
The Downtown and the market.
The Scenic drive.
05/23/2009 Phoenix, Arizona.
We only had enough time to visit the downtown of phoenix. the downtown of phoenix is beautiful compared to the downtown of Arlington( to be honest any downtown is better than arlington). Filled with lot of big companies, phoenix was like desert on weekend. The ASU medical campus looked beautiful. if this was a residential campus i think i would have been happy to stay here. Nothing much interesting but seems to be like a nice place to stay. Honestly no idea how it is like to stay in phoenix.
Phoenix downtown.
First church in Phoenix ( apparently)
05/24/2009 Santa Monica , CA
In simple words. Santa Monica is beautiful. The vence beach is filled with people who wants to get out of their routine life. After about three years i stayed at a youth hostel. the Hostelling Int'l - Santa Monica is one of the best hostels i have stayed it. it is little expensive on the money wise( but the best deal you can get over this place, hotels are way expensive) but is bubbling with activities. fellow travelers share their experience and plans. i met an Australian guy who worked for a non profit organization which provided education to families. so he was visiting the families and stayed with them for a short span of time to know how it is working. We discussed cricket , it was embarrassing to talk about royal challengers. One of the places i liked the most in Santa monica is the 3rd promenades. A lot of people perform on the streets. Watching live performance has its own charm. one of the performance i really liked was Seis Cruedas. You can read about them at seiscuerdas.net. They are two brothers who play guitar and the music is just amazing. The pier on the beach also has some amusement rides for kids. Since that day was memorial day the beach had a small ceremony and had lit candles in the honor of people who died during the Iraq war.
3rd Street promenades.
Beach
Pier
05/25/2009 Sunnyvale , CA
Home away from Home.
Left Arlington, Texas on 05/21/2009 and headed to El paso, Texas. We decided to drive about 400 miles a day which makes each of us to drive about 200 miles and for 4 hrs.
Route details.
05/22/2009 El Paso, Texas
El Paso is a city which lies in Texas and the border of Mexico, the country and New Mexico, the state. You can sense the influence of mexico at this place. Spanish is what is spoken more often that English. from this place you can actually enter mexico and re-enter usa. there are about 3 bridge which connects el paso with mexico. The movie "No Country for Old Men" was filmed here. While on I10 you can see the border . the tall wall separates the nations. Generally we used to do site seeing this afternoon and have lunch and leave to the next city in our trip. so we had about half a day in el paso. so we went to a church and then headed to the city down town. as usual you can find some of the photos of the city below. I would suggest to take the scenic drive to see the entire city and the other side of the border. the market place near the border is also a nice place to walk around to experience a nice atmosphere.
The church
The border.
The Downtown and the market.
The Scenic drive.
05/23/2009 Phoenix, Arizona.
We only had enough time to visit the downtown of phoenix. the downtown of phoenix is beautiful compared to the downtown of Arlington( to be honest any downtown is better than arlington). Filled with lot of big companies, phoenix was like desert on weekend. The ASU medical campus looked beautiful. if this was a residential campus i think i would have been happy to stay here. Nothing much interesting but seems to be like a nice place to stay. Honestly no idea how it is like to stay in phoenix.
Phoenix downtown.
First church in Phoenix ( apparently)
05/24/2009 Santa Monica , CA
In simple words. Santa Monica is beautiful. The vence beach is filled with people who wants to get out of their routine life. After about three years i stayed at a youth hostel. the Hostelling Int'l - Santa Monica is one of the best hostels i have stayed it. it is little expensive on the money wise( but the best deal you can get over this place, hotels are way expensive) but is bubbling with activities. fellow travelers share their experience and plans. i met an Australian guy who worked for a non profit organization which provided education to families. so he was visiting the families and stayed with them for a short span of time to know how it is working. We discussed cricket , it was embarrassing to talk about royal challengers. One of the places i liked the most in Santa monica is the 3rd promenades. A lot of people perform on the streets. Watching live performance has its own charm. one of the performance i really liked was Seis Cruedas. You can read about them at seiscuerdas.net. They are two brothers who play guitar and the music is just amazing. The pier on the beach also has some amusement rides for kids. Since that day was memorial day the beach had a small ceremony and had lit candles in the honor of people who died during the Iraq war.
3rd Street promenades.
Beach
Pier
05/25/2009 Sunnyvale , CA
Home away from Home.