Californiacation!
I just got back from a two week end of summer vacation from California. Now even though I am an east coast person, California simply blew me away with it’s great weather and amazing scenery. To put it in figures, I took 756 pictures in the two weeks that I was there. Now since I am a nice person, I will not bore you will all these photos. Instead, I’ll just pick a few of the photos that I like or think are interesting and write a few lines about them. I hope you enjoy it 
[PS: This is quite a long post. Feel free to skip and head directly to see the photoset!]
I thought we’d start the trip with a picture of the mountain. I caught this piece of art(?) on the trip between San Jose and San Francisco. The slight amount of blurriness is becasue I took the snap through the windshield of the car.
One of the major road trips that I made was the drive to UC Berkeley. I found it to be an absolutely fascinating place with students and prof’s walking and cycling around all over the place. Rumour has it that the UCB dorms are outside the college so that the students can get mugged at least once while they walk to college. The photo below is a snapshot of the clock tower in UCB from a side angle.
Still in UCB, this was a totally random encounter. I was trying to capture a small stone structure when this dog runs past. So, I start trying to photograph the dog. While I was doing that the owner of the dog came up behind me - and perched on his shoulder was this very, very colorful parrot - appropriately named “Mango”. Long story short, the bird was quite tame and all of us got snaps with Mango perched on a shoulder.
And just in case you thing that shoes on a wire are an east coast phenomenon, here are *three* shoes hanging from a wire
All right, let us move from UCB to San Francisco! While the original plan was to walk around the city, time constraints forced us to take the car around for the most part. Even so, we still tried to do the walking bit by finding parking far from the madding crowd and then try to take in the local color.
Let’s start this part of the tour with a quick snapshot of the Palace of Fine Arts. We took a detour here as there was much too foggy on the bridge for photography.
Of course, it’s impossible to go to ‘frisco and *not* take a photo of the Golden Gate bridge. So, I join the teeming masses and present my photo of a very famous bridge.
What I found more interesting than the bridge was the flora and fauna of the area. I managed to capture some new birds and flowers in the vicinity of the bridge. Here’s the one I liked the most, but as usual, I don’t have a name to give .
Here’s a horizon snap from the center of the bridge. There were boats of all types in the water - sailboats, powerboats, and even cruise vessels. Made for a fun snap.
From the bridge to Fisherman’s Wharf. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to ride the trams in the city, but we had a great time walking around the area.
From there we drove a little to Crooked Street. I don’t think I need to decribe why the name came around - the picture says it all. What I found really odd was the fact that people drive down this street! There’s no way to see the “crookedness” when you drive down! Oh well, it takes all types..
From there, we moved onto Coit Tower. Though we didn’t manage to go all the way up the tower, the elevation was high enough for me to get a city shot of the area.
The trip to ‘frisco ended with dinner at Union Square, but before that, we just managed to squeeze in a quick trip to Pier 39. This is one fun place - part pier, part fun fair, part mall and (definitely) part zoo. Sea birds (gulls and their ilk), pelicans and sea lions abound! Here are some pelicans busily flying in the evening light.
I managed to take the time out to see Stanford. For some odd reason, I didn’t like Stanford (which is this sprawling campus/city) as much as UCB. I felt that there was a lot more energy and atmosphere in and around UCB. In fact, the photo I liked the most at Stanford was a snap of the base of their fountain!
If you have made it this far - thank you. Just a little more to go. One of the things I definitely wanted to do was a trip to Big Sur. I managed to get this done just a day before I left. For those of you visiting California - this drive is worth taking the time out for.
En route to Big Sur, we stopped at pebbled beach near Carmel. What I found really cool was how intensely “blue” the water was along the drive. I mean - look at it! It’s blue blue!
There was quite a bit of animal life there too - here’s a snap with a starfish and some anemone.
Well, we finally moved on to the Big Sur drive. There were a lot of vista points along the way - and I had to stop at each one to take snaps . Here I present the one I like the most. I think the contrast between the water and foam makes this the best vista point snap.
Here’s a lookback at the drive towards Big Sur. It’s a beautiful drive with hills on one side and a cliff on the other.
We ended the drive at a place called Nepenthe. There is a restaurant here that serves the best french fries and (freshy squeezed!) orange juice that I have ever tasted. This is not the end of the drive - there is a lot more road to travel, but we decided to end the trip there. Here, I present the phoenix of Nepenthe.
We rounded off the trip with a visit to Monterey beach. By this time the light was beginning to fade and we just passed the time wandering and cycling around the area. I also managed to get this snap of a gull and a black sea bird (yes,I don’t know the name!) flanked by sea lions.
Let me finish the mini-photoset with a photo of that lovable rascal Dennis - yes the one and only Dennis the Menace. There is a park dedicated to the scamp in Monterey.
Well, those are the highlight of my California trip. All these photos can be seen in the California Photoset on my Flickr page.
This is just a small set of the photos that I took. The flickr account will be updated over the next few days with new photos. I have just one favour ask you patient reader - of all the photos on this post, do tell me which one deserves to be showcased on the photoblog.
Remember - your vote counts!
