This is the blog where in I write about my first visit to the US. Well, as many of my friends and colleagues, I was also expecting a visit to the US on official trip. That was my long pending dream - not because I was desperate to visit US, but to know about the lifestyle there which is attracting lot of people across the world. After I changed my job to Cisco, I got an opportunity to visit San Francisco for a week and I felt happy for it. I got to know that couple of my colleagues will also join me during this visit. We planned our visit together and planned to take the Emirates flight to SFO.
We started our journey on 20th October so that we could land in SFO on Friday and take rest over weekend before going to office on Monday. I was a bit concerned about sitting for 16 long hours from Dubai to San francisco. But Emirates gave the best flight experience I had ever witnessed. The flight was a bit less occupied and hence we could sleep nicely in the flight and did not feel much of jet lag inspite of experiencing time travel :) Yes, I was happy to witness time travel. . We landed in SFO and waited in the immigration queue for half an hour before proceeding to Hilton Hotel, Union Square where we had our booking. We called up the Limo from airport pod setup and reached our hotel. We were surprised to see a huge queue for check in at the hotel. Finally we could enter our rooms at 4PM. Since we did not feel tired during the journey, we got freshened up and found an Indian restaurant near by to have dinner. We stepped out by 7.30PM. It was chilly that day and we thought it will be worse during our visit in the coming weeks. We ordered roti and dal for dinner. But that roti was so huge and thick that we could hardly finish one. After that we went on to some grocery store to buy some fruits and other stuffs which can come in handy when needed. Then we proceeded to starbucks for coffee. We enjoyed coffee and reached hotel and called parents to inform about we reaching the destination. Our first day at San Francisco ended and we had sound sleep.
My friend had told that her friend and previous colleague would come and pick us up on Day2 to San Jose. So we all got ready and finished our breakfast quickly and had some more snacks at the store that was present at the hotel. The hotel did not offer complimentary breakfast. We had to make arrangements for the same. We got ready by 10AM and were waiting for his arrival. Initially I was feeling a bit uncomfortable on going with an unknown person. But by the end of the day Ravi proved me wrong by his hospitality. We were picked up by 11AM and Ravi asked us about our breakfast. We told the food we had (bread and jam). So first he took us to Tirupati Bhimas, an Indian pure vegetarian restaurant in San Jose. Before visiting the hotel we visited Cisco head office at San Jose and finished photo session and proceeded to hotel. We all had good food and filled our stomach properly which would enable us to spend time and energy on shopping for next few hours at the Great Mall. He dropped us at the Great Mall and told that he would pick us again once we are done. We spent around 3-4 hours exploring there and got few stuffs as well :) The winter wear collections were too good to resist and we got few of them and gave Ravi a call by 5PM. He picked us up and took us to CostCo where in we got some chocolates and other stuffs. Later he took us to his home and quickly cooked food for us. The Rasam he prepared was very tasty. I had proper batting (read it as heavy food). By now, we had so much conversation with Ravi and I felt like I knew him from many days. After that we had nice ice creams as well. He is such a down to earth person and made us feel very comfortable right from the beginning. His hospitality did not end here. He even got a big chocolate box for each one of us and gave it to us before sending us off. Finally at 10.30PM we started to head back to San Francisco with loads of luggage. Thanks to Uber which was available to drop us to hotel. Our hotel area was such that there were lot of homeless people around the hotel streets. Our uber cab driver also alerted that the area is not safe to roam around. So from then onwards we were extra careful while roaming around the streets.
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| Cisco main office |
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| Main office Cisco |
Since it was my first time in the US, I did not venture driving there. Hence on Day3 we had planned to take the Big Bus tour in San Francisco to visit most of the famous tourist spots. The BigBus tour is open bus tour which operates every half an hour throughout the day from 9AM till 5PM. It covers around 21 stops covering most of the famous spots. The bus offers live guide about the places and they also provide ear phones to listen to the commentary using the audio equipment present at each seat. We can take any number of loops throughout the day to go around all these 21 spots. So initially we decided to simply take a loop without getting down so that we could get to know all the stop overs briefly and in the second loop cover only those places which we liked. We started our journey at 9.30AM near our hotel and first we reached the Civic center which is the replica of Washington white house at a smaller scale.
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| Civic Center |
Later the bus went on to SF Jazz centre, Alamo Square, Golden gate park etc. After all these it reached the famous SF Golden Gate Bridge. With this my long time dream of visiting the Golden gate bridge got fulfilled. Unfortunately, I could not visit this at night and hope for better luck next time :)
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| SF Golden gate bridge |
Later the bus took us to the Pier39. On the way we went along the China town. The bus stops at Pier39 which is the last point of the loop. We got down there and had some food before we took our second round of the loop. In this loop we visited Golden Gate park and Palace of Fine Arts. We wanted to experience the Crooked street and the famous Cable car. So, after visiting the Palace of Fine Arts, we got down at the Union Square North and walked down to the Cable car starting point. It was an amazing experience to go through the ups and downs of San Francisco roads on cable car. It costs 7$ from one point to reach another point in cable car. But its really a not to miss experience. We went to crooked street in this. Here are glimpse of them.
Overall I felt the lifestyle in SF is easy provided one has a job to satisfy his necessities as the cost of living is very high. On contrast I could witness hell lot of homeless people who looked scary. Lot of people depend on Cars for transport. Few people use public transport and very less people use the motor cycle. The ones who use motor cycle are the ones who ride high end race bikes. One thing I appreciate there is the driving discipline. People follow lanes and traffic signals seriously. Hence it is relatively safe there to drive. However I had witnessed few crashes on road here and there, mainly because people did drunk and drive. So I felt, unless people really realize their responsibilities properly, there will be hiccups and problems everywhere.
Few tips to visit San Francisco
- Always have your passports with you
- For exploring SF, one can bank on BigBus tour which is a great experience. It costed $46 for us as Hilton gave 10% discount.
- Carry a good camera with you, you would not be disappointed.
- Do experience the Cable car. You can purchase the tickets at the starting and ending points with cards. However inside the car as well you can purchase tickets by paying the amount to the crew member.
- Stay safe
- Car rentals are widely and easily available in SF. If you have valid Indian driving license, on B1 in California you can drive for a month. However do this only if you are clearly aware of the local rules and regulations. Otherwise for any mistake, the penalty is too heavy there and it may lead to further legal complications as well. Hence get to know all the rules before getting into it. Once you clearly understand the rules, it is very easy to drive there.
- One can easily manage with credit/debit cards there.
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