My Scrawls

This is my first winter at Chicago, the windy city. It’s freezing cold here. Last night recorded the maximum chillness of -15°F, with the wind-chill of -30°F! Chicago saw the first snow for this winter on December 1st 2008. Since then, we have been seeing only snow showers.

The average Chicago winter produces 38 inches of snow. Unlike western Michigan or in northern Indiana, Chicago rarely gets lake-effect snow because prevailing westerlies that cross the region pick up moisture from Lake Michigan after passing Chicago. This moisture is dumped as snow in the nearby Snow Belt cities such as Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and South Bend. Rare northeasterly winds during the winter may deposit the sort of snowfall that one associates with nearby Snow Belt cities. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Chicago is -27°F on January 20, 1985, with a wind chill of -83°F. (Source: Wikipedia)

It’s wonderful to feel the snow flurries showering on us. It’s really pleasant to see the snow filled streets, trees and vehicles. Its snow, snow and snow everywhere!! Winter at Chicago is not as bad as people warned me about!

Well, we need to be more careful while driving on the snow filled streets. Dressing up in layers is the most important tip to tackle the winter at Chicago. I do wear 2/3 layers of clothes before I put on my winter coat. A scarf (along with the winter hat) to cover the face would be of great help if we have walk down the streets.

Dressed up in layers with the gloves/mittens, winter hat, scarf, boots I enjoy walking in the snow filled streets and relishing all the winter activities.

As I was surfing the net, I stumbled upon this interesting article which describes that the visitors come here to enjoy the winter at Chicago!

Last year a month long winter celebration known as “Museum of modern Ice” happened in the Millennium Park in Chicago from February 1st till 29th. This winter celebration featured “Paintings Below Zero”, a 95 feet long by 12 feet tall wall made of boldly colored, abstract paintings in ice by Canadian artist Gordon Halloran. Here is the video showing the construction of this Ice wall.

A five days winter festival “Snow Days Chicago” is going to happen this year in the Michigan Avenue Grant Park featuring a national snow sculpting competition, dog sled demonstrations, a snowboard rail jam and kids activities! More than 27 snow sculptures are showcased in this festival. The admission to this event is free!!! This city is indeed the winter wonderland.

Well there is so much to explore and enjoy in the winter too. Must check the “Snow Days Chicago” without fail! We are no artists… but we made our earnest attempt to sculpt snow man in our backyard. Here is the snow man with his cap

Yes… we love the winter at Chicago!

General Winter in chicago

Pongal is the harvest festival celebrated in Tamilnadu on the first day of the Tamil month “Thai”. Rest of India celebrates this harvest festival as “Makar Sankaranthi” or “Lohri”. Starting from this year, Pongal/Thai thirunaal officially marks the beginning of the Tamil New Year!

Sakkarai Pongal – Sarkarai Pongal is prepared with the fresh milk and the harvested rice in the mud pot and offered (as neivedhaiyam) to the lord Surya(Sun God).

Here is the Sakkarai Pongal recipe that I prepared in the pressure cooker. This being my first Pongal away from home, I made my maiden attempt to try out the Sakkarai Pongal recipe.

Ingredients:

Raw rice – 1 cup
Moong Dall (Paiyatham parupu) – 1 cup
Jaggery – 2.75 cups
Cashews – few
Ghee – 2 tbsp
Elachi (Cardamom) powder – 1 tbsp

Preparation Method:

1. Pressure cook rice and moong dal
2. Add little water to jaggery and heat it in low flame.
3. Stir the jaggery till it melts and dissolves completely in water. Then remove it from the
       stove.
4. Now add the cooked rice and elachi powder to the jaggery syrup and stir it such that
       the cooked rice and the syrup mix very well.
5. Heat ghee and fry the cashews in it.
6. Add the cashews to the Pongal.

The recipe did come out very well. “Divine as kovil prasadam” was the comment from Ganesha. Sakkarai Pongal was sweet, but sweetest was the compliment from my hubby pie

Anu's Kitchen Sakkarai pongal, sarkarai pongal, sweet pongal

It was early morning. I lay in the bed sleeping peacefully. Ganesha was immersed in his laptop dutifully concentrating in his office job. Suddenly Ganesha came near me and I heard him saying “Google has ranked u #1″.

Was it a dream? I got out of bed with a jerk. Ganesha embraced me with joy and proudly told that Myscrawls.com has been ranked number one by Google for the keyword “my scrawls”!!

Wow…I am on cloud nine. I pride myself on the gold medal that I received for securing the university rank in BS. The Google ranking has once again made me a proud rank holder

With just 3 posts in the site, the newbie Myscrawls.com has noticeably placed herself in first few ranks for most of the popular keywords like Bahamas SUB, Bahamas SUB adventure, Chicago to Bahamas, Oru Payanam etc.

Uncle Google has made our day! We both are jumping with joy. As I type this post to share the happy news with all my readers, I hear Ganesha humming the song “Where is the party tonight”

Wishing u all a very happy Pongal/Sankaranthi/Lohri

General

To read the first part of this journey click here.

We woke up early and afresh. After hot complementary breakfast we started to explore the Atlantis. It was amazing to see the tall towers. We spent some time at the casino and at the shopping mall near the coral tower.

We enjoyed playing in sands of the beautiful beach and being engulfed in the warm sunshine. Motor boats are available for about $75. Couples can try this too… take your loved one in the motor boat and enjoy the tides in the Atlantis beach!!

After lunch, we visited the downtown Nassau. We took a ferry boat to the New Providence Island. We had a nice walk down the bay street of the Nassau. Bay Street is the most popular place for the duty free shopping. It almost resembled our famous “Usman Road”… well, not very populous though

All the products including food items are imported from US. Hence everything is very costly here. We heard from the locals that most of them come to Miami to shop. Only milk and bread are duty free imports.

Interesting information about Nassau is that people here buy water from the nearby Rose Island, Bahamas. Through out our stay at the Paradise Island and in the Providence Island (Nassau), we had to buy water bottles. First we were quite puzzled as we couldn’t see even a single water fountain. A Bahamian explained us that the ground water is very salty and hence they buy the water from a neighboring Island!

In the evening, we visited the straw market. The Bahamian women decorate dried palm and sisal plant leaves to create items such as baskets, bags and dolls. They sell their hand made goods at the straw market. We got few handicraft decorative items here. We didn’t bargain but feel the items are worth the money.

Ganesha wanted to sip hot coffee. This coffee fever amuses me. Well I take pride to mention that he is not a coffee addict, one cup a day would suffice him Let me not digress. We targeted star bucks at Nassau and had refreshing evening drink. After a little “paet-ki-pooja” we took the water taxi (ferry) to reach our resort.

The next day we booked a city tour. We wanted to explore the Nassau, of course with a local guide. We visited Queen’s staircase, Fort Fincastle, water tower and Fort Charlotte.

Queen’s staircase has 65 steps. It is carved out of solid limestones by slaves in the late 18th century. This staircase was named in honour of the 65 years of Queen’s Victoria’s reign. The staircase is dedicated to Queen Victoria for it was during her reign that slavery was abolished. Fort Fincastle was built by Lord Dunmore, about 1793. Fort Charlotte is the largest of the forts found in Nassau. It was built in 1789 by Lord Dunmore. This fort has never fired a shot in Battle.

We clicked few snaps at these historic places

[caption id="attachment_81" align="alignleft" width="270" caption="Inscription on the wall of Fort Charlotte"][/caption]

Hey! We got a chance to see the locals getting ready for the Junkanoo… wats it? It is street parade that occurs in most of the town in the Bahamas. My friend Wiki (he he wikipedia) says the largest Junkanoo parade happens in Nassau, the capital of Bahamas.

Wats special about this parade? Junkanoo groups’ dance to the music of cowbells, in costumes made from cardboard covered in tiny shreds of colorful crepe paper, competing for cash prizes.

We heard from one of the Junkanoo group, that they start preparing the costumes for this parade and keep it a secret so as to hide their ideas from the other groups. On the d-day they give a blasting performance to win the cash award! All their costumes are made out of card board. We didn’t forget to click few snaps of this wonderful Junkanoo costumes… well the secret was revealed only to us before the actual show

After enjoying the Nassau city tour, we hit the bed dreaming about our under water venture that we were going to attempt the next day!

We woke up early and had a very light breakfast. The bus from Stuart Cove picked us from our hotel. We drove through Nassau to reach the Stuart Cove. It was about an hour travel from our hotel. We thoroughly enjoyed the pleasant sunny morning.

On reaching the cove, we picked up our wet suits. These suits can be rented at $10. The dive boys explained us about the underwater scooter. We were taught few “very simple postures”. These are the signals to communicate with the dive boys within the water. There are few postures that alarm the divers that we are in trouble. After this introductory session we were are all set to enter the ocean. I really thank all the dive boys who made our day. Needless to say we enjoyed the thrilling adventure. Not to forget… we were safe and comfortable.

We returned back to the cove at about 1pm. The bus from Stuart Cove dropped us at our hotel.

To know more about our experience, have a look here.

We stayed at the Paradise Island. How can we ever miss the water rides at the Atlantis? Of course not!!! We spent the next two days in exploring the Atlantis. We enjoyed playing in Current rapids, water drops, water falls, and the swimming pools. There are kid’s water parks too.

Our 5 days Bahamas trip came to an end. We enjoyed this trip to the core. We started from Nassau to reach our next vacation spot Orlando (Florida).

We spent next few days at the Universal Studios and the Disney World. We saw the holiday parade at both Universal and the Disney (Magic Kingdom). Words cannot explain the fun that we had here. Being holiday season, there was huge crowd. We had to wait for long time to enter the roller-coaster and other thrilling rides. Nevertheless we enjoyed all the fun there!

Wow… time flew away. Our 10 days holiday trip came to an end. With all the fun still lingering in our mind, we reached Chicago fully invigorated looking forward to the start the New Year with joyful spirits.

Hope u guys too had fun in this virtual tour. Thanks for joining us!

Travel

Saturday 20th December morning 8 am; Get, Set and Go!!!!!

Hurray we are going to start our much awaited “honeymoon” trip. Bags packed, had a refreshing bath and breakfast, we are ready to start… but where? We were all set to start our vacation in the Paradise Island of the Bahamas!! We didn’t want take cruise package, hence we decided to fly to Bahamas.

We had to take 3 flights to reach our destination.

Chicago to Memphis (Tennessee)
Memphis to Orlando (Florida)
Orlando to Nassau (Capital of the Bahamas)

The flights were on time and the sky was clear…Heard we just missed a snow storm that hit Chicago… thank god! We reached Orlando as planned. The flight to Nassau got delayed. We had to wait for two hrs to board our last flight. But that didn’t spoil our vacation mood by even an inch!

After all the usual checks, we boarded our flight at sharp 10pm. I was amused to see the plane! It was a propeller plane. We both were delirious to take the propeller ride. Well, we had to bear with the noise from the propeller. The flight was very small… 20-30 seats. Nice one though.

I was gazing thru the window… It was amazing to see the dark ocean with the ships here and there… the lights from the ships sparkled… appeared as though am seeing few stars below from the sky above

As we were flying across the Atlantic, we waved “hi” to few islands that passed by. Bahamas has 700 islands of which only few are inhabited. We first encountered the Grand Bahamas, then few other islands… finally reached Nassau.

The airport at Nassau made me nostalgic. It resembled the Sri Rangam Railway station Small one yet beautiful in its own way.

All custom checks done. We left the airport and headed towards our hotel (what do i say? Hotel/resort??) Well the resort.

Paradise Island is about 30 minutes drive from the Nassau international airport. This Island is famous for the sea resort Atlantis. “Royal Towers” is one of the few towers at the Atlantis. The two Royal Towers are joined by a bridge. The Bridge Suite, located in the span, is among the most expensive accommodations in the world at $25,000 a night. Wanna spend a night there?

Paradise Island is located on the northern edge of the New Providence Island. The downtown in the New Providence Island is called Nassau, the capital city of the Bahamas. Two bridges connect these islands. Any private vehicle should pay a toll to the Paradise Island. Ferry boats are also available to commute between these islands. Well it’s much cheaper means of commutation as opposed to taxi travel.

I have to mention about the taxi at the Bahamas. Most of the taxis are like a mini Van. Same as the mini vans that ply in the peak hours in Chennai. We chennaites love this mode of travel

I bet Ganesha that we are going to have driving on the left side here just like the UK… this is a common wealth nation… so the driver would be seated on the right front corner of the vehicle. What did I see??? Well I was correct to an extent that driving here is on the left side of the road as opposed to USA but I was amazed by the fact that these people handle both English and American cars (i.e. vehicles with the steering wheel on either the left or right) very well.

We were dog-tired and completely washed out as we reached our room at 1 am. We dozed off dreaming about the vacation that we are gonna spend the next few days!

Stay tuned and join us in this virtual jaunt!

Travel Chicago to bahamas