Check out the photo gallery of our adventures and misadventures as we attempt to go ice-mountain climbing in the catskills of new york!
Archives for 2011
Going Local: Ten Best Coffee Bars in New York City
In a pinch, we can drink coffee anywhere in the world. We have drank burnt espresso, overly milky frappuccinos, and super-sugary Keralan cold coffee from street coffee shops in places like Vietnam and India, at chain stores like Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, 7-11, and McDonald’s worldwide. But we’ve also tasted a coffee brewed to perfection at coffee plantations in India, been intoxicated by the fresh aroma of drip-coffee at coffee bars in Milan, Naples, Paris, San Francisco, and New York City. You heard us right, New York City has finally gotten with the program for the serious coffee drinker!
New Yorkers used to have to rely on West Coast roasting companies like San Francisco based Blue Bottle Coffee or Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland, Oregon to supply the coffee beans for their favourite joints. Now there are plenty of roasters right here in town (including roasting companies that supply not only coffee bars, but restaurants and carts all over the City), like the Brooklyn Roasting Company, Porto Rico, and West Coast roasters mentioned above. There are a handful of companies that already do on-site roasting, and many of the coffee bars listed here have plans to roast their own beans within the year!
Here are our picks for the best coffee bars in New York City:
Musings: The Six Coolest Places We Slept in India
Traveling in India for six months, we had our fair share of odd experiences — but the most interesting seemed to be when it was time to rest our weary heads. From bumpy buses and crowded trains to a thatched…
Photo of the Week: Fortune Cookie Factory in San Francisco, California
Who knew making something as fun as fortune cookies could entail so much stress? If those flat mini-pancakes on the right are allowed to cool for even a second, they become too hard and can’t be folded. We tried them and they are delicious. Round, crunchy, fortune cookie . . . with no place to put the fortune though!
A Very Happy (and Messy) First Birthday at Blue Smoke in NYC!
For Kavya’s first birthday, we knew plans were underway for a big “little” gathering and we were okay with that. But we also wanted to have something for her that was just the three of us, especially since this could very well be the last time we get to control anything birthday related (or otherwise!). So we decided to have an incredibly messy birthday at Blue Smoke, a barbecue joint in the Flatiron area of New York City. This would also be Kavya’s first time eating barbecue, with her two front teeth.
Weekend Honeymoon: Las Vegas, Nevada
Looking for a quick, romantic getaway? With its sparkling lights, posh dining and worthy sites galore, Las Vegas is a sure bet for romance – especially if you want to tie the knot or renew your vows. In fact, Navdeep and I got married there (before the big, fat Desi wedding), so for us, it’s a super-special weekend honeymoon destination.
Four Airports with Free Wifi
I was pretty ambivalent about the Continental and United merger that took place in 2010. Even when we couldn’t check in online to the first leg of our flight from Newark, New Jersey to Fresno, California because Continental claimed that flight was on United, and United claimed it was on Continental, resulting in neither website letting us check in. When we finally managed to get through agents at both United and Continental, the best either of them could say was, “We can’t access the flight information because that flight is on Continental/United. But I do see you have seats. So I wouldn’t worry about it.” Guess what happened the next morning when we tried checking in at 5:40 a.m. for our 7a.m. flight?
Aside from the flight situation, I was also annoyed that neither LAX or Newark had free wifi (they cost $8 for the daily rate, and I didn’t bother looking to see how much the monthly service was).So, I decided to do one of the few things I could do without my internet: compile a list of airports we had been to that had free wifi on Microsoft Word. Here they are:
Travelogue California: The World’s Largest Gingerbread House in San Francisco?
We had all of two days to spend in San Francisco with my parents-in-law, and for some reason, I was stuck on seeing this two-story gingerbread house — made of real gingerbread, of course — at the Fairmont Hotel. So…
