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I went to the Italian island of Sardinia for a four day break with 6 friends of mine a couple of months ago. We didn’t do much there but to chill on the beach, but since we had an awesome time its worth sharing anyway.

Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily. It is quite far away from Italian mainland but just a few miles south of the french island of Corsica. Sardinia is not as crowded as Sicily, and not as developed as a tourist destination as other Italian destinations. The capital is Cagliari which is to the south of the island.

We went to a place called Santa Teresa which is on the northern tip of Sardinia. The plan was to stay in a sea-facing apartment owned by parents of one of the group members. We flew to Olbia, which is a port in the north-east and serves as entry point to the posh resorts off the north-east coast, the likes of Porto Cervo on the Costa Smeralda (the Emerald coast), where the rich and famous of the world descend in their yatchs in the summer. We obviously had no plans whatsoever of celebrity-spotting, not even footballers and pop divas, so we headed straight to our less posh but much nicer destination a bit further north.

The apartment was wonderful with great views across the mediterranean (we could see the island of Corsica sitting in the balcony!) and the local harbour. We actually ended up spending quite a bit of time in the balcony enjoying long meals.

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I have had occasion to go to San Francisco a few times, basically due to work related travel. The first time, I got a chance to travel on a type of tram (a cable car running on the ground). Lots of fun and very enjoyable. Later, on different occasions, I got the chance to see some more sights in the city (tourist places, not the night life / clubbing culture). San Francisco has an incredible reputation as a very liberal city, with a very mixed population (it is apparently the first city in the US where the white population is now less than 50%). Plus, it has pretty good weather; visitors not from Iceland don’t freeze to death in the winter in San Francisco, unlike many other cities in the US :-).
So, as I mentioned, I got a chance to travel to San Francisco in the month of December. I like weather with a nip in the air, and that was exactly what I got. The first few days were spent in San Jose doing the usual company related drudgery, and then the first weekend came. There were a group of us, and we decided to spend a bit of money (although you can use a combination of the usual bus / BART / Caltrain stuff) and hire a cab that will take us out for a period of around 8 hours through the city and nearby places (imagine hearing from your friends again and again about the scenic Pacific Highway !).
The cab arrived sharp at 9 in the morning, and off we went. Given that we were somewhat of a novice to the whole area, we asked the cab guy to take us around a few of the places (of course, we did mention a few of the places we knew about such as - Golden Gate Bridge, Pacific Highway, Fisherman’s Wharf, Alcatraz). Off we went first to the Golden Gate Bridge (wikipedia) and then the highway beyond that. The Golden Gate Bridge is a mighty structure, worthy of admiring, and wondering how much time and effort went into building such a structure.

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This is in continuation of my previous post on Cornwall, where on the first day we had spent some time exploring and experiencing the coastline around Fowey in South Cornwall. The next two days we intended to visit two of the most famous gardens of Cornwall - The Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan.

The Eden project is not your local beautiful garden, it is much more, a world famous site and a unique botanical fete.  It is a very ambitious project that attempts to assemble the vastly varied flora of the world at a single site. 

We decided to walk the 3.5 mile distance from our hotel to Eden using the walking directions left behind by an American tourist who had walked a lot in these areas. Our sense of heart-thumping, adrenaline boosting adventure was fulfilled when the footpath led us straight through some dense undergrowth into a pasture with around 30 cows and bulls, and the usually docile creatures violently chased us off the pasture back onto the path! I can still recall all the bulls snorting at us from behind the gate of the pasture. We later got to know that many footpaths in Britain lead through pastures which the farmers don’t like one bit, and so we shouldn’t have hoped that help would arrive in case we had been cornered by the beasts and gored to death. A passer-by joked - “Those cows don’t know that you won’t even eat them?”

Anyway, all this meant we took an eternity to reach Eden using an alternative walking route (the main road). The park is built in a huge crater site and has three main areas - The outdoor biome, the rain forest biome and the mediterranean biome. The two indoor biomes look like huge blisters or bubbles, appearing to have landed straight out of space.

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And so the monsoon has come back. It is truly the most beautiful and sublime act of nature if we ignore its capacity for destruction. If in mood for destruction, it doesn’t leave anything or anyone. Disintegrates city life, with flooded roads, railway tracks and drains, mudslide and what not. Not only cities it creates havoc on mountains with heavy landslides, road blockages and the plains with unwanted floods.
But but but. Who regrets its arrival ? Not me. The farmers are happy; the birds start singing, peacock dancing and kids have whale of a time. The monsoon is widely welcomed and appreciated by city-dwellers as well, for it provides relief from the climax of summer in June.

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