Here I am with the post of my 2nd trip (after St. Louis) to New Jersey & New York. This was a family vacation as opposed to the individual vacation that I took to St. Louis. It had been looooong time since we have had any family vacation together, so I was really looking forward to it :). This was a 10 day trip planned with first 5 days in NJ and last 5 days in NY. My parents had families in both the states so we were looking forward to meeting them as well. So here it goes....
Day 1:
The trip was from August 31 to September 9th and we head to airport early Friday morning to catch our 10:30 am flight. Even though it was labor day weekend, there wasn't much crowd and we got through security in less than 15 minutes. We boarded the flight to Newark on time, but apparently we were on the runway for over half an hour. So I guess the labor day weekend traffic was on the runway and not at the airport :P...hehe. Anyways, the flight took off after little over half an hour and luckily that didn't effect our landing time, so we landed on time in Newark. Surprisingly where we got off the gate at Newark (whichever terminal that was for southwest airlines), there wasn't much walk to the baggage claim. It was short distance so once we got to the baggage claim, we were greeted by my uncle and cousin. This was a first time for me and my brother to meet them and it was great to see them. We headed home which was about 45 minutes drive and we had a surprise waiting for us at home!! My cousin's son (about 2 and half years old) came running outside as soon as we got in the driveway and welcomed us with a big smile!! The rest of the day included meeting my bhabhi (my cousin's wife), and my masi (aunt), having a family dinner, chatting with them, celebrating my aunt's birthday with some yummy pastries and then finally going to bed around midnight.
Day 2:
Today's main agenda was to go to meet one of my mom's college friends whom my mom had not seen in over 15 years. She lived in Jersey city which was little over an hour away from where we were (Princeton) but they had decided to meet since we were in town, so my mom's friend's husband came to pick us up around 11 am and then we went to her place. Ohh...it was joy to see my mom meet her college friend after such a long time and it was great for us to meet her as well since she had seen us when we were kids. We had nice lunch together and then we decided to take the NJ Transit back to Princeton since we didn't want her husband to drive back all the way. They lived so close to the NY that the Hudson river is the only gap between them and Manhattan, NY. He took us to the JFK East side where you can see the entire Manhattan downtown which was beautiful!!
We stopped at one or two spots and then headed for the Secaucus train station to catch our 3:24 pm train. The ride was smooth and nice since the NJ transit train had really nice and comfy seats and it didn't have any crowd at all. The train also had small compartments at the top if you want to put your bags or any kind of luggage. We got to Princeton junction in 1 hour where my cousin was already waiting for us. Before we went home, we stopped by a Durga Mandir which was very close to their home. The Mandir was so beautiful and peaceful from inside. It had Durga Murti in the center along with Ram, Sita and Laxman, Shiv-Parvati, Krishn-Radha, Ganpati, Santoshi mata, Sarasvati mata, and some other Gods as well. We got home and then had nice dinner and then sat down to watch the movie Bol Bacchan. I don't remember but I fell a sleep around midnight when the movie was about 2 hours done..but honestly I wasn't a big fan of it!! For those who don't know, this is a Rohit Shetty movie and his movies are adaption to the old classic Hrishikesh Mukherjee movies. Bol Bacchan was adoption of Golmaal and it failed badly!! Of course, bollywood is running out of ideas, so that's why they have to adopt the concepts of old movies and torture it, or remake the old movies!!! In either case, I fell asleep during the movie and didn't care to finish the movie :)
To make sure that my posts are not super long and that they don't feel like essays, I am going to stop right here and continue the remaining New Jersey experience on to the next post.....
Hope you enjoyed reading and continue to do so :)
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