A Weekend in Venice

For the first long weekend in May, we decided to check out Venice! We figured its not too hot in Italy yet and hopefully not too smelly in Venice either (Rahul and Sahil can tell you all about their smelly experience in Venice!) :)

Venice is a really beautiful and picturesque city -- it looks exactly as you would imagine it to! In case you're curious, check out our photos. Little alleyways everywhere with really cute little footbridges every 50 metres to cross over canals, old buildings line the canals with little boats tied at docks, no cars anywhere, so all public transport is via the waterways.

We had a fantastic time overall and really enjoyed taking ferries up and down the Grand Canal (the real one, not the one at the Venetian) :) and had some delicious Italian food, including some of the best pizzas ever! Harry's Bar is a great place to pop in and enjoy a bellini -- after all, they were invented at this bar in Venice and really, they are the best bellinis we've ever had!

Its the one place in the world that's even more expensive than London (imagine that!), so we'd recommend going once the dollar strengthens against the Euro :) If you're planning to go and would like any tips, just give us a shout.

Highlights from trip to Cape Town!

Deep and I visited Cape Town during the recent Easter holidays and had a wonderful time! Here are some photos from our travels. We spent 3 nights and 4 days exploring the entire region including the city, waterfront, Table Mountain, Robben Island, Western coast, up and down the peninsula, Cape Point and the wine country. Cape Town is definitely one of our favourite destinations in the world! The weather is excellent, the natural landscape of the region is so beautiful, the history is of course fascinating, the food is superb and best of all the rand affords you a great time (15 rand to the pound, we were in heaven!) :) Some highlights include:

• We took a fenicular (cable car) up to the top of Table Mountain and hiked around the top, where there were incredible views of Cape Town!


• We drove down the East coast of the peninsula down to Cape Point, took a fenicular up to the top for some fantastic views from Cape Point, and then drove back up to Cape Town along the Western coast, which has some of the most breathtaking views! Reminded us of an untouched version of the PCH or Highway 1 in California.
  
• Deep had organised a personal helicopter tour of Cape Town and the wine country, which was lots of fun! We even landed in Franschhoek in the wine region to have lunch at a vineyard called Haute Cabriere, which was delicious!


• We took a ferry to Robben Island to explore the place where Mandela spent most of his years as a political prisoner. The tour given by an ex-politicial prisoner who was at Robben Island during the same time as Mandela was truly fascinating and his stories were both interesting and of course terrifying as well.

We would both highly recommend you all visit and 4 days is a good amount of time to spend, although 5 would have been a little less hectic. If you want any tips, just send us an email! :)

December in Cambodia and Vietnam...

As many of you know, we travelled with Deep's parents this past December to Vietnam and Cambodia for 2 weeks. It was a fabulous trip and we would highly recommend visiting soon, before it become overrun by tourists like other parts of the region (ie. Thailand). We spent 3 days in Siem Riep, Cambodia exploring the Angkor temple complex. From there we flew to Hanoi where we spent time in town and also did a day trip to Ha Long Bay. After that we flew to Nha Trang, where we spent 5 days relaxing on a beautiful beach. Once we had recovered, we went to Hoi An for 2 days, which is a World Heritage town on the coast that has lots of character. Our final stop was 3 days in Saigon (also known as Ho Chi Minh City after the North beat the South in the war), which is the most cosmopolitan city in Vietnam

If you'd like to see some photos from our trip, check out this web album. We had three photographers on the trip (Deep, his Dad and me) so you can imagine it took forever to screen through thousands of photos to come up with this selection :)