Our Journey to India (Better Late Than Never)

After many failed attempts of taking self-pictures in the airport, I'll spare you of those pictures. However, I thought I would put up some pictures of our journey from North Carolina to India.

First stop: New York, NY

Michael and I had a 9 hour layover in New York so we decided to venture into the city. We at least wanted to get a good piece of pizza out of it, which we did. I can't say that I loved it since our affinity lies with Chicago and its pizza (the place where we had our first home together), but it was exciting to walk around in the city! We went to Rockefeller Center and actually went to the Top of the Rock, as they call it. The views were beautiful. Michael spotted the Statue of Liberty, which I must say was very disappointing at that height because it looked so small. But we did get to see an incredible view of the Empire State Building and Central Park. As I blogged from the Dubai airport, there we so many different people there from so many different places. I can't begin to explain how many languages we heard even solely on Top of the Rock. It was astonishing. 

While we were waiting to go up, we visited a courtyard that had flags from all over the world. As we walked up and stood against the railing, Michael immediately noticed that India's flag was right in front of us. That was pretty neat to see and know that we would be there in a day or so. 

Second stop: Dubai, UAE

Traveling across the globe for us was really a good experience; however, waiting in the airports was not so much fun. Between trying to adjust to different time zones and having flights in the middle of the night, we took naps whenever we could. I'm usually the napper, but Michael has taken that title from me on this trip. Poor thing was trying to read for his class he is teaching, but could not make it through. After watching him fight it for about 20 minutes, I looked over to find this and couldn't help but take a photo.

Among our adventures in the Dubai airport, we decided we need to eat a meal before we boarded our final flight to Trivandrum, India. After roaming and surveying a wide range of options, we decided upon Burger King. The BK had a menu with the standard fare, but it also had choices tailored to the region. After studying the menu board and calculating the currency conversion, we determined that, of all things, the special "Ramadan box" would be our best deal. In the spirit of providing lots of food to a person breaking their Ramadan fast at the end of the day, the box was loaded with a meal we could easily split. I snagged a picture of Michael with the Ramadan box to commemorate the occasion. 

Part of our adventure included many fruitless attempts to the (purportedly) free Dubai airport Wi-fi. After finally giving up, we discovered that with a purchase at a coffee shop/food stand we could gain access to their Wi-fi. So after polishing off the Ramadan box, we settled upon a Nestle Toll House stand, where we purchased a cookie and a Coke Zero (for Michael). After firing off a few short missives to family on our newly-acquired Wi-fi signal, we boarded our final (4 hour) flight into Trivandrum.