Photo of the week: Finding love and warmth on a cold Christmas night in Antwerp

Love in Antwerp!

That caught my eye: Love is in the air!

This one’s from a very cold winter night in Antwerp. Right next to the Christmas markets in the town centre, there was a small fountain pool on which a fire was burning. And everyone had huddler around it, enjoying the warmth while relishing the tasty snacks from the Christmas markets.

And as you would expect from a very pretty European city, there was a lot of romance in the air!

Love is in the air!

Travel fantasies.. no, not another “11 places to visit before I die” list!

As is clear from the long ‘looking-like-its-a-blog-post-in-itself’ title, this post is not about the 11 or 101 places I want to visit before I become 30 or 40 or a similar round number.

This post is about how I imagine ‘ideal’ travel to be. Oooooooh, treading on thin ice, I know! There is nothing like ideal travel, one might say. One’s man ideal travel could be another man’s living hell. And I completely agree. So, let me clarify.

This is a list of things that when I see someone else doing while I am travelling, I can’t help remarking to myself – ‘Oh, I should be doing that’. This is a list of things I imagine that I’d be seen doing if there was a movie made to document my travels. And this list seems to keep growing without many items getting struck off.. maybe, that’s why I chose to call them fantasies. But there’s hope, so I shall start with one which I recently managed to cross off..

1. Sitting outside a European cafe sipping hot chocolate and writing in travel diary.

Yes, this one sounds ripped off from a movie. It probably is, I don’t know. I imagined it as a sunny day, sitting on an outdoor table of a cafe somewhere in Europe, chilling out with a refreshing hot drink while scribbling notes in my diary.
And I did it! Last month, during my Eurotrip, when I was in Paris, I did exactly that. In a cafe at the Jardins des Tuilerie gardens (which stretch from the Louvre museum to Place de la Concorde). Can’t imagine a better place to fulfill the fantasy. Icing on the cake? Eating delicious nutella crepe! 🙂

Bliss! Nutella crepe, hot chocolate and my travel journal!

2. Play football with local lads when visiting a foreign country

Football/soccer, whatever you call it. Actually, it doesn’t matter which sport it is. Sports convey a universal language. You don’t need to know a single word of the local language, but that pat on the back after scoring a goal, or the big thumbs up after giving a good through-pass, or the big smile and handshake at the end of the game say more about being part of a universal brotherhood than the collected speeches in a United Nations summit could ever do.

3. Sing ‘Ruby Tuesday’ at a Karaoke bar, having a good time with friends and strangers

This is a very peculiar one, and probably the easiest one to get done, but then what usually appears too easy usually isn’t. Simple reason. I don’t know how to sing. At all. And inherently, am a shy guy. So despite actually preparing for it, despite taking a printout of its lyrics, I haven’t managed to do it yet. Wish me luck (and the same goes for the poor folks who’d have to listen to me singing)!

4. Be able to sketch when I see a great sight while travelling

A great sight could be the Rhossili Bay in Gower Peninsula, Wales or it could be the Eiffel Tower in Paris or it could be a little kid chasing pigeons at the Trafalgar Square in London. This one should hopefully come true soon, as I am learning sketching right now! I’ll share with you some initial sketches I made in the classes very soon.. 🙂

So, my chase for these dreams continues.. Do you also have any such travel fantasies?

Vande mataram!

On a historic day when Indian cricket team have become the world cup champions, there is nothing else on my mind which fits better:

Chak De India!

Indian tricolour flies high!