A Journey to Dreamland

When we got married this January, our parents and other family members were eager to send us to a so called “honeymoon”. Puri, Digha, lots of name were floated. We had to expedite everything due to my shortened stay in Kolkata after marriage. Yes, it was painful. Leaving my wife just 10 days after our marriage, only to wait for two months till she gets visa to US. So we decided we are not going to spend time on honeymoon now. But back of my mind, I had some other plans. I planned something big back then. Something extravagant, something I really dreamed of, we really dreamed of, all the time. How about a trip to Disneyland, a trip to Hollywood, watching killer-whales and sharks jumping around in sea world, wild bear running loose in African rain-forest environment in sandiego zoo?

The plan seemed exciting itself in its birth stage. So after my wife shuchismita came to US 2 months later, and after my grueling semester was over, we thought about materializing our dream. After spending few sleepless nights on doing research about airfare prices and hotels, and tours, we managed to purchase everything through yahoo travel. We could not wait for the big day, 9th June, the date of our travel. We could not sleep the night before, part of the reason being the excitement, and other part being we had a flight to catch next morning at 6:30 a.m. Yes, 6:30 a.m. Sometimes you have to pay price for materializing your dream.

Day 1: The Journey Begins: San Diego Zoo

Nevertheless, our journey got off to a good start, reached San Diego at scheduled time, around 11 in the morning. The ride from airport to hotel was pleasant one, and view of palm trees, house in the slant side of mountains, gave us a pleasant feeling. It felt like home, and when we went to our hotel, Good Nite Inn, it completely felt like home. The hotel has surprisingly Indian ook. We kept our baggage in the lobby (since they didn’t allow us to check in early) and went off for Zoo.

The first dream came true in the zoo, riding an open-hood bus. We only heard about this in stories, saw in movies, so when we actually sat on the bus, it was really exciting. The tour itself was quite good, taking us through different part of the zoo. First part was different herbivores, including African wild buffalo, and deers with fancy horns, Texas longhorns, Giraffes and more. I haven’t seen six giraffes together at one place before. There were horned pigs, hornless rhinos, elephants playing with iron-balls, bears trying to eat a fish, lioness feeling restless in hot, and lot more. It was really enjoyable, and we really felt sad when the tour came to a close. But to treat us as soon as we got down from the bus, a peacock was standing right at our face posing for photos with its decorated colorful tail wide open. Yes, it was cloudy. I did not miss the opportunity.

We were off to visit Panda after that. We dreamt about seeing panda live, as I always feel exclamated by this creature. Finally saw the Panda, a couple, one male, and one female. The attendants were saying the female Panda is pregnant. After seeing the panda we went back to the main zoo, to ride on the aerial tram. The view from the aerial tram was excellent. The vast greenery is bound to give pleasure to your eyes. After that, we decided to explore something of our own, went for a walk in the tiger trail, and experience African rainforest. African rainforest was simply superb. Big green compound leaves covering the sky, eerie silence throughout the surroundings, chirrups of unknown birds, it really felt like we are in a rain-forest of Nairobi. We were walking through a pathway, where there were not too much visitors, and sometimes groaning of cheetahs coming from distance, the feeling was mixed with enjoyment and horror. We visited a sea lion show in between; the sea lion was smart enough to show some stunts, acted like a human being, to bring the crowd alive.

We managed to see couple of cheetahs and one Puma in the tiger trail. The weather was gloomy and cold, it was a little bit surprising for the tigers not coming out. Slowly the day came to an end; we saw some Australian cranes and bought a magnet as souvenir, before calling it a day. The San Diego zoo was a marvelous experience, and indeed, we are feeling proud about the fact that we visited the zoo.San Diego is a city of immigrants. Since it is very close to the border of Mexico, and due to its closeness to the sea and tropics, it has attracted tourists and people from all over the world. Our taxi driver on our way back to hotel from zoo was Middle Eastern. He guessed right that we were tourist and did not miss his chance to earn a few more bucks since we were not aware of the shortest route back to hotel. We had to check in the hotel after we came back from the zoo, since the check in hour starts from 3 p.m. in the afternoon. The room was spacious and good, and did not look like a hotel in a first world country..!! Anyway, it was a long and tiring day, and since we have to get up early next day, we had our dinner in a nearby fast-food joint and went off for bed. Thus ended the first day of our .. well .. you know..:



Day 2: Disneyland

On Friday morning, 10th June, truly the journey to dreamland started. We are heading for Disneyland, the place we dreamt of from childhood, the stories we heard so many times during bedtime, the characters we believed in so much that they became part of our lives. Once upon a time…there was a magical place in the world. Our journey from San Diego to Anaheim was a quite uneventful one, except for the fact that a part of this trip was on the seaside drive of Pacific Ocean. The great pacific ocean, so many creatures, so many stories, so vast in nature, so deep to its nadir, so calm, yet so deadly. The first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean was so thrilling that we totally forgot that we were inside a bus, with many other people.Reaching Anaheim, where we found a Bengali taxi-driver who took us to the hotel. It’s a true saying that, even in the darkest, most deserted place in the world, you will find a Bengali. Anaheim is a famous place in that respect. Here again, we were unable to check-in in the hotel. But that did not dominate our mood and enthusiasm, as we were off to Disneyland as soon as possible. When we arrived in front of the Disneyland, our heart filled with joy. This place is too short or too inappropriate to express the feeling, it is impossible to express those feelings in words. Huge cut outs, colorful people and long queue filled the entrance. We did not lose the opportunity to get a picture before the entrance.

Once inside, Mickey greeted us with the 50 year celebration sign. This is the 50th year anniversary of the opening of the Disneyland Park. In 1955, Walt Disney realized the dream and made the dream reality in this part of the world, which became a legendary place itself for years to come. We wasted no time and jumped into the adventures. First we embarked on a boat which took us through the jungles of Amazon. There were elephants in the river, piranha fish in the water, tribes shooting to the boat, lions and tigers roaring. Well, they were fake, but the atmosphere was good enough to feel excited. We stopped in at Tarzans tree house to get some wild experience. Then we got a little bit hungry, but the prices in the restaurant were extremely high. We manage to have chicken skewers (it is more like a kabob dipped in barbeque soss). After the lunch, we decided to join Jasmine and Aladdin in the fairy tale story. There were kids all around, and after entering the show, we realized that we have already lived through these years in our childhood. We sat there nevertheless for some pictures.

After this came the most electrifying experience in the Disneyland. A ride through the bumpy mountain railroad. A rail with 6 seating compartments were traveling through mountain caves with enormous speed and every moment it seemed that we are going to hit one of the mountains. Luckily for us, we did not hit any, and safely came out of the ride, but I was feeling a bit shaken.

So we decided to take a pleasant ride, and boarded Mark Twain’s ship, and it was indeed a pleasure journey. The ship was nicely decorated, resembling the old times of mark twain.

Then came the most extravagant wonderful experience of the whole day, the Parade of Dreams. Larger-than-life fairy tale characters paraded through the main street USA in the Disneyland, the characters came to life. The beauty and the beast, snow white and seven dwarfs, lion-king, Mickey and mouse, Donald duck, chip and dale, all the characters, all the stories that we are accustomed to from the time we were sensible, came to life. It was an awesome experience and truly justified Disneyland’s nomenclature as the happiest place on earth.

By this time we were getting a bit tired, the clock was ticking towards 5 o’clock in the afternoon. We went inside the “Sleeping beauty castle”. What a marvelous sight it was from out side. Inside the castle, we went for the fairy tale boat-ride, and enjoyed Alice in wonderland. The crowd was getting larger by each second, so we had to wait in line for 10 minutes on average for every ride.

We were really exhausted by 6 p.m., and decided to take some rest. We almost missed the snow white musical theatre show. We rushed to get to the theatre by 6:15, and enjoyed the best musical theatre show ever. Snow white was sheltered by the seven dwarfs and rescued by the prince from the wicked witch, after she died by biting the poisoned apple. All the characters were played marvelously, and the effects and music was awesome. Our mind was fulfilled after the show ended.

We then thought about getting some star-war adventure stuff, and went to the futureland drive. We jumped inside a box that was vigourously shaking and having a fake speed of light-year velocity, which sometimes make you jump out..!! It was artificial, scary enjoyable, messy.After this, we were headed to Mickey town. Mickey mouse and his girlfriend Mini live in this town. We went inside Mickey’s house and had a picture with Mickey, explored mini’s house too.

We had a park-hopper ticket, which means we were allowed to go to Disneyland California Adventure Park, just across the street to Disneyland. They organized an electrical parade in the evening, we stopped by there to observe that, did not found that amusing, and came back to Disneyland main park. By now, we were totally exhausted and waited impatiently for the famous firework. We heard about this firework for long long time.Around 9:30, all the lights in the Disneyland were turned off; only the sleeping beauty castle was lighted in a pinkish color. Suddenly buzzing fireworks in the form of several Disney characters flew in to the sky, and the music was pumped up. We just looked into the sky, soaked into the music, and enlightened by the glittering light. Truly, there cannot be a better experience. For those 30 minutes, it seemed that there nothing exists in this world; we were escorted by magical creatures and put into this dreamland, where all the fairy tale angels came to life and they are making us happy. It was truly one of the most memorable nights in my life. We finished our dinner at a fast food joint and came back to hotel, but our mind was far away from this mortal world, we were truly in dreamland in our heart and soul.

Day 3: scared to death-Universal Studios Hollywood

Cinema, is one of the greatest forms of entertainment to human society. From the earlier part of the century, from the times of silent movies, to the recent times of hi-tech-matrix-star-wars harry-potter extravaganza, this medium have swept away generations after generation with madness, skill, and fascination. Hollywood, is supposed to be the greatest venue on earth , when we talk about cinema. Though, numerically, our own bollywood is ahead of Hollywood. Mumbai madness produces more film than Hollywood. But, if you consider all the aspects, I think Hollywood is still steps ahead than ours industry.

Nevertheless, on the Saturday morning, 11th June, we were picked up from our hotel and were headed to Hollywood studios. Our bus went through the Los Angeles downtown, another dream coming true. Los Angeles is a city that you always dream of, not really want to live in. It’s a city of rich, city of street fights, city of fashion, city of “show-off”, city that never has a dull moment. We got a glimpse of the sky-line, big-buildings, and the Los Angeles Lakers basketball stadium. Though it was foggy, we had a glimpse of the famous Hollywood sign on the mountain of the Beverly hills strip near the universal studios. We reached the Hollywood studio main entrance near 10:30 in the morning, and our tour-bus driver let us in the park, and said that he would come back at 6 p.m. to pick us up. So we had about 7and half hours to endure all the fun. Oh yes, it was fun indeed, only the type of fun you don’t want everyday in your life..!! It was scared to death all the time. The theme of the park is scary, and may be that’s the reflection of American mentality of having fun.

We started with van helsing haunted house, we have to walk through the dark house and from different alleys and blind-spots, and swinging skeletons are coming and grabbing our hand. It was not for the weak-heart people. When we finally came out of the house, we were breathing heavily. We did not know that we were just getting started. I have seen the movie “Mummy” and “ the return of the mummy”. And both me and titum, we are interested in ancient Egypt, its civilizations, and the mysteries hidden inside those pyramids. So no wonder we were excited to go inside the mummy ride. We had to put our camera and bags outside in a locker, and then went in. It was dark and scary to begin with. We sat on a 4x4 rail, 4 people in each row. And then it started with immense speed. It was dark, and scary creatures with big opened mouth coming towards us, looked like the ghost of the pharaohs inside the tomb. They were coming towards us, to fulfill their unsatisfied desire for human blood. It was really scary, we screamed, and a few times I closed my eyes. It was too intense. At the end of the ride, we were suddenly sank down and water droplets were spread around us, and we could see nothing. When the ride finally ended, again we were breathing heavily. After we came out, we took some pictures outside the building, but whenever I closed my eyes, mind went back to those horrible moments inside the “pyramid”, where all the mummies came alive after thousand years of sleep.I already mentioned that this is the day when every moment seems to be the last moment of your life.

Our next stop was at the Jurassic Park ride. Once upon a time , 65 million years ago, there lived dinosaurs on this planet, they roamed around everywhere in the world, and disappeared suddenly after the Jurassic-Triassic age. In the last decade, Stephen Spielberg had awaken those creatures back in his masterpiece movie series about dinosaurs. The technology have even created a question in the scientists mind that can actually the dinosaurs be back again really on earth? From the fossil prints and DNA implantation, it is theoretically possible. But how difficult it is in actual science? As difficult as to find a needle in haystack in a completely dark room. When we went inside the Jurassic park river ride, at the beginning, it seemed calm and quite, there was a river on which our boat was sailing, and artificial dinosaurs were spreading water, making noise. They looked big, but we were able to enjoy them. Then suddenly , our boat entered inside a dark path, where all sorts of scary noises started to happen, and the river path were shaking. Before we realized it, we saw a T-rex (Tyrannosaurus-rex, the most ferocious dinosaur of all) coming to eat us with its open mouth and sharp teeth. Our heart pumped out and we lowered our head to save ourselves, and we managed to avoid the T-rex. Then, next moment, when we saw that we were going downhill. An 84 ft water tower is taking our boat down. This is got to be the end of everything. Then suddenly we were in the open daylight, our boat splashed in the water, and we are able to back on earth, safely. The effect is awesome, and the success of this is that it had been able to create a real impact on our mind. Bravo…

Enough of adventure for the morning, and we were also hungry by this time. So, lunch break. There was a Chinese restaurant nearby, so we decided to have lunch there. But since our time was limited, we finished the lunch, went headed back to the future..!!

Yes, then name of our next ride was, “back to the future”. Its supposed to be a time machine, that will start from ice-age and take you to the years to come. We went inside the big room, where they have 8 seats. They have a 3-d animation screen in front, but it seemed like the whole environment is surrounding us. They move the seats, in such a way that you think that you are actually traveling through whatever you are seeing in front in the screen. This was probably the best ride of the whole day. We started with ice-edge, we were really feeling frozen cool , then went through the erupting volcanoes, and the heat was enormous to survive. We went inside the cave of ape-man, floated on the ocean when there was only water on earth, and finally we were headed to the stars and hi-tech world. We had a glimpse of the world as it would be, say in 3005, thousand years from now. Unfortunately, we could not take any picture of this ride.We always hear about the special effects use in the movies, and how the directors and film producers create illusions in the mind of spectators .Now came our first chance to see live –the special effect in the water world. During this half-an-hour show, the stuntmen showed us all sorts of things, driving in to water, creating smoke and fire in water, aero plane crashing into the water, driving on the rope. The crowd went crazy, and it was indeed a special thing to watch.

Then came the most exciting and knowledgableble part of the tour. The behind the scene tour of hollywood studios. We boarded a two compartment bus, and our driver was giving running commentary of the site. We started with different stages where many indoor special effects of various famous films have taken place. We saw the place where the epic movie “SPARTACUS” was shot. We went through the movie set of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Whenever I saw snowfall in the movies, I wondered how come there can be so much snow in different times of film shooting. Now I got my answer. They were FAKE..!! We went to different demonstrations where we saw how fake snowfall can generate real filling, how fake landslide, waterfall and rainfall can make you think how disastrous the weather is. Then we visited the “War of the World” movie shooting site, and we were taken to a plane-crash site. It is simply unbelievable to believe that there was no actual plane crash happened in that place, no one was actually dead there. We did not missed out our chance to see 3-D movies, with Arnold Schwarzenegger involved in Terminator and Shrek animation. The effect were really intense. Me and my wife are not exactly accustomed to these sort of things, so as soon as things went to crazy(like a shark coming towards us, we are falling down from a huge hill-top), we opened the 3-D glass and removed the effect.The last event of the day was animal-channel show. I actually fought with the gate keepers to let us in after the gate closed for that particular show. I loved animal and I thought they would show really exciting things. But it was pretty dull one, few stunts by monkeys, parrots flying around the arena, and that’s about it.That summed up another day of our tour, and before coming out, I stood on the red carpet outside the studios, and really felt something special. If you love movies as I do, you think about Oscar awards ceremony, all the starts gathering and posing on red-carpet. I stood there on the red carpet for a while, realizing that there has been fulfillment of another little dream of mine.On our way back to hotel, I clearly got a glimpse of the famous Beverly hills street, where Hollywood is written in white letters. Thats it, that’s what we have waited for so long, and now we can be counted among one of the elite class of people who have seen Hollywood sign.:)

Day 4: Seaworld

Sunday was the next day, and we somehow lost track of the days and month, we were such intensely engulfed in our tour and experience. All these places were dream-come-true experience. Anyways, Sunday was our time to bid adieu to Anaheim and Los Angeles, and go back to San Diego. The weather was gloomy in the morning, and when we were on the bus, we kept thinking about the past two adventure-filled days, at the universal studios and Disneyland. The bus stopped at one beautiful spot, the stop was inside a big yellow house, resembling our Hajar-duari at berhampore . There were Palm trees surrounding that place, and we were feeling like we are in a place of many many years ago, we were in a place when there was peace in the world. It really gave an unusual nostalgic feeling.Journey back to san diego was uneventful otherwise .After coming back, we took a quick lunch, and was headed for sea world straightaway. The weather was continued to be cloudy and gloomy.We have heard about this sea world a lot, its an utmost experience of going through ocean life in this sort of setting. We are more used to see zoological garden, but sea world is fist of a kind to me.First we went to a polar atmosphere, and it was really amazing to see how a frozen north-pole like atmosphere has been created.

The polar bears were sleepy, and shy in front of so many people.Then we continued our journey in the polar atmosphere to observe different other creatures that live in such extreme conditions. There was a little funny looking bird having yellow hair on the head, then we saw few penguins which hover around the coldest mountain range of Chile and Argentina close to the south pole.

First time I saw a whale, and it was white. These white whales live in the water under the frozen ice. After finishing the polar atmosphere, we quickly headed to a dolphin show. I already saw this kind of show before in Chicago aquarium, so this was nothing new to me. Dolphin has a very developed brain, and it can communicate with human brain pretty well. After watching that show we went to see sharks and then sea-lions. The sharks did not look as horrible and terrifying as it is portrayed in the Hollywood movies. The interesting part was that, when we went to see sharks, we were walking inside a tunnel, and the water reservoir where the sharks were floating , was above out head. So sharks were actually floating above us.

Sea Lion is a creature that looks like sea horse, but its black, and makes some weird noise, and it loves fish. So people were throwing fish at their direction, but there are sea-gulls. These birds are dangerous, and they show no mercy when trying to catch the fishes that are thrown to the sea lion’s direction. Somehow the cry of the sea lions made us feel sad.

To freshen up our mood, we went to see the famous “shamu-the killer whale” show. We have heard about this show for long time, and every one that we talked about our tour advised us not to miss this one. Shamu is an internationally famous killer-whale, and he has been used in number of movies too. The tag attached to his name” killer-whale” is somewhat misleading, because he is not killer by any means. It is actually the whole shamu family, the father shamu, mother shamu and baby shamu. They danced, they jumped out of the water, they waved with their fins, and they spread the water too drench the crowd sitting near to the huge pool. It was really an entertaining show, and our mind was filled after watching the show. Then we were of to a bumpy river ride, in which we were completely drenched. Then to make things pleasant, we went for the aerial tram, to get a glorious view of san diego and sea world from sky. We were not disappointed, though the sky and weather was gloomy, so we could not take too many good pictures.

By now, we started to feel a little bit tired. We were running around for last 4 days non-stop. We sat down, had a chocolate ice-cream, relaxed, watched a circus show in the water (not so great). Then we again took a ride on sky tower. It basically takes you about 400 fit high and lets you watch the beauty of san diego in twilight. After doing that, we came back, and titum wanted to have a go with the dolphins, and played with them for a while.We waited to see the shamu show again in the night, and the show , shamu, water pool in the floodlights, all looked amazing in the night. We enjoyed it even better than we did in the morning.Finally our day at sea world came to an end. We waited outside for a while for the taxi, and then came back to hotel. Needless to say, we were pretty tired. So tired that we did not have the energy to go for a decent dinner. There was a fast food joint just outside our hotel, I quickly went their and came back with some food, we ate it quickly and went to sleep.

Day 5 : The city and harbor tour

Monday was the last day of our tour. We almost covered everything we wanted to cover on this trip, so we saved the last day for the local views. The city of San Diego, the old town Mexico, and the sea beach. We started from our hotel in chartered bus that picked us up pretty early in the morning. Then we roamed around the city and its suburban area.

We saw the older side of san diego, the beautiful side of san Diego. We went to one of the most expensive places in the world, it’s a small town called “La Jolla”. The beach is beautiful, and the guide told us that lots of Hollywood stars have houses in this area. We visited an art museum in La Jolla, and visited a sea-side gorgeous hotel. Then we visited the old town Mexico, the place is almost at the border of Mexico, and many regards this place as the birth place of California. The place gives you a pretty nostalgic fantasy feeling .It reminds you of old times, when civilization did not engulf the world, when people still survive on hunting, when red Indians used to be the only population around this part of the world.
Bushy trees, old style cars and trolleys, artifacts and handcrafts resembling the old Maya Inca civilizations and many more sights like this exactly portrays the old town Mexico feeling in your mind. It was really wonderful and memorable place to see. We did some shopping in this area and added a photo-frame resembling old town in our collection.

Then we were off to see the san diego port and harbor. It was a one hour long drive in the san diego bay, which is a part of pacific ocean .It was enjoyable, but nothing extravagant .We got a good view of San Diego skyline. The journey was closing to the end. We came back to hotel in the afternoon, and discovered Panda House around our hotel. The best Chinese-oriental food we had for long long time. Then we came back to hotel, and did not take much rest, and went off for sea-beach. Another dream come true. So far ocean meant Bay of Bengal. Now, when we see the pacific ocean in front of us, when we get to play in the water of that ocean, its really an experience we want to cherish for long long time. We hear the stories about pacific ocean, its vastness, its depth, its mysteries, its sharks, its whales..and lot more. The beach was not the prettiest beach, but we enjoyed nevertheless, in the water, danced around, withstood the water current, collected snails, ate hot delicious fries. And thus came the end of our tour. It was indeed the most memorable tour we ever had. People dream about such trips, let alone Honeymoon. Both me and my wife was so satisfied that we were really repenting how the days went so fast.

I am sure now and also in many many more years to come, whenever we would dream, we would dream about Disneyland’s snow white, dream of parade, fireworks, spaceship to eternity in Hollywood, whales jumping in water, and we would dream about the distant, far away shoreline of Pacific ocean still wondering what is beyond that line.Journey to dreamland was finished on high note, and we came back to Ann arbor on Tuesday, June 14th,and still thinking, “once upon a time in San Diego..”.