Roaming Raos

How deep is our love? They say that if you want good desi food in Paris, you should take the Metro or RER to Paris Nord and then take the Eurostar across the English Channel to London. They are not joking!!! We realized this within weeks of moving to France, and the foodies that we are I could foresee multiple trips to London to get our desi fix. A few weeks ago I came across a Eurostar New Year promo and it was too good to pass up on an "all you can eat Desi food weekend" in London. What can I say? Desperate times call for desperate measures, maybe? :P

Our first long weekend after moving to France and our choice of destination was easy. We could hear London calling us! Or maybe we could hear ALL the London desi eateries calling us? :P (You can check out our blog on London desi eateries here ) This was going to be my fourth time and I can go to London another dozen times. (We have made one more trip since then and hope to go at least once more before we return to the US before the end of the expat assignment.) That says a lot about how awesome London is to visit because if you ask anyone who knows me they'll tell you I DO NOT like going to back the same place over and over again. Why would you when you have so many new cool places to see? Except if it is London, Lahore or San Francisco! Then you do not count  <3

Iceland had been one of my most desired places to visit for the longest time. My interest was first sparked when I saw some calendar worthy shots of its limitless natural & geological wealth that my husband's coworker shot on his photography tour about 3 years ago. I remember coming home and doing a quick search only to realize that a trip to Iceland for a family of four can seriously break a bank, so it had to wait.

Fur our first Winter holidays in Europe we decided to visit Prague, Czech Republic as it is supposed to be beautiful around that time of the year with all the Christmas markets and holiday decor. We flew to Prague on Christmas eve because it was the cheapest to fly on that date and the ticket was still not cheap by any means. It is basically not cheap to fly to anywhere around Christmas; we figured we might as well go somewhere we had never been and was known to be beautiful enough to make tolerating the cold worth our while.

This was our third trip to Germany, but our first to Berlin. You cannot live in Europe and never go to Berlin, you just cannot. That would just be weird and so that was precisely why it was our pick for the Easter Long Weekend trip.

On the last weekend of winter break we drove down to Bordeaux with the kids and one of my husband's French colleagues. He was heading down there to see his girlfriend, we had room in the car and if he did not mind travelling with kids we certainly did not mind the company :) It was actually a pretty interesting five hour drive and I am positive our chatty family gave him a headache by the end of it :P I mean we did not hold back at all; from playing Desi tunes in the car, to eating chicken & gg salad sandwiches, to sipping on tea out of a thermos, we made sure he knew what a Desi road trip truly sounds, smells and feels like :P Do not worry, we got him there alive and well, we think :P

Early Saturday morning when many were still making their way back home after a Friday night out on the town in Helsinki, we were on our way to catch a flight to Ivalo, Lapland - the northern most airport in Finland. It was also the closest one to our dreamy destination,  Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort . We were expecting a really small plane, but to our surprise it was a pretty big and full one. I think the Japanese myth that a baby conceived under the Northern Lights is a happy/lucky/boy baby might have to do something with it :P