DocDivaTraveller: September 2016

Outside The Mall, Athens

Ancient sculpture in modern Athens..The Acropolis Metro station

I am sure whenever you hear Athens you think of Acropolis and Hercules. Its not faulty though, we have been programmed to associate Greece with history. Ancient history means Greece and all the Greek Gods associated with various mythological stories. I covered all the parts of quintessential 'Athens' in my previous posts. When we were chalking out our itinerary, I wanted some time for the modern parts of Athens. Like I wanted to visit the malls, stadium, etc etc. The fact that my plan backfired on me is a different story.

While returning from the Odeon part of Acropolis, we were handed over a flyway of an Indian restaurant. I being the wildly experimental eater have no qualms with food. However my pure vegetarian husband has of course reservations. So we decided to have Indian Food. The pamphlet said walking distance from the Acropolis but we were quite clueless after walking ahead. Whenever we asked anyone, they said it is just a 5 minute walk. In the meantime we found a couple of Bangladeshis (at different points). They first assumed us to be Pakistanis (God knows why) but were happy to find me Bengali. Their ancestors had immigrated from Bangladesh and they were now Greek nationals. Strange life is..work compels people to go to various corners of the world.

With the daughter of the owner of Desi tadka

Moving on, we finally spotted 'Desi tadka' It was run by a Punjabi family with the beautiful daughter of the owner, the hostess. Hubs ordered a deluxe thali which was around 15 euro. I preferred not to order anything as I wanted to have something later on. They were very sweet people and we had a long chat during and after the meal.The family visits Punjab very rarely but the girl spoke good Hindi. Its all about how we try to preserve our cultures. You may forget Hindi while living in the heart of Delhi while you may be fluent even if you have not visited India for years!

The train had art all over it...unlike the Delhi Metro

Getting into the Metro

After the hearty meal, we walked to the Acropolis metro station and boarded the metro to 'The Mall', the largest mall of Greece. After a ride of 45 precious minutes, we reached. As soon as we entered, I was taken aback. The stores were closed! Whaaat? A mall closed on Sundays? In India, malls are the busiest on weekends. How can a mall be closed on Sundays? I was totally crestfallen. Our precious time was wasted and we were on the other side of the city. Anyways the food court was open and I had wings from KFC. After that we headed right back. We had the most beautiful part of the city 'Plaka' left to visist. Unfortunately by the time we reached, it was pitch dark. Daylight till quarter to nine in the evening was not enough for us it seems! Anyways it was a huuuggee waste of time in our tight schedule :(

View of the modern Athens from 'The Mall'

Top: Zara

Hat: Accerorize (Malaysia)

Purse: Aldo

Sunnies: from Bangkok

Skirt: Designed by Mom

September 28, 2016 5 comments

September 24, 2016 9 comments

A communion goes a lot beyond than sharing just a bread and cup. Its to reconstitute a new humanity of grace through the sharing of bread. And yes its so special! For such significant ocassions, there should be special dresses too! We girls just keep on thinking about dresses right? But the truth is that there is a dress for every ocassion. I mean you just can't appear in your pyjamas on a wedding! Or wear sneakers to an interview! Similarly for a communion, you got to doll up in communion dresses!

For the uninitiated, the bond uniting Christians as individuals and groups with each other and Jesus Christ is called communion. Its the service of Christian worship in which bread and wine are consecrated and shared. Recently I came across a wonderful site Mariacommunion.com which has the perfect dresses for this ocassion.

First Communion Dresses:

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White Communion Dresses: The colour white is definitely special and holds a pristine position in beautiful ocassions like weddings and of course communions. Lookout for pristine white communion dresses.

First holy communion dresses: Every holy ocassion requires a new dress. The first communion is no exception. So why wait? Just shop this pretty dress here

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Dresses for first communion: So look no further. For the first communion, you have myriads of options here!

September 22, 2016 8 comments

For a blogger like me, social networking is everything. Okay I may not be into that much networking because of time constraint. But for blogging, the social nexus is everything. With blogging being a full time job and being taken absolutely seriously, a lot of platforms have come up. There are various platforms that connect bloggers to brands and bloggers with bloggers. I have joined many of them but use a very few. For me a networking platform should be friendly and easy to use. One such platform which I really like is Affimity.com

Affimity has been made up of two words: Affinity plus amity (the words are themselves self explanatory). The best part is that here you can share your posts with like minded people. I mean there are various categories (mainly health related). You can read others and post your own too! In short you can openly exchange ideas.

With virtual world becoming more real, our virtual connections have started gaining more importance. We spend more time chatting on internet than on an actual voice call. Infact there may be many days when you have replied a thousand emails but not even had a single voice call! However that does not mean we can connect with anyone and everyone in the virtual world. The friendships with the people out there are very similar to the ones you have in the real world...the strongest binding factor is ''Like mindedness''. Here is where Affimity is best of the lot!

Affimity has various sections like Fitness, Wellness, Beauty, Yoga, Cure, Food, Parenting etc. Now these are the topics which we surf most on the net. Eg I may be having trouble dealing with hairfall and may want to look what my fellow bloggers think. What better way is to find all the related topics under one tab?

Using Affimity is a cakewalk. You sign up and then Bam! Your profile is created.

You would be given suggestions to follow. Some of them maybeyou already know, some of them are top contributors. I followed two people I already knew.

Among the various categories I started with parenting. I believe new parents struggle with so many things and baby's comfort is usually the top concern. I shared my thoughts on comfortable baby diapers.

My post looked like this.

Then I decided to write about fitness. Being a big foodie, I can't even think of cutting down my diet. So I came up with other alternatives to maintain my weight without punishing myself! I decided to share my views with the rest of the world.

I also read various articles which are of my interest like Yoga, Beauty etc etc.

After a fellow blogger commented on my Yoga post, I reached Level 2! Yay! This social blogging platform really rocks! I am really enjoying reading articles of my interests and connecting with like minded people. You can follow me on affinity here.

September 21, 2016 3 comments

Every city looks spectacular during the night.

The colour of the lights in the Colosseo changed every five minutes.

After a horrendous start to our day in Rome (you can read it here) we decided to make the most of what was left. It took a while to decide whether to go for the night tour or not. Finally we ignored what the books said and set out to explore the city at night.

Before leaving for Italy, we had been warned by hundreds of our acquaintances about the lack of safety in Italy. Everyone forbade us to venture at night and scared us with frightening anecdotes of burglary. Since it was our very first day in Italy, we were quite apprehensive. Amsterdam had been very safe but we felt ominosity lurking at every corner in Rome. On deserted streets, we would walk very fast to reach a manned area.

The Santa Maria Maggiore Church

There are special Night Tours of Rome which are conducted by tourist operators. The moment we set out foot outside, we knew why. All the architectural wonders looked magnificent at night. The mighty Colosseo or the Colosseum (in English) gets lit up in every possible colour. The light changes every five minutes. And talk about the vibe. These areas are pedestrian only streets (area pedonale) and you can see swarms of visitors! I mean it was twelve at night and tourists were moving as if it was six! And we were scared of theft and thugs! Talk about stupidity!

The mighty colosseum at night

We walked from our hotel to reach the square that had few very important architectural marvels. The Colosseum, the Roman Forum and the Constantine Arch. Being an Indian I find it silly to say that I had never seen so much crowd! Apart from the tourists, there were myriads of locals. Some were selling sovenirs, some were spray painting with loud music blaring while some were playing instruments for some quick money. Everything felt so nice in the middle of the night.

Spray paint artists whipping up some really good Colosseum pictures in a jiffy; under the influence of blaring music! Notice the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill in the backdrop!

It was half past midnight when we decided to go back. We had a long day ahead (we had to cover what we had lost) and it was along way back to our hotel. There were police vans at many places but as soon as we crossed the touristy area, it was again deserted with sinister looking people keeping an eye upon us. I had my first Italian gelato that night. We reached our hotel safely.

Ah those cobbled streets!

If we overlook the fact that we slept through our sightseeing hours, it was quite a perfect evening.

Arch of Constantine or Arco Di Constantino

This Arch is a triumphal Arch which was erected by the Roman Senate to commemorate Constantine I's victory over Maxentius in the battle of Milvian Bridge in 312. Talk about Rome was not built in a day!!

The Roman Forum

All over Italy there were these fountains that supplied drinking water. This is one of the best aspects about travelling in Italy. This fountain is right near the Metro station of Colosseum.