We saw many castles in UK. Here are some of my favorite things about each castle
Tower of London
The Tower of London
The tower of London was built in the first century to commemorate Norman victory of England.  Over the past 1000 years, this tower has had a long and interesting history. At various times it has been a royal palace, a prison,  as a palace, a prison, a fort,  a place for executions, a treasury, a war hospital and also hosted a menagerie including polar bears that were fishing in the Thames and now it is the home of the British crown Jewels. Continued…
Here are my 2017 highlights!
Costa Rica was on my bucket list for the past 8 years. I used to dream and plan this trip whenever I was bored at work , so this was a pretty well fleshed out plan! So when we decided to make a trip in early December, I was ready with my excel spreadsheet, list of activities I wanted to do and places I wanted to see. The beginning of the trip was inauspicious. Tanay had a lingering cough for the past week and we were hoping it would get better soon. Unfortunately, three days before the trip, he was diagnosed with pneumonia. On the morning we were supposed to leave for the airport, we got up early in the morning, checked up on Tanay and decided we cannot go and just turned back and went to sleep. Fortunately, Tanay had really perked up by morning and seemed much better by afternoon. Another trip to the doctor confirmed that his wheezing had reduced, so we rearranged our itinerary, got a new flight for the next day and managed to salvage the rest of the trip.
They were most accommodating when we had to push our car rental by a day and were prompt in picking us up and transporting us and our baggage to the car rental place. Though the formalities took some time  (they seem to have adopted the Southern African motto of “Hurry Up Slowly), they were done with a smile and before we knew it we were sent off with a recommendation to stop at Denny’s for dinner. The airport area was crowded with flashy restaurants but many of them had a huge wait time, so we decided to grab something by our hotel. Unfortunately, by the time we reached the hotel, it was late night and there was no one that spoke or understood our English help us. By this time (it was past 10pm), we were tired and decided to make do with the snacks that we had in our bags and pretty much crashed.  We woke up to appreciate the beauty of the 
Hirshhorn Museum : Washington DC has a number of really excellent museums – all world class and most of them completely free. Despite our wish to see all of them, we tend to go to Washington DC primarily when we have guests. And then we take them to the two most visited museums, the Air and Space Museum and the Museum of Natural History. These are great museums but now we have been slowly badmouthing these museums to our guests and suggesting that they visit some other museum. Most folks are clever enough to not fall for our trick but my cousin really didn’t care enough about museums and let us lead us into Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Now we entered the museum not knowing anything about anything about contemporary art. Right at the door, we were met with a young docent who was giving a free guided tour of the main exhibit , so we decided to take advantage of it. While waiting for the tour to start we took a stroll in the gardens to look at the various sculptures they have.
This is is all wrong, said Seejo. Antennas are supposed to be parabolic in nature to capture the signal. These 
antennas don’t make any sense – they just won’t work. The poor guide was speechless. He was trying to get us to see that underneath the antenna, there were words written that spoke of wide open spaces and loving without boundaries. Seejo brushed those lofty feeling aside – but this is technically wrong he insisted. It was at that point, when I steered Seejo away from the Ilya and Emilia exhibit to some lego faces and colorful paintings. We really understood that well.
Fredericksburg, TX
Following the tradition, here are my 2016 highlights.
Most of the places we went to this year were all places we had been to before. With my sister I visited NYC and Niagara and Luray and Dubai again. But these were some of the new places I got to see this year
fairy tale maze , a painting corner– each of which could keep the kids engaged for a long time. For me, the biggest plus of this place was that each & every zone had a special corner to accommodate infants & toddlers – so both kids could play nearby – if not together. Most of the kids were Annika’s age – so she did have a great time with friends. They also have a carousel so both kids had multiple rides and they ended the day with a performance from a jester with the kids following him about like Pied Piper. There were multiple theatre shows that the kids can attend throughout the day. All in all, it was well worth the $20 admission fee for the entire day. 
