Bangalore, India

I arrived in Bangalore around 1230am last night, after traveling for 22 hours. I spent way too much time sitting in a plane. I was on Air France and flew through Paris, but didn't get to see any of the city from the air because it was so foggy. I was hoping to at least see part of Paris. I really need to visit Paris. I watched a few French movies to make up for it. The cutest one was La Petit Nicolas.

When I finally made it to India, the hotel had a driver waiting to pick me up with the little sign. The drive over was pretty quiet, there weren't a lot of other cars out (probably because it was 1 in the morning), but every time the driver went through a crosswalk, he would honk, which I thought was a little weird because there wasn't anyone out. I found out today why he honked. That's all they do while they're driving here, honk to let you know they're about to run you over, honk to let another car know they are in their way...lots of honking. I had to take a video, which I'm having troubles putting on here. I'll have to try later.

Here are some pics of the road around here, nothing too exciting or pretty.

I'm staying on Brigade Road, which is next to MG road, both of which I had read about as being good places for shopping. I did get out and found some nice deals on a few things, but I really didn't like how dirty everything was out on the sidewalks and all the loud traffic around me. I went into this department store that had all sorts of things on sale. The weird thing about that store was how many people were working there. I would look at one or two racks of clothes and one employee would come up to me and just stare at me, so I would say, "Oh, I'm just looking, thanks" and then I would get to the next couple of racks and another person would come up to me and start staring. It was so weird. First, that they had so many people working there and then second that they wouldn't ask me if I needed any help, they would just wait for me to say something first. And then when I was making my purchase, I asked the guy if they took American Express and he shook his head no so I asked him if they took Visa and he said, "we take American Express or Visa". I guess shaking your head no means yes here. So confusing.

I had read about a huge botanical garden here, but I didn't have enough time to find it. It would have been nice to see some more green. I did see two small garden patches, but there was garbage thrown all around it. I really should have found the botanical garden, so I could know there was something really pretty here. Maybe I'll have time on my way back home.