Atlanta - Day 1

We reached Atlanta around 9.30 pm on Christmas Eve and stayed with my childhood friend KKB and his wife. She had made a wonderful South Indian dinner of pearl onion 'sambhar' and potato fry. This is the first homemade meal for us in 4 days and it was splendid.

On Christmas day, we had a late start, had another home made meal of Indian rice cakes - Idlis, with chutney, then headed for the Temple. The day was cloudy with a little bit of rain. Most places are closed today, with the exception of places of worship and ethnic restaurants / movie theaters. First, we picked up Shankar's cousin Ram, then went to the Hindu Temple of Atlanta. Shankar and I haven't been to a temple since we came back from India last July and this was a good opportunity.

The temple also has a kitchen and we had Tamarind Rice and Yogurt Rice for lunch. They are food items we grew up with and part of our comfort food list.

We went to a movie theater in the mall next for National Treasures - 2. I was not impressed with the second one as I was with the first. It was good time pass before dinner. Atlanta has one of the famous restaurants from Madras (Chennai), called Saravana Bhavan. This is a classic restaurant at home and we were excited to be able to go to one in the States. This branch had opened very recently and one of our other friends Goutham also joined us for dinner. We had food items that are hard to make at home, and it was a lot of fun to meet up with friends and family on Christmas day :)