Day 2 - The International House of Pancakes and Quaker Mall!

Day 2

The International House of Pancakes and Quaker Mall!

The night was interesting. I woke up and thought that I had slept more than usual, but to my amazement, it was only 2 AM. Bah! This was not to stop there. I slept again and again but the time didn’t move. Ok I thought. “This is going to be an eventful day”

My colleague Anand called me @ 7.30 AM and told me lets go to IHOP for breakfast. I agreed without knowing what it was. It was a gloomy day with rains and mist all over. But I was different. Wearing a Hanes T-Shirt and a ¾ trousers, I got ready after a nice bath. (which I’m not generally interested in India!) We got out of the hotel at 8.30 AM and we drove about 10 miles. “International House of Pancakes” – A shiny blue board with white letters. We went in and I was slightly nervy about what I’ll get there. Anand was confident as he loves this place. A big fat lady walked in with menu cards for us. I started searching for a suitable Veg offload. I didn’t expect it to be so easy with the kind of reviews I got from India. It had a lot of pancake varieties – Buttermilk Pancakes, fruit berries, choco chip…etc.

I chose a “Harvest n Grain Pancake – with wild Strawberry and Whipped Cream dressing”. Anand chose pumpkin pancakes and cheese omlette. After a few minutes, the order came. So huge were the pancakes and were 5 of them! It tasted like half – dosa and half roti. I started to devour them as I was extremely hungry. But I was not able to eat more than three! It was very tasty with the blueberry and raspberry syrup. It cost me around 7 USD but Anand offered to pay this time. I was ok with this and we returned back to hotel.

I got the charger pin from him and worked for around 2 hours. Also, I got time to read the Harry Potter. I badly wanted a pin so that I can use my laptop independenly and we decided to go out for Shopping at 4.00 PM to the Quaker Mall.

But Anand’s rented car was having a passenger door which doesn’t get locked. So we checked out @ 3.30 PM and found a nearby Hertz office (it’s a huge rent-a-car chain across US) at Laurenceville. We exchanged our Toyota Camry for a Mazda 6. The cars are good in the US as they are without gears (perfect for me!) We then drove towards the Quaker mall.

It was big! In the sense, the malls in US are more spacious, huge stores. One floor in forum will be small compared to a mall store in US. But there height is less than 3 floors. The parking area is huge and bigger the mall centre. We entered through the MACY’s (a big chain of stores in US) and strolled through almost all the stores like – Verizon, Bostonian, Dockers, JCPenney, Sears. We then went to Radio Shack to get a charger pin for me. It cost me 10 USD. “What the hell” I thought! But I had to buy it. All malls in US have a separate space for food and restaurants. I found Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins and many other country cuisines. Anand wanted to have a coffee. So we went to the Dunkin Donuts to get one. Amazing were there ice-cream varieties! From cho chip ice creams to mint to raspberry to many others which I cant dream about in India. I was tempted to have one. I ordered a coconut ice-cream wafer with Almonds, Choco Nuts, Raisins and Walnuts with a raspberry fruit syrup. I say – it was fantastic! Then we went around the mall for another 2 hours, took some good shots and it was 8.30 PM.

We had already decided to find an Indian Restaurant for dinner. We searched our CAR GPS and found two. “Masala Grill” and “Sadya Chandy’s” (mallu’s will love this name!)
We decided to try Masala Grill which was 5 miles away. It was inside Princeton University!

Princeton University – one of the Top 15 in the US! The restaurant was located inside the university. The sun was just going to set. Long days – 6.00AM to 9.00 PM. I was seeing an US university for the first time. So huge the campus is – bigger than my home town. Anand was saying the Harward and Cambridge will be much much bigger. I would be visiting them next week and I’ll be in Boston. Inside the university, you have so many shops, cuisines from almost any country, banks and housing localites. All the houses and buildings had a European touch. You think somewhere you would have seen them - Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad! We entered a Nassau street and parked our car. Started our search for MASALA GRILL!

There we found a tiny small room within a small building with Indian attendants. Surprised to see many Americans eat there! I went ahead and grabbed a table for ourselves.
Then Anand came and told me. “Typically in US, you don’t go ahead and grab a table. You wait for the hotel attendant to call you and offer you one.” Another good advice / custom from him. “God! Will this ignorance ever end?” I wondered.

We ordered Mixed Vegetable Pakoras, 2 Rotis and Navaratan Korma. The food was good and cost us 13 USD each. My first Indian Cuisine experience outside India! Good spicy drenching for my otherwise starving tongue.

Time was 10.30 PM and the sun was sleeping. We returned back to our hotel after another eventful day. Tomorrow morning, I should be up early as my business training starts tomorrow.

Watch out for Day 3 – “Aswin enters the Franklin Corner Road and the Oak Tree Road”