Bajofondo

We took Lyft to Venice today and strolled along the boardwalk. There were a lot of artists selling their work and a lot of people riding bikes and electric scooters. We returned to the hotel to find our luggage had arrived - it hadn't made it on the plane with us in Shanghai.

We planned this trip to allow us to attend a concert by Bajofondo. We are in the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the band is taking a break right now. They are incredible and perform very rarely, so we are lucky to be able to see them. We will fly home tomorrow and a very enjoyable trip will be over.

To LA

Cute kids this morning at the Temple of Heaven. We are off to LA - in Shanghai now. Airplane mode is imminent...

Countdown to home

We took it easy today, just strolling around near our hotel. We walked through the park where these pagodas are and paid the fee to climb up in them. We spent an hour or so and then came back and ate lunch near our hotel. It was another case of pointing to what we wanted but it worked out well.

This evening we walked to a night market but it was drizzling rain and the pickings were slim, so we came back to eat in our hostel. Tomorrow we will take the train to Beijing, spend the night, then fly to LA on Friday.

Guilin

We arrived in Guilin last night and took a bus to our hostel, where we have a regular hotel room. This section town is very touristy, which means more selection of types of restaurants but higher prices. We booked a boat ride down the Li River then ate Chinese food at an Irish pub.

We got on a bus at eight this morning and were dropped off at our hostel at seven this evening. Of the eleven hours we were away, only three and a half were spent on the river. We basically joined a parade of similar boats all doing the same thing, which was taking people to see the scenery along one section of the river. It was pretty but we were frustrated that so much time was spent in buses and in Yangshuo waiting for the ride back to Guilin. Perhaps we need to take a break from viewing gorgeous landscapes.

While we were in Yangshuo, we halfway joined a conversation two American men were having about how advanced the technology is here. For example, hardly anyone uses cash for purchases. They use their phones to scan qr codes at shops or anyplace we might use cash or credit cards. Their trains run exactly on time, at least the fast trains do. They are rapidly expanding their high speed train system to cover the whole country. Most of the motor scooters here are electric. It is a different way of approaching things than we have. They have a long way to go to clean up their air, but they are even working on that.

We have no plans for tomorrow except to take it easy.

Towers of stone

Our visit to the Zhangjiajie park went well, especially since we had only one day there. The park is big, so many people spend two or three days there.

We left Changsha on the first slow train we've ridden on this trip. We had "hard seats", but they had padding and ruffled seat covers. The seats faced each other, with a little table between them, so we were close to our neighbors. The ride took longer than scheduled and when we arrived at Zhangjiajie City we had to find out where to catch the bus to Wulingyuan, the tourist town at one of the entrances to the park. Once there, we walked to our hotel, which, of course, was placed wrong on the map from Booking.com.

The park ticket windows opened at seven and we were in line at 6:40. After a mad rush to the ticket window we took a bus for twenty minutes to get a cable car up the mountain. At the top, we rode on another bus for a few minutes to where we walked on paved paths to view the scenery. Absolutely breathtaking.

We went to a couple of other sites within the park, the second of which has rock towers named Avatar floating mountains, after the Avatar movie. The Hallelujah Mountains in the film were inspired by those in Zhangjiajie. The spires are spectacular - hundreds of feet tall. We saw a couple of monkeys, too.

Now we're going back to Changsha, where we will spend the night before heading to our last city, Guilin. The last, of course, except for Beijing, because we will fly back to the States from there.

To Zhangjiajie

We arrived in Changsha yesterday afternoon and checked in to the Mellow Orange hotel. No one at reception spoke English but they had our reservation. Our room was the biggest and, so far, cheapest of the trip. It had the first minibar offering condoms we had ever seen.

We went for supper to a place recommended by a guide book, Fire Palace, where the ordering process resembles dim sum - carts are brought by the table and you point (in our case) to what you want. The food was indeed fiery; even the snow peas and broccoli had chilis on them.

Then we took the subway to the old part of town, which is a shopping area. The photo is of an alley off the shopping street. We went back to the hotel early. At one point Laurie asked me if I had dropped a business card near the door. No, but someone had slid a card under the door. It advertised call girls. Two more cards appeared ten minutes later. Proof positive that ours was not a hotel aimed at foreign tourists.

Now we're on the train to Zhangjiajie City, where we will get a bus to the village at the park entrance. This is our first time on a regular train in China. Not bad, but the fast trains are much better.

Huangshan day two

We spent the night on the mountain and I left our room at 5:20 to catch the sunrise. I was really hoping to see the sea of clouds or at least some wispy clouds below the peaks, but the weather was clear. The light on the crags was pretty, all the same.

After breakfast we started walking to the Jade Screen cable car station, along with hundreds of other hikers. I say "hikers" but stair climbers and decenders is more like it. We went up and down stairs for over four miles. Our legs were still feeling yesterday's activity, which didn't make it easier. For over half the way the path was so crowded we had to move at the same pace as everyone else. There was spectacular scenery most of the way, though, and we were glad to be seeing it. We decided we were happy to have visited Huangshan but we wouldn't do it a second time.