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.

Huangshan photo

An example of the views up here.

Huangshan

Huangshan, or Yellow Mountain, is one of the sources of the iconic Chinese paintings of the steep peaks floating above clouds or pine trees growing out of rocks. We rode the cable car up this morning, leaving most of our luggage at our hotel in Tangkou, the town at the base of the mountain. Visiting here is a little like going to a national park in the States, but with a lot more people. There was a bit of a scrum getting on the cable car but things smoothed out after we were on the mountain.

Everyone visiting here is on holiday and pretty much everyone is in a good mood. Lots of families and couples. There are tour groups at all the sights we visit and Huangshan is no exception. They are cute - everyone in the group wears the same color hat. That is the Chinese tour groups I am speaking of. We haven't noticed any foreign tours on Huangshan.

The place is truly beautiful but we have to walk up and down many, many steps as we move around on the mountain. There are paved paths everywhere but they mostly consist of steps. Still, it is a real privilege to be able to experience Huangshan.

A group that probably doesn't feel so privileged are the porters who carry everything up and down the mountain. There don't seem to be any roads up the mountain and there are several hotels up here. The porters walk with very heavy loads up and down the stairs - fresh things up and trash down. They stop and rest a couple of minutes every few dozen steps. I wonder how the materials to build the hotels came up the mountain, though.

Tomorrow we will go back down and spend another night at the base of the mountain and then make our way to Changsha on the way to Zhangjiajie, another place of natural beauty.

On the train to Huangshan

We have been on the train a few hours and arrived Yangrao, a city on the way to Huangshan. All at once everyone got up and pressed the lever on the end of each row and spun the seats around to face the other way. The train reversed directions and this way we are all still facing forward. I had never seen that before but it made a lot of sense.

We made it to Yu Gardens yesterday at Laurie's urging, this time getting up early and catching the subway. We beat the crowds and it was a beautiful place. It is surrounded by a wall with dragons on the top and has old pavilions, ponds and trees. One of my favorite things about China is the presence of dragons everywhere.

Then we took a ride on the Huangpu River to see the Shanghai skyline. There are 24,000,000 people in Shanghai, so there is a lot to see. On the way back to the hotel we stopped for boiled dumplings, which you can see being made in this photo.

Today on the train we have made the transition from coastal plain to hills. Graves are dug into some hills, I would guess to save flat land. Rice is just sprouting from the paddies and we have seen a few cows and water buffalo. This train is not as fast or as slick as the one from Beijing, but it still beats anything we rode in India.

This evening we will stay at the base of Huangshan, a very popular scenic mountain. Tomorrow we will go up the mountain and spend the night there. If you want to see some pretty photos, do an image search for Huangshan.

Old City God

We left our hotel this morning to walk along the Huangpu River and immediately turned around to get warmer clothes from our room. It was cool, windy and foggy. We headed to the old post office building where we wanted to go on the roof to see the view (I know, in the fog), but were stopped at the entrance by a lone guard.

We kept walking to the Bund, the old colonial business section of Shanghai beside the river. There is a pretty promenade and it was filled with families and tourists, all looking across the river to the Pudong section of the city, where the mind blowing skyscrapers are. Their tops were obscured by clouds but it was fun to see them. The river was busy with cargo boats.

Our goal was to visit the old Yuyuan Garden and the adjacent bazaar, but we wound up visiting the temple of the Old City God, about which I know nothing except that it was interesting to see. There were a lot of statues of deities but I have no idea who they were. We decided against visiting the garden when we saw how crowded it was. The temple, garden and bazaar are located in the same area.

One thing I am enjoying in Shanghai is the easy availability of dumplings, fried, steamed and boiled. Last night we went to Yang's Fried Dumplings where I managed to squirt the hot oil from the inside of a dumpling all over my pants.

Something I miss when we travel is easy access to a washing machine and, especially, a clothes dryer. It's easy enough to wash clothes in the sink and I did that, but the clothes don't dry as quickly as I would like them to. I sat for a while this afternoon aiming a hair dryer at a shirt that was stubborn about getting dry. I also gave the rest of my laundry to the hotel to have washed, but that isn't always possible when we stay just a day or so in places.

By the way, thanks to everyone who has commented on the blog.

The Summer Palace and on to Shanghai

Yesterday we rode the subway to the Summer Palace to enjoy the sights. The place is a huge park with a lot of ornate buildings, pretty gardens and collections of art that used to be owned by the Empress Dowager. As far as I can tell, most of the buildings stand as a monument to her vanity, but they are a lot of fun to see. We stayed for several hours before heading back to our hotel.

We checked out of the hotel early this morning and took a cab to the train station. Our train was a fast one, going 353 kilometers per hour at times. That's 219 mph. We rode second class and it was clean, quiet and comfortable. The trip to Shanghai took just a few hours. The scenery was mostly green fields.

We got off the train and emerged into a vast station, where we took a little while to figure out how to find the right subway line. After a good while on the subway we reached the station near our hotel. It began raining just as we arrived at the hotel, so we felt lucky to have missed the rain. We'll spend a couple of days in Shanghai before moving on.

The City and the Wall

Yesterday we caught a bus to the Forbidden City, where we and many thousands of others viewed the Imperial buildings. Only eighty thousand people are allowed in per day and a whole lot of them were there with us. We enjoyed the visit and the buildings are truly majestic but we were glad to escape the crowd and walked back to our hotel.

Laurie took a class in the evening on how to make dumplings and I got to sample her cooking when she came back to our room. I visited a craft beer joint down the lane while Laur was taking the class.

This morning we got up early to leave at 6:30 to visit the Great Wall at Simatai, which is roughly two hours away when you have a driver that drives as fast as ours did. The guide book said the site opens at 8:00, but the guide book was useless. It turned out we were not allowed in until 10:00, so we could have slept later. The joys of independent travel.

We rode a cable car most of the way up the mountain and walked the rest of the way. Simatai is known for how steep the wall is between the towers. The wall has been partially restored but is not like some sections that have been completely rebuilt. It was everything I had hoped to see and experience. Only six hundred people are allowed to visit, but I couldn't tell if that was at one time or per day. It was not crowded and at times we were alone; there were no where near six hundred people there.

We were tired after walking on the wall and climbing up and down the steep sections and were glad we had a car waiting to bring us back to the hotel. We had a simple supper at a place across the lane from us and returned to our room for the night.

First day in Beijing

We were met at the airport last night by a driver arranged by our hotel, The Orchid. We decided to have the hotel send a car instead of taking a taxi because our hotel is in a hutong, which is a traditional neighborhood of narrow lanes and homes set behind walls. The hotel offers cell phones to guests but, so far, mine has worked well enough that I have declined their offer.

We had breakfast at the hotel and then walked past the Bell Tower and Drum Tower, both of which are big and located at the northern end of the the old part of the city. We headed for the Forbidden City but learned it is closed today, so we visited Beihai Park. The park has a lake in it that was full of peddle boats and surrounded by old temples and other buildings with the ornate roofs I always associate with Chinese design.

The high point of the park for me was the Nine Dragons Screen, which is a wall covered with ceramic dragons on both sides. After visiting the park, we ate a late lunch and are relaxing in our room. Altogether an enjoyable first day.

In Pudong Airport (Shanghai)

The first long flight is over and we are waiting to board the plane to Beijing. Chinese immigration and customs were pretty painless but it was not always clear where we, as transfer passengers, were supposed to go. There was a door marked "Transfer", but that wasn't for us. We had to go through customs, exit the secure area, then go back through security. It didn't help that we are operating on very little sleep. All's good, though, and we will be glad to get in bed in Beijing.

Off to China

Laurie is posing with a really big Hershey kiss at LAX. We are sitting on the plane waiting to take off to Shanghai, where we will change planes for the flight to Beijing.