China

I have been avoiding this blog because there was just way too much to write about on our trip and we have over 700 pics -- so it was just too overwhelming. But today is the day -- I'm just going to do an overview of everything. You may not even care anymore since it took me so long. Oh well. Here is goes anyway.

First of all - I am not sure what exactly I was expecting - but I wasn't expecting it to be as poor as it was. And we were only shown the best parts - so I know there is so much worse. It seemed no one had washers and dryers. Everywhere we went we saw clothes hanging out of all the windows to dry.

I was also blown away by the amount of people. There are so many people. Everywhere. They have tons of tall apartment buildings because they don't spread out - they spread up. So many cars on the road (every one honking) - and so many people on bikes. It really seemed like getting around on a bike was much faster than a car because the streets were so busy. I understand now why they put a limit on children. I still think it is sad - but now I at least can kinda understand.

These were the bathrooms. Some stalls had doors, some did not. Some bathrooms had toilet paper - a lot did not. You were safest to always carry a wad in your back pocket, just in case. At first I was totally scared of these squater toilet things. It a hole in the ground. But after using them for a while I actually found I preferred them to trying to squat over a regular toilet. You don't have to put as much effort into avoiding contact with the toilet. Our hotels had normal bathrooms - which was nice. And clean. :)
Our food. The first day it was kinda fun. But after that I was over it. It was funny because our tour guides would take us to different restaurants every meal and would describe it to us and make it sound like this meal would be totally different than the last. But no - everything tasted the same. Very greasy and salty. I was so swollen all week from all the salt. I ended up losing 6lbs -- but quickly found it back in the US. ;) Also everything had bones in it and joints. And I am not entirely sure what all meats we were served. Some had some very strange texture -- I don't think I want to know actually.

All meals were served on these big lazy suzans. And all meals were served with beer or coke (warm) as a drink. No ice because we were never allowed to drink the water there. It would have made us sick. We even had to brush our teeth with bottled water. Even with all of those precautions - I still am pretty sure I came home with some sort of parasite or something. Sam put me on a Coke diet for a day and that cured that. (he learned that in Argentina)

Anyways - if I ever have to eat Chinese food - from China - it will be too soon.
Okay -- onto the locations.

First up was Beijing

Olympic Village - Birdsnest...

The Forbidden City (this is where all the emperors lived - it's huge)

The Summer Palace (one of my favorite places. This is where the "Dragon Lady" primarily lived - she had this place made because she didn't care for living in the Forbidden City)
Ming Tombs (where a lot - not all - of old emperors were buried)
The Great Wall of China (highlight! It was beautiful and amazing. And there were a million trillion steep steps)
At the great wall there were all these locks. We found out that people go there to confess their love to one another. They put a lock on and throw away the key. Awww... :) Too bad we didn't know this before and bring our own lock.
Old Beijing. We were pulled in this by a little man on a bike (poor guy) They took us around to show us Old Beijing - it was pretty poor
While in Old Beijing - they set up for us to eat dinner in a locals home. It was tiny -- we were eating in their living room. They had one little room off of each side and a tiny little kitchen. They were very sweet and made lots of food for us. It was pretty darn cool.
Temple of Heaven
next City... Suzhou
This city had my favorite place - Tiger Hill
Tiger Hill had this leaning pagoda. The whole place was just beautiful. Lots of beautiful plants, flowers, trees and buildings.
While in Suzhou we went on a boat tour thru their Grand Canal. It is called the Venice of China.
While going thru the Grand Canal we stopped off at a farmers market. It was MUCH different from what we would find in our farmers market here. I didn't see anything I would even know what to do with there...
and I had a really hard time with the smells...
Next city - Hangzhou

Here we went to a green tea plantation. It was beautiful and pretty interesting to learn about.
While in Hangzhou we went on a boat ride in West Lake. Can you see that cool boat out there? Ours wasn't as fancy. :)
Final city - Shanghai

Here we got to go on the Bullet Train. SO FAST!! I got a little nervous on this.
see!! fast!
The is The Bund -- the smog was really bad - but it is a place with tons of big new buildings in Shanghai.

Can you see the big, blue, glowing building?? That's our hotel in Shanghai. Our room was on the 34th floor. I think this hotel was my favorite - maybe tied with our Beijing one. But all 4 of the hotels we stayed at were extremely nice. They all were 5 stars and pretty fancy.

Our last full day in China they took us to this huge shopping bizarre area. As you can see, it was a bit crowded. They have knock off of everything and lots of funky other stuff you can shop for. They gave us 3 hours here - it was crazy. But we got some fun stuff to bring back for the kids. And a fake Coach purse for me. :)
We really loved both of our tour guides -- but our second one - Jacky really won my heart over. I just love him. Here we are at the airport saying goodbye.
Above everything else - one of my (and Sam's) most favorite things about the whole trip was all the friends we made. It actually surprised me. I knew we were traveling with a group - but I just figured we go along but Sam and I would just kinda do our own thing. And then when we met our group and found that we were at least half of everyones age - I really thought we'd be on our own. But I was totally wrong. We LOVED these people. It was like we became family on our trip. And I'll cherish their friendship forever.
Well that about covers everything. Hope you made it thru all that. Sorry for the delay. But I'm glad it's done.