China

Last October, Sam and I went on a tour of the country Napoleon called "The Sleeping Giant." Although physically, China is the fourth largest country in the world (only slightly smaller then the United States in square miles), it has the largest population – more than four times as many inhabitants as the US. We had 24 days to explore this huge country and meet a few of its 1.4 billion people.

First stop: Beijing. Home to over 21 million people, it is the modern capital of the People's Republic of China, with a very long history and many beautiful tourist sites. We managed to see a few of them, including The Forbidden City, The Temple of Heaven Park, Tiananmen Square, and the Summer Palace.

The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City

Outside The Forbidden City

Temple of Heaven (The Chinese are very fond of their selfie sticks!)

Temple of Heaven

Temple of Heaven

Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen Square - Displays celebrating the 66th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Revolution.

The Summer Palace – Home of the last Empress of China

The Summer Palace

Of course, what would a trip to China be without a visit to one of the biggest tourist sites in the world? The Great Wall is a must!

A member of our tour group took this photo of us with my camera, but unfortunately, the focus was on the background instead of us. Still, it is proof we were there!

Can you see how many people are on the wall?! Thankfully, our knowledgeable guide told us to use the stairway leading in the other direction, and our side was much, much less crowded!

Guard tower on the Great Wall

VERY steep steps!

Some steps were like climbing a ladder. Going down backwards was sometimes the safest way!

Although this young woman made a fashion statement for sure, I'll bet she was sorry she didn't have more comfortable shoes on for the climb!

During our visit to the Great Wall, I probably climbed the equivalent of about 500 stairs, but I did it with sturdy walking shoes and a walking stick that I purchased at the gift shop. It wasn't easy, but I was encouraged by the many young Chinese people who smiled and gave me a thumbs up as they passed. Then, at one point, an older gentleman came up next to me and started speaking to me in Chinese. Of course, I couldn't understand him, so a young woman translated, telling me he wanted to know how old I was. This is a very common question in China. When I told him I was 64, he laughed, made a short remark, and took off, almost running up the steep steps. The young woman told me, "He said he is 80!" Only very old people in China allow their hair to go white, so I guess they thought I was much older than I am. I suppose I wouldn't have gotten so many thumbs up if they had known how young I am!

The hotel we stayed in in Beijing, the Qianmen Jianguo Hotel, also houses the 1000 seat Liyuan Theater where Beijing operas are performed every night. One evening, we attended the opera, including a pre-show treat – watching one of the actors applying his makeup.

All the tourist sites we saw were fantastic, and the opera was very entertaining, but I enjoyed other activities even more. Little things, like going to a shop near our hotel to buy snacks and extra water. Meeting people and trying to communicate with them can be far more rewarding than fighting crowds at tourist attractions. Probably my favorite excursion while in Beijing, was having lunch at the home of a family who lives in one of the few remaining hutongs. 

"Hutong" actually means alley, and refers to the narrow walkways between the traditional courtyard homes that used to belong to well-to-do families – before the revolution came along and turned them into multi-family dwellings. Now the term is used to describe those old neighborhoods. During preparations for the 2008 Olympics, many of the hutongs were leveled to clean up the city and present a more modern face of China to the world. Now, however, some of them are being preserved as part of Beijing's heritage. 

We walked through the Lingdang Hutong to have lunch cooked for us by a woman who is a retired restaurant chef. We sat around the table in her tiny kitchen, watching her cook and enjoying the wonderful dishes she prepared for us.

The entrance to the home of our hostess was fancier than most in the hutong. Step to the left of the door, and you will find the community toilets shared with the surrounding homes in the hutong.

Fresh ingredients.

Delicious meal!

Dumplings come in many different shapes. She was making fancy ones for her family's dinner later in the day.

In some of my photos, you may have noticed the beautiful blue skies with puffy clouds, and wondered what all the talk of pollution is about. We were just lucky. It was really, really windy almost the whole time we were in Beijing, and it blew all of the pollution away from the city. One of the couples in our group had arrived two days before us, and they reported that the smog was so bad the first couple of days you couldn't see down the street, and even the air inside the airport was grey and smoky looking! We knew we were experiencing something special when our guide, Mr. Liu, was excited because he thought his six year old daughter might be able to see the stars in the night sky for the first time in her life! 

During the rest of our trip, except for one day on the Yangzte River, we had grey skies everyday, and it wasn't just in the cities. In fact, the countryside is almost as bad, if not worse sometimes, because although the government is utilizing alternatives for coal in the cities, in the countryside there are coal-burning power plants everywhere. In small villages, they often use coal to heat their homes, they still burn trash, and most rice fields are burned after harvest. Combine all that with the moisture in the air, and pretty much all you get is super hazy vistas. I'm sure you will notice in later photos from the trip.






(To see photos enlarged, click on one and it will open a slideshow. If you would like to see more of my photos from Beijing, click on the link for my Flickr album.)

Dinner in the Dark and Bruges in a Day

Our last destination on our trip this past spring was Paris. We stayed a few days with Sam's cousin Paul and his girlfriend Eva, including celebrating my birthday dinner at Dans le Noir, a restaurant in the city that serves its diners in complete darkness! This is what it looked like in the dining room:

And I'm not kidding! It was completely pitch black, and your eyes do NOT adjust at all! We had to leave all of our belongings, including cell phones and watches, in lockers before entering the dining room. A blind server lead us to our table and instructed us on how to pour our water into our glasses, find our wine glasses (very carefully), and eat our meal as a blind person would. We only had one mishap when Sam accidentally spilled his wine, but they quickly cleaned it up and replaced his wine. It turned out to be a very unique and delicious experience, one that I would highly recommend if you're ever in Paris (or London, Barcelona, St. Petersburg (Russia), or even Nairobi, where they have additional restaurants).

While we were in Paris, we decided to take the advice of the older British couple we had met in Portugal and do an overnight visit to Bruges in Belgium. The city in the province of West Flanders is a few hours drive from Eva and Paul's apartment, and the drive was quite pleasant, with lots of nice scenery. We arrived in late afternoon and began our whirlwind 24 hour tour of the old city center.

Bruges is often compared to Venice, because of its canals, but it is actually much more like Amsterdam. While Paul and Eva went shopping for some kind of herb or something she was interested in finding, Sam and I got in line to do a boat tour of the canals. I know, it's a touristy thing to do, but with so little time, we figured it was a good way to see more of the city, and from angles you can only see on the water. After quite a long wait, our boat finally arrived with our captain/tour guide, who was funny and full of interesting facts about various buildings and the history of the town and its inhabitants. It was very relaxing and entertaining, as well as informative. Definitely worth a few dollars.

We even saw the Relais Bourgondisch Cruyce, the hotel where Colin Farrell jumped out of a window in the movie In Bruges. Recognize it?

After the boat ride, we met up with our travel companions and did some more exploring on foot.

While wandering around the residential areas, one of the handsome residents greeted us from his window.

Twenty-four hours was certainly not enough time to truly enjoy this lovely Flemish city, but that just means we will have to return one day! 

I do have a few more photos of our Bruges visit, so if you'd like to take a look, go to my Flickr album.

Portugal!

Next stop on our spring 2015 trip was the magical town of Sintra, Portugal. 

We arrived very late at night, as our flight from Bordeaux departed over seven hours behind schedule! We flew on an airline called TAP Portugal. TAP, we were told later, stands for, "Take another plane!" I will definitely remember that the next time we go to Portugal! 

We stayed in a guest house called Chalet Saudade, a newly restored, old chalet, one of many built as vacation homes for wealthy Europeans, in a style imported from the Alps. It is built on a hillside, with two floors on the front and a total of five down the back. We got lucky, and managed to get the best room in the place! I have more photos of Chalet Saudade on my Flickr page.

(Click on photos to see them enlarged.)

We originally decided to include Sintra in our trip plans because I had seen an article featuring one of the small Portuguese town's many tourist attractions: the "Initiation Wells" at Quinta da Regaleira.

Quinta da Regaleira is an estate that has changed hands several times, but in 1892, it was purchased by a wealthy Brazilian business man, and from 1904 to 1910, he had the huge estate turned into something that reflected his interests and ideologies, including mysterious buildings that supposedly held symbols of alchemy, Masonry, and the Knights Templar. 

There are two of these "wells" on the estate, but they were never used as a source of water. Instead, these underground towers were used for ceremonial purposes that included Tarot initiation rites. The two wells are joined by underground tunnels. The smaller one, often referred to as the unfinished one, is interesting, but very primitive in its design.

The larger well is much more impressive, and if it weren't for the other tourists climbing up and down the stairs, it would have seemed pretty spooky. As we walked through the tunnels that lead to the well, we could imagine dark, hooded figures, carrying torches, slowly walking and chanting...

From the Chalet Saudade, the main town square was a good walk up a curving road, along which there were about a dozen sculptures installed. Some good, some weird, and all were interesting at the very least.

Another one of the main attractions of Sintra is the Pena National Palace, built between 1842-1854, by an amateur German architect, hired by King Ferdinand. Apparently, this designer had knowledge of the Romantic style castles built along the Rhine River, and the colorful finished palace looks like something Walt Disney might have built.

From the ramparts of the palace, we could see the countryside for miles, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean far below, including the Castle of the Moors, another popular tourist attraction, but one we didn't have time for.

We toured the inside the palace, going past living quarters and work spaces, and were surprised by how small the bedrooms were. One thing not lacking though was elaborate ornamentation of all kinds. Intricately carved wood furniture, ornate three dimensional wallcoverings, hand-blown glass chandeliers.

 After the palace tour, we wandered the acres of lush gardens and small lakes for a couple hours, until my camera battery died, which signaled it was time to head back to the chalet and dinner.

Two of the dinners we had in Sintra were especially memorable. One was at a "traditional" restaurant called Apeadeiro, where our dinner consisted of very large portions of delicious traditional dishes, a bottle of Portuguese wine, and included free desserts and a bottle of port at the end, all for the equivalent of about $40! One of the best things about Portugal is that it is very inexpensive.

The other dinner was at a very modern, upscale restaurant across the street from the chalet. It was called Incomum, and it was one of the best meals I can ever remember eating. Including a bottle of wine, dinner ended up costing only about $70! When we were nearly finished, a older British couple (imagine imperial United Kingdom people of wealth, living in India) arrived and struck up a conversation with us. They had lived all over the world, apparently, but for the last 25 years, have resided in Mexico. They asked us where we were going next, and we told them we would be visiting Sam's cousin in Paris for a few days. They enthusiastically encouraged us to take a trip to Bruges, "If you like Venice, you will love Bruges!" So, while we were in Paris, we did just that, but I will tell you about it in another post!

On our last full day in Portugal we hired a driver to pick us up in Sintra, provide us with a short tour of Lisbon and the beach towns along the way, and then drop us off at the airport hotel, so we could catch our flight the next morning. First stop was Guincho Beach.

Guincho is a beautiful, clean beach that is very popular during the summer. Had we been there a month later, our driver said, we would not have found parking so easily. It's a great place for surfers of all kinds, and as you can see from this photo, the water is gorgeous!

From there, we stopped briefly in the coastal town of Cascais, a suburb of Lisbon and one of the richest cities in Portugal. It was nice, but we were anxious to move on to Lisbon.

In Lisbon, we stopped to see the Belém Tower, the Monumento Combatentes Ultramar memorial honoring fallen Portuguese soldiers, and the Monument to the Discoveries, celebrating the Portuguese "Age of Exploration" in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Our last stop that day, before checking into our hotel, was the Port Wine Institute's tasting room. I don't have any photos of the place, but it is a very interesting establishment. You can have a glass of any of the many different port wines produced in Portugal, making it possible to try some very expensive, aged ports, at a fairly reasonable price. They also sold snacks, and there were several rooms with multiple seating areas made up of cocktail tables with comfortable leather sofas and chairs. It seemed like a fun place to go for a "happy hour" type meal with friends. 

View of Lisbon from the Bairro Alto (Upper District) near the Port Wine Institute.

That evening, on the advice of our guide, we took a taxi to a restaurant where we were told we could have a meal and enjoy the best Fado performance in Lisbon. Well, it turned out to be an extremely crowded venue, filled with large tour groups, who didn't seem to care about the show. Although some of us in the audience tried to hush the loud, rude groups of tourists, the noise continued, and it was very difficult to hear the music! I felt embarrassed for the singers, and as we left, I apologized to one of the young female singers for the crowd's disrespect. She smiled and thanked me. Next time we're in Lisbon, we will make an effort to find a more intimate venue to enjoy the famous folk music of Portugal!


(If you'd like to see more of my photos from Portugal, check out my Flickr album.)