Next in the works was a Yangtze River cruise and we had the minor misfortune to find ourselves on a boat that I can only describe as, well, how do I describe the boat? Hmf. It’s as if you took what would have been considered a modern building circa 1968 Czechoslovakia (only not as fancy), turned it on it’s side and sailed it down river. Our room was so small I could actually place my feet on one wall and touch the opposite. Small sleeping quarters on any boat is to be expected, but this was tiny and I’ll let you judge the décor. It also rained the entire time which added some cool mist effects on the mountains around us, but made excursioning soggy. A) yes, I used my Mickey Mouse rain cape (so at ... read more

Ah, Springtime. Flowers in bloom, blossoms on the trees and wtf is this white stuff??? Just before leaving Beijing and everywhere in Xian there are whirlwinds of this fluff flying everywhere. The caption of the photo from the newspaper reads “People cover their faces as catkins from willow and poplar trees float in the air in Beijing yesterday. They are warned to wear veils or sunglasses when outside because catkins can cause respiratory problems”. And I thought it was just the smog making our eyes burn, but no, we’re also being attacked by nature. Sniffle, sniffle. Out of necessity I’ve been “liberating” boxes of soft Kleenex from our swankier hotels to keep on hand (oh, my poor nose). As I mentioned in a previous post, we stick out like crazy everywhere we go, and the lovely ... read more

I spent the better part of our first day of travel waiting for a plane, on a plane or not sleeping because I was worried about oversleeping to make the plane. We connected in Newark for our long flight (13 HOURS) to Beijing where the gods of airport travel smiled upon me by having one of only a couple of empty seats on the entire plane ending up next to mine. Freaking awesome. There was another passenger on the other aisle seat in my little row of three and we took full advantage of obnoxiously stretching out our stuff (and ourselves) over the extra seat (oh, extra space, you are so awesome, I love you). Even without the extra space, the seats were comfy and the seatback entertainment kept me easily occupied whenever I wasn’t napping. ... read more