I blathered on rather too long in the last one -- with a few snaps -- so more snaps will make up for hopefully brief text (otherwise I will never get to bed). That was my excuse last night -- had to catch up with sleep so went to bed at 10:30 PM and did not get up till 10:30 AM. Just spent some time in the room looking at the Net and so on and finding out what sites were blocked by the Chinese cyber snoopers - quite a lot like Facebook etc. Anyway finally got out late in the afternoon and decided to take a metro ride to the east to the Ming palace ruins area, being well aware that there was virtually nothing left. This was indeed the case, particularly when it is ... read more

There was a bit of a "gap" there folks due to the fact that occasionally I have to have a rest from the (self-imposed) tyranny of the blog. I am now in Suzhou which is about 45 minutes from Shanghai on a relatively fast CRH train. You should see a picture of the actual train that I arrived on below. The trick was of course to get to the station in Shanghai and a taxi was necessary for this which cost about $3.50. Then it was a question of finding out where to buy the ticket, as the station is huge (see also picture attached of the frontage). I tried the automated machines, on which you can select English, but ground to a halt I thought when it requested me to place my Chinese ID on ... read more

This will likely begin and end with food. As I had bought some bananas last night that served as a sort of breakfast but decided that I had better have a relatively early lunch. It was indeed fortunate that barely 100 m from the Hotel is a place called Shanghai Grandmother which supposedly served hearty food. So that seemed as good as any for a top up. I ordered some cold eggplant and garlic dish to keep up my vegetable component - there was virtually crushed garlic on top. However this was nothing compared with the pork and black fungus and garlic. There were only about five very thin slices of fried pork in it, quite a lot of black fungus which was okay, but an unbelievable amount of sliced garlic (to the extent that I ... read more

I really was going to write this on the night but am instead writing it the following day with the result I almost cannot remember what the details were. However the general details always involve virtually setting an alarm for 9:30 AM to have a quick shower before heading up for the breakfast deadline at 10 AM. Being a Sunday there were more people who were having it late (completely different story at the same time on Monday -- only a very few at that hour). Anyway with one thing and another, despite knowing that the sun sets at around 4:45 PM, it was really only at about 2 PM that I got going. I have really only had a very general idea of what I am doing and that usually involves picking an area to ... read more

This is largely written on the Finnair flight from Budapest to Helsinki where I hope/know it will be cooler than the 33-34 in Hungary! There is just one final piece of business in Krakow. I did get up to the Royal/Wawel Castle but only did the grounds/cathedral, which are free. There was a separate charge for other things like the Crown jewels etc but as it was 4pm bit late in the day for that and I did not really have the time. As the LP guide is old (pre-2009) there was no mention of something that I only found out from the In Your Pocket guide at the hotel – namely the existence of the Enamel Factory/Oscar Schindler museum. It rates it as essential so thought I better had. Even better it was open until ... read more