Itinerary and preparations

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I have had the opportunity of a lifetime handed to me on a silver platter. Through luck, love, friends and an act of God I fell into a FREE trip to China! Let me explain. I have a great friend who likes to travel, but he has no one to travel with. He offered to take me to China on vacation if I did all the work setting it up and making all the arrangements. WOW, right? He made the offer at brunch one day, so I looked at my wife and she said "GO". I thought long and hard, about 3 seconds and replied, "sure." and the rest is history.

I met another friend Tony Baroni, yup his real name, and he suggested a company called China Spree, a tour company sponsored by the Chinese Government. It was a tour and company he used before and highly recommended the trip. It was well run, beautiful, SAFE and above all CHEAP! So I looked into it.

The website is Chinaspree.com and they offer a number of options. After a review of the trips offered I selected 15 day China's Best treasures at a whooping cost of $3199 INCLUDING airfare! Well with that recommendation and at that price how could I say NO?. So I didn't. I began the arduous PLANNING STAGE of the trip.

So here is the full itinerary:

http://www.chinaspree.com/escorted-china-tours/china-best-treasures-tour-2016/china-tour-itinerary.aspx#sthash.Yw7owzek.dpbs

If you look at the above link you will see that the tour is fully immersed in the culture, history and people of China.

A good trip starts with PLANNING. For anyone going on such a long journey I would recommend a TOUR. There is little to think of on tour. They have the hotels, transportation, local guides, entrance fees and all the amenities already figured out. You only have to enjoy. Now I am a control freak in normal life. I like to decide what, when, and where I will do something. But as the veteran of more than 10 world traveling tours, I can assure you that for me this is the BEST way to go. To each his own however.

Planning was a little more complicated than I thought. First We needed a VISA to travel to a Communist country. China Spree provided all the paperwork and even assisted in getting the Visa approved. Note if you have anything negative in your background this trip in NOT for you. They will check you out thoroughly and one past mistake and they will reject you.

Once we got that far the next problem was that the tour left from JFK in NY and we are in Toledo. Should be simple enough right? Wrong. The cost to fly to JFK was nearly the cost to fly to China!. After many painstaking attempts at finding a fare on all the different web sites we settled on flying from Detroit to LGA and then taking the local ground transportation system to JFK, 9 miles away. This saved us $477 EACH!

So now we have the trip planned and the US transportation in the bank. Next is VACCINATIONS. Although noting is needed to go to China specifically, they do have some bug there that are not here. So we need to get, Tetanus and Hepatitis A and B, before we go. Check with your doctor for requirements that may be specific to your personal needs.

Next I wanted to convert money to Chinese Yuan. Again I hit the internet and found the absolute BEST exchange rate with AAA. If you convert $1000 USD into any currency there is a very nominal fee, and you get the day's million dollar exchange rate and they ship the money to you next day at NO CHARGE. So with Yuan in hand we are getting ready to go.

Departure date: April 3

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