Advertisement
Published: October 5th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Walking to Eddie
We couldn't believe we missed these beautiful walkways. Much nicer than the busy streets and you get to the same place! Homeward bound We left Beijing for the short flight to Dalian. Dalian? Why on earth would we go back to Dalian? Well, that is where our company paid tickets to Canada left from. In the good old days, we could cash the ticket and fly from anywhere we wanted. Or just change the Japan Air Lines ticket to leave from another city. But this year, the ticket rules changed and we had to leave from the city where we had originally arrived.
With the uncertain weather in July (remember the three day fog delay last year) we decided to arrive in Dalian a couple of days early so we would be sure to be in the right city on The Big Day. It turned out to be a good decision as there was a lot of fog during the time we were there. It didn’t cause us any problems but it could easily have been nasty. Check the pictures!
We had stored the bulk of our luggage at the hotel and arrived for a two night Kempinski weekend. Not exactly a hardship. The only problem was that we really didn’t have enough time to enjoy the luxury they
The Real Eddie's
We couldn't believe how hard it can be to find an address in China. Lucky we have cell phones to call for help. provide. As is our custom, we chose to walk around places we hadn’t been to in our previous weekends. On our way to dinner we walked past some beautiful parks we couldn’t believe we had not seen before.
For dinner we chose The Real Eddie’s downtown location. Eddie himself was on hand and we had a great time visiting with him. We had phoned to confirm the directions (see the story about the twelve of us going to Christmas dinner last year). It took two calls to get them right. We suspect that our call went to his cell and that he came in just to make sure we found the place. We were planning to walk back to the hotel along a route we knew well but Eddie watched us as long as he could to make sure we didn’t get lost. A great host.
We said goodbye to another pair of old friends that weekend. I had a favourite pair of Reeboks that I had been wearing for years. They had been through thick and thin with me, including a couple of monsoons where the water was ankle deep. But the thin was winning so they
The Real Eddie
Eddie himself. We had a great time reminiscing about the good times we had at his KaifaQu and Jinshitan restaurants. I really miss his sunflower flax bread. had to go. Sigh.
On the cab ride to the Kempinski we had passed what I thought was the Lvbo Pastic Mall (see The Great Bubble Wrap Adventure). I was really hoping we would go back the same way and had my camera ready. As we went by, I snapped a quick picture and was rewarded with a good laugh, if not a good picture.
Japan The next leg of the trip was a stop at Narita Airport in Tokyo. Except for a few days in early July, JAL doesn’t fly to Tokyo early enough to make the connection with the Tokyo-Vancouver flight. We were forced to stay over at the JAL hotel (included in the ticket). It’s a nice enough hotel but you basically waste a day waiting for your late afternoon flight to Canada. We saw a lot of the airport. Interesting, but….
Canada Yes, it certainly seemed weird to arrive back in Canada. We managed a trip to Alberta to see Dianne’s family as well as visiting our children, grandchildren and my sisters and brothers-in-law. This is why we came back to Canada. It was great to see them all.
Finally,
Another good friend we
We met Rawat through our friend Thomas (aka Christmas Man) who introduced us to Indian cuisine in China at Rawat's restaurant. Rawat later became a chef at the Kempinski. Small world? we headed over to Pender to check the status of our renovations. Things were moving along a lot faster now that the ground had dried up. Last winter’s wet weather had made life miserable for a lot of contractors.
We started phase one of the reorganization. We had to sift through the stuff we carried back from China to see what had to go to Williams Lake and what stayed behind. I had to go to the storage locker and retrieve the 80+ boxes of stuff and store it in the upstairs bedroom until the downstairs storage is finished. As it went up there, we tried to locate things we might need in WL. Then we had to go through the contents of the house to pick out other Williams Lake stuff and pack the rest for storage in the new addition. The rest of the main floor has to be packed and stored there too as we will start renovating the main floor when the addition is finished. Gives new meaning to the term Chaos Theory.
Then the crate from China arrived in Victoria and we had to sort that out. Cleverly, I decided to leave all
Goodbye to old friends
I wish I had a dollar for every kilometer I walked in these shoes. I love Reeboks. the Williams Lake stuff in the crate and just took to Pender the things we didn’t need in WL. When the time came to go to WL, we had to come back to Victoria anyway to rent the trailer so we loaded it then. Fortunately Russ and Heather were kind enough to let us leave the crate in their driveway until I could come back from WL to take it apart.
Suddenly it was time to hit the road for Williams Lake. Our “Canadian Summer” was shorter this year because we had travelled in China before coming home and we were leaving for the “north” earlier than we would have left for China. China? Seems like a distant memory. It’s only when we review old blog entries or get e-mails from our friends in China that we remember what a fabulous adventure we had.
The End of the Road Sadly (for me), this is the end of the WilsonsInChina blog. But for those of you who are a bear for pun-ishment, you can continue to follow the exploits of Dianne and her trusty sidekick as they continue to seek out new adventures. We had never been to
The reason we came early
The view from the 21st floor highlights why we wanted to be in Dalian for our flight to Canada, not in Beijing trying to fly to Dalian. the Cariboo/Chilcotin area of BC and were looking forward to seeing it. Will we like the snow? It certainly can’t be any colder than our winters in Dalian! Time will tell…
If you would like to continue to follow the adventures, click
ToBeContinued and subscribe or drop me a note and I will be happy to add you to the list.
Thanks for sharing our China adventures.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.145s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 12; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0483s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
I\'m sorry it is over so soon. Hopefully you will write a few blogs about your local area.