Binns and Cheryl

Our connection from Athens to Seoul was in Moscow and I was pumped to finally be stepping foot in Russia. Binnson has heard stories of Russia being a pretty racist place for Asians to travel to which has deterred us from getting there so far..... but I won't rule it out just yet! Although we weren't leaving the airport, we still had fun walking around checking out babushkas, lavish faberge eggs, and other such goodies - my favorite being a Putin t-shirt and cell phone covers vending machine :-) We shot into the future and landed in Seoul late the next morning. As we were meeting up with some friends in Korea to tour around with, we hung out at the airport for a little bit waiting for one of them who was getting in to ... read more

Flying out of Mykonos to Santorini with others who were stranded by the ferry schedules, only they were paying 4x the price of our tickets. We were grateful to land in much nicer weather, still windy but manageable. It was afternoon when we landed, staying in Firostefani our first stop was a walk to Fira. The views on the walk there were incredible- I took so many duplicate photos as none could do it justice. On Saturday morning, the ladies that ran our hotel knocked on our door with a little Easter basket containing 2 red dyed eggs, 2 candles, and 2 baked treats that they had baked themselves. We hadn't planned our trip to Santorini around the Easter weekend at all, it was just a happy coincidence. The girls explained to us that tonight we ... read more

Arriving to Ataturk airport, we handed over our passports and our flight confirmation email to the man behind the counter. “There is a problem.” Words you really don’t want to hear at an airport. “You are at the wrong airport.” Hearts sink. Here nice and early but not nearly enough time to get to another airport. “Go to the main ticket agent down the hall.” Our tickets were not refundable but flights are still leaving in 30 mins, 2 hours, 3 hours, etc. from now to Izmir. Feeling embarrassed about our error, we re-booked our flight to leave from Ataturk and we were on our way a couple hours later. We took the metro from Izmir Airport to a station that had part of our hotel name in it. We couldn’t narrow down the walking directions ... read more

We took a taxi back to the bus station in Tunxi to head to Hangzhou where we would take the train back to Shanghai. We were walking onto the bus to find our seats when I heard a familiar voice... I looked up to see that our Korean friends were sitting directly behind us on their way to Hangzhou. They were excited to see us and hands were shook all around. What are the chances! Once last time in Hangzhou, we said our good byes and headed for the train station. Luckily we were able to get a train within the next hour and were off to Shanghai. Trying to get a taxi from a couple streets away from a metro station proved impossible, extra impossible when the couple taxis that did pull over couldn't recognize ... read more

When I read that Hangzhou was comparable to heaven on earth, I knew that we had to make a stop there on our way to Huangshan. As I have never been to heaven (that I know of), I think that this would be pretty acceptable. The lake, the trees, the old people dancing in the squares.... Looks pretty good to me! So relaxing around the lake and parkways... unless you step on the grass. Do not step on the grass. That guy will blow his whistle at you until you get off. And then just a couple streets a way, a super busy shiny city. We took the high speed train from Shanghai's Hang Qiao station. This train station is huge and rivals any other train station that I have ever traveled through as the biggest, ... read more