Tour with Barb and Nancy

Now that Barb and Nancy have left us and are enjoying Hong Kong, Mark and I figure we would back track a bit. The next few days we will share some photos that we took while travelling from Beijing to Shanghai, to Tongli, and finally to Xi'an before heading back to Xiamen.

When Barb, Nancy and I went to the Great Wall, we were extremely fortunate for two things, that a) the weather was outstanding, and b) there were few people walking the Great Wall. Barb walked a bit of it, while I continued walking hoping to avoid crowds when taking pictures. I was very lucky, aside from a couple ahead of me, and a group of French tourists, way, way ahead of me, I basically had a section of the wall, all to myself. Rare, I am sure, so I enjoyed every moment of it.


The next day we went to the Forbidden City and Tian'anmen Square. Apparently you can only see Mao's mausoleum in the morning. It's closed on Tuesday's which we were fine with. There were more people here than on the Great Wall, but still not as bad as last October, after the Olympic Games. These cats knew how to live!



While we were at the Forbidden City, Nancy and Barb were a hit with the Chinese!

The weather in all the places we visited was excellent. Clear skies and warm temperatures.

Nancy and Barbs Big Adventure - Part trois, quatre, cinque

We made it back late last night from Xi'an. It was a wonderful, busy week with many highs and no lows.

Beijing was not what we expected. You have your own ideas of what China will look like and we was pleasantly surprised. Very much a government city with large tree lined streets. We went to the Forbidden City and Tian'anmen Square day two and the Great Wall on day three (see pictures). We could not have asked for better weather and we got to the wall before the hordes of bus tours arrived. We were sitting on the wall, in my own little section, all by myself. I had to pinch myself that I was actually there. Later that day we got to have Peking duck and see an acrobatic show. It was great fun and Tina talked us through everything in both English and mandarin.





From Beijing we went to Shanghai...think George Jetson. This city is so modern and futuristic...the buildings are in shapes and sizes hard to imagine. Highways as high as 20 stories, one on top of the other, it was sensory overload. We looked down on the city from both of the Hyatt's in both a day and night view. Looking down on the river, sipping martinis, Ahh, Magic!

We were picked up after 2 days in Shanghai to go to the river village of Tongli. Wow, talk about a departure from the modern. It was quaint and rustic and some Chinese lady tried to rip us off for beer money...Tina talked her down. So now it just doesn't matter where you are...a buck is a buck. The hote was cute, think Fred Flintstone for the bed. lol

We were picked up in Tongli and made our way to the airport and our flight to Xi An. We had dinner at the "best" dumpling house in Xi An. In China everything is the best or #1. The next day we made our way to see the Terracotta Warriors and to say the least we were speechless. What an undertaking to unearth all of those warriors, no two looking alike. We thought Xi An would be very polluted as we were told by many of our friends that they found it difficult to breath. That is not the case now...no more coal burning, no motorcycles, etc. The day was clear and the sky was blue.

Nancy and I were amazed at how fluent Tina is in Chinese...she has gotten the lingo down. She was tour guide extraordinaire. Nancy and I were very lucky to have her with us.

That's all for now until next time.

Nancy and Barb