Today was an interesting day. We opted to join the rest of the tour group for an optional day of touring around Shanghai. In the morning we were on the Maglev Train reaching speeds of 400 km which was rather amusing. It was funny to see members of our tour group running around and screaming …
After a bit of a bus ride from Suzhou, we were in Shanghai! Our first stop was the Bund to have a bit of a view of the city skyline (fortunately it was a nice clear day with beautiful blue skies) before heading off to the Shanghai Museum to spend some time wandering around it’s …
Today was one of our final day in Suzhou, and was spent running around checking out a silk factory (poor little worms) and visiting the Lingering Gardens. The Lingering Gardens in particular were very beautiful, and I loved how they had designed the garden so that there were all different sorts of frames and viewpoints …
Our first day in Suzhou was an interesting mix. First stop was a boat ride around the water, taking a look at the various pagodas. It was rather relaxing and the area around the boat was beautiful. It was interesting to see how many couples were having their wedding photos taken in the area – …
Today was our only day in Hangzhou, with most of the time on tour spent at a tea house. Can’t say that was overly fun as it was just another money making exercise attempting to hard sell tea to the tour group. At the end of the day when we were all released from the …
Today was the day that we would visit the Terracotta Warriors. Our tour group spent about two hours or so from memory in the museum area which houses the Terracotta Warriors. The First Pit is by far the biggest and most impressive. It’s quite a sight when you first step in and see them all …
An overnight sleeper train from Beijing, and in the morning we found ourselves in Xi’an! Rather exciting start to the day as at some point over our two days in Xi’an we would be visiting the Terracotta Warriors. We weren’t going to visit the Warriors today, but the day was instead spent wandering around the …
Today was a good day, as we were off to see the Great Wall and fortunately for us the ‘fog’ had cleared. It was a beautiful clear day, and wonderful weather for climbing. Would have been better though if Takeshi hadn’t been sick from one of the included meals on our tour. We think we …
Our first full day in Beijing was spent wandering around Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The square wasn’t that exciting in my opinion, but the Forbidden City was incredibly beautiful. Couldn’t stop taking photos! All of the details on the roofs and the building design is amazing. Reminds me of the palaces and temples …
It was a reasonable flight from Sydney as we were transferred through Chongqing before flying onto Beijing. Once we arrived in Beijing, I can’t say the weather was… all that brilliant. Our tour guide said it was ‘fog’, but it smelt and looked like bad air pollution to me. After being dropped off at our …