Hi!
I know I haven't blogged for a while, but then again this is a holiday blog and we don't have LOTS of those throughout the year! :) Anyway, last month we went to Pembrokeshire. I know, I know, not quite as exotic as China but it's a holiday! I have posted my diary below so you can read everything forwards as usual, and you should also be able to navigate on the right hand side over there too.
There are more photos on my Picasaweb album too: https://picasaweb.google.com/brocklehurst79/PembrokeshireOctober2011
Enjoy! :)
Siobhan xx
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
Saturday October 1st
Today we headed off to Pembrokeshire planning to stop off at
Powys Castle. We had the AA directions
with us which estimated how long it would take to get to our cottage which was
just outside Fishguard. The traffic was
light and after just two hours we arrived at Powys Castle and we had our lunch
just outside it, laying out the picnic blanket as the ground was quite
damp. Inside, it was a very nice house
with some really nice gardens which looked almost Italian.
After our visit we got back on the road and on our way in
the direction of Fishguard. Although the
traffic was quite light all the way, the AA directions did not take into
account how windy the roads were, so a journey which they thought would take 16
minutes took us a whole hour to complete, and we still had around 40 minutes to
go (according to the AA that is…!).
Originally we planned to get there by around 6pm or just before – maybe
even 5:30! This would mean I would be
able to watch Strictly which started at 6……then I thought perhaps we would get
to the cottage at around 6:15 but we were still on our way at that point, and
eventually we reached the cottage – Jemima’s Cottage – at around 6:40. Our host showed us around and left us to it,
along with her little dog Nelly who was VERY friendly, jumping into the back
seat of the car to find out what goodies we had brought with us haha!! By the time we were unpacking our food, I
managed to watch the last 2 dances before it finished L But we were able to watch Doctor Who of
course!Sunday October 2nd
This morning we headed off to Castell Henllys Iron Age Fort,
which was a reconstructed village of round houses, which was quite fun to
explore! A couple of them even had a
little fire going inside. It was quite
peaceful, perhaps because it was Sunday, as we may have been the only people
there this morning!
We then did a walk up to an Iron Age Hill Fort and some Bronze Age Barrows within the Preseli Hills. It seemed quite a steep walk – and it was – but I was fairly happy with going up it so I took out my super sticks (my pair of hiking sticks - they are awesome!), and walked up to Foeldrygarn (sp?) which turned out to be a 113m ascent! By the time we had finished up there, we found a place a little more sheltered from the wind, managed to find a place to sit where there was no sheep poop and had lunch there.
We then went to a dolmen-like stone called Pentre Ifan – I
think this is a fairly well known one in this area, and it was quite a large
one. However, when we arrived there, we
discovered a small group of people sitting around it. At first we thought they were artists, but as
we walked past them, we saw that their notebooks were full of writing with a
few sketches so we came to the conclusion of creative writing. Maybe.
I have no idea. All I know is
that it was pretty annoying because half of them were practically sitting on it,
so we couldn’t really take a decent photo.
I know it was Sunday and I know these people have to go somewhere for
their (I assume) creative writing exercises, but it was pretty annoying going
to see something and all you can see are a load of people lounging about on
it. Just imagine if you went somewhere
to admire some prehistoric monument, hoping to take just one good photo for
your holiday snaps, and when you get there the atmosphere – and your photo - is
lost by people “needing” to sit ON the thing….anyway, it was a bit of a
challenge but we managed to take a reasonably good photo of it at a strategic
angle...!
Next we had a walk around Dinas Head which was slightly more
up and down than I expected it to be, and on the way up I did get into a bit of
a strop and stormed off (in the right direction towards the top of course). I think this was because I had already
managed to do quite a big walk this morning and I thought this would be a nice
relaxing potter around Dinas Head…..!
You see, when I get fed up of whatever walk I’m on and find out there is
a huge up waiting around the corner for me, I get mad and – oddly – I
practically run up it. It’s a bit weird
because I actually don’t want to go up it at all, but when I’m in that mood I
end up thinking “well I’ve got to get up there anyway” and I do it REALLY
quickly without a care in the World about what it’s going to do to my muscles
or my breathing. Once I was up there and
on the way back I was fine, but it was just that little bit that I went a bit
mad with…..and good grief, in the morning I certainly knew about it haha!!
Monday October 3rd
Last today we took a coastal walk along St Govan’s Head and
visited St. Govan’s Chapel which was basically down the cliff! It was a cute little building and when we
walked through to the other side, we came to a very rocky coastline where we
saw the waves crashing. We stumbled upon
a couple of people having their lunch on the cliff there and as they went
another couple came down which we thought may have been rock-climbers, although
we didn’t see them do anything except probably have some lunch. Must be a good lunch spot then!
We headed off to walk along part of the Head. The whole area is in an MOD artillery range
so is sometimes closed off to walkers but today it was all open. We didn’t see any cows which the signs told
us about, so we imagined them all coloured camouflage instead of being black
and white, and wearing berets. There was
plenty of evidence of them on the ground though, although from the looks of
said evidence, it did look like it had fallen from a great height…..perhaps
fired in place of normal ammunitions….
So then we thought perhaps the beret wearing camouflaged cows may have been
firing their own self-made ammo around….but then we thought “Hey, it’s pretty
windy up here!” which probably explained why it looked like it did. We eventually saw the cows on our way back to
the cottage. And no, they weren’t
camouflaged or wearing berets. Moo.Tuesday October 4th
Today we had arranged to meet some friends who we had met on
our holiday in China, in St.Davids. We
had arranged to meet at 12:00 noon, so we went there in the morning and visited
the Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace.
St. David’s Cathedral – I think – is the nicest Cathedral I
have ever been to! It’s small and
compact, but inside it looks much more spacious than it does on the
outside. No, it wasn’t a Tardis but it
was really nice inside, with an amazing painted wooden roof, and many
Romanesque arches inside which – Mathew told me – in most other Cathedrals
around the country would have been rebuilt into a Gothic style. What I particularly loved about this
Cathedral was the floor – in some places the original tiles were still in
place, obviously we couldn’t walk on those.
But pretty much everywhere else, they had done the floor up with replica
tiles and it looked amazing – I loved it, and the colours were so bright and
cheery! Sometimes you just don’t realise
how colourful places like this would have been because of the faded colours, or
even lack of colour in some places. I
was so impressed with this Cathedral I actually bought the guide book – and I
don’t usually do that with Cathedrals!
But there are quite a few nice pictures in it which swayed it for me!
Right next door was the Bishops Palace which was pretty
similar to Lamphey Bishop’s Palace yesterday – in fact, it was built by the
same person. This one was slightly more
ornate, or at least some of the more ornate parts had survived much better here
than at Lamphey. It was bigger but
basically the same kind of thing. And it
was there that I saw some bats!! I don’t
know what species they were, but they were just hanging out in the undercroft
in an alcove behind one of the exhibitions which I almost missed. I went in there for a nosey and there they
were, just hanging on the ceiling! Some
of them flew off but I managed to get a quite good photo of the ones which
stayed there long enough! They were so
small and cute!! I have only even seen
flutterings of bats at night, but I actually properly saw these ones, still AND
in flight!
It was time to meet up with Elizabeth and Austin at the
Information Centre at midday. On our way
to the car we bumped into them, so we decided to have lunch at the café before
our walk. We all had leek & potato
soup which came with bread and a chunk of cheese (!) so we all tucked in and
caught up with each other as we hadn’t spoken or been in much contact since the
end of April this year. Elizabeth told
us that her sister – Margaret – wasn’t with them today because she was busy
packing for her holiday to South Africa tomorrow. Apparently she gets everything packed at the
last minute after having spent most of her time laying everything out which
she’s going to take with her haha!!
Austin kept saying the soup was much better than “sticky rice” which was
what we had a little too much of in China…I’m pretty sure I heard him saying
that he wasn’t bothered if he never had Chinese food again! I think that holiday may have scarred him for
life haha!! They then told us of their
plans to go to Malta next week as its their 50th Wedding Anniversary
on October 14th, and they also plan to go to New Zealand next year,
which sounds pretty exciting!
After lunch, we got into our cars and headed off to Caerfai
to start our walk along the coast. The
walk was a little up and down, but it was just my kind of walk really, it
wasn’t too bad. Austin zoomed off ahead
of us all haha! We went to St. Non’s
Chapel which wasn’t exactly what I expected – I was thinking it was going to be
similar to St.Govan’s Chapel, but it wasn’t in the cliff at all. It was a nice quiet little chapel which was
open for people to light candles and write prayers down for their loved ones.
We continued on to Porth Cais where we stopped for a short
while before heading back fro where we came.
It was a good walk with some nice cliff side scenery but we didn’t see
any seals – I think the time for seeing seals on the coast was over at the
beginning of October! We sat down for a
moment before getting into our cars again and we followed them to their home
which was in Camrose. It turns out they
have a Guesthouse – which explains why they offered to put us up for a night –
which must have had around 6 bedrooms I think.
It was a very nice house, and also they took us around a building site
where they are building some new houses.
I thought they were retired, but I think it looks like Austin still
dabbles in the building trade- obviously – and I am not sure whether or not the
Guesthouse is still working or not. I
heard Elizabeth say “Now I don’t have guests anymore” so I think maybe they are
done for the season or done altogether.
It must be handy at Christmas though, they can have their entire family
around!!
We stayed at “Austalise” for a little while and had a cup of
tea before heading out to the restaurant which they had booked a table
for. It was called “The Jolly
Sailor”. Everyone had starters but me as
I had my eye on dessert. Mathew and
Elizabeth shared some chicken liver pate and Austin had some leek and potato
soup – again! Then for mains, I had a
small Welsh rump steak with salad while Austin had the large one with LOTS of
chips! Mathew had the fish pie with just
as many chips as Austin had, and Elizabeth had the duck. For dessert I had a cheesecake, while Austin
and Elizabeth had ice-cream. Mathew
didn’t have any dessert as he was stuffed.
I think Austin maybe shouldn’t have gone for all three courses as I
think he was more stuffed than Mathew by the end of it – he only just managed
to finish his ice cream haha!!
We went back to “Austalise” and bade farewell to them as we
headed back to our cottage. It was a
good day today!
Wednesday October 5th
We started off with Carew Castle and Tidal Mill. When we arrived at the Castle, I realised – I
had forgotten my camera!! So I had to
rely on Mathew and his camera for the rest of the day as mine was sitting at
home. I had put new batteries in it this
morning as well! *huff*
We then went on to Tenby, and started with the Tudor
Merchants House. By now the rain was on
and off so we were ducking in and out of it a bit! The Tudor Merchants House was really cute and
actually quite spacious, despite the small size of it. Mathew and I wanted to take it home but I
don’t think it would have fit in the car somehow! J It really was very nice, and I think I would
recommend anyone visiting Tenby to go and see it.
We then went on to the Museum and Gallery which was actually
IN the remains of Tenby Castle, and it was very small and cute. Downstairs was all about the prehistory of
the place, with lots of flint tools such as axe heads on display, and around
the corner on the same floor there was a gallery of art – half quite old art
and half very modern. There was even an
extra gallery of work by a local artist, all of which was for sale. Upstairs was more random with history not only about the
town, but some Victorian items such as a Penny Farthing bicycle and some WW2
memorabelia.
On our way back to the car we stopped off at one of the many
sweet shops in the town (this place was seriously geared up for seaside
tourists!!) and bought some sweets, some rock and a small bucket of
candyfloss!! We hadn’t had that for
years. We could wait to start it so we
opened it as soon as we got back to the car hehehe!
On the way back we decided to have a look at two Castles
which were on our map as CADW but we had no idea what they were. The first one was Llawahadon(?) Castle and
was relatively easy to get to because we had seen some brown tourist signs for
it. By this time the weather wasn’t
looking too good – my feet were already pretty damp from the intermittent rain
we’d had in Tenby and the clouds didn’t look particularly friendly. The wind was still against us too, although
it wasn’t freezing cold.
This Castle was
open access therefore quite ruined so we had a little look before trying to find
Wiston Castle. By the time we got there,
the wind and rain had not eased off at all, and we could see the ruins (another
open access site) from where we parked the car.
I decided I wasn’t too fussed about this one so I stayed in the car
while Mathew went up to explore. He said
it was quite a cute little Motte with the Castle ruins on top, and I saw him
right next to it as the heavens opened and the heavy rain really started!! He got back quite wet and we returned to the
cottage when the rain decided to hammer it down as we were about to get out of
the car. It was nice to be in a warm
cottage after a day outside in the wind and the rain, even if it hadn’t been
that cold!Thursday October 6th
Next on our list of things to do today was a walk along the
Teifi River trail. I had discovered this
one on the internet and I thought it looked quite nice, and we thought a nice
little potter along the river would be a nice way to spend the afternoon, as we
weren’t feeling like doing anything strenuous today.
So, we started off and walked our way through
some woodland to get to the Wildlife Centre which was basically ON this
trail. It took us around an hour to get
to it, and before stopping off there, we found a “Badger Trail” which we
explored and found a HUGE picnic bench where we decided to have lunch. In the Wildlife Visitors Centre, we then
decided to have a coffee upstairs in the “Glasshouse Café” which looked like it
served some really nice food, but we had already had lunch. Oh well!
We didn’t know anything about this visitors Centre and it was in the
wrong place on Mathew’s map – which turned out to be about 15 years old
haha! Well, we found it eventually and
although my decaf cappuccino was quite strong, it wasn’t too bitter and it went
nicely with my apple and cinnamon bar. I
spent much of the time in the café wondering if the guy who served Mathew was
either wearing a wig or had used and
entire tub of hair gel. Seriously – his
hair did not move at all!!
So, we started off and walked our way through
some woodland to get to the Wildlife Centre which was basically ON this
trail. It took us around an hour to get
to it, and before stopping off there, we found a “Badger Trail” which we
explored and found a HUGE picnic bench where we decided to have lunch. In the Wildlife Visitors Centre, we then
decided to have a coffee upstairs in the “Glasshouse Café” which looked like it
served some really nice food, but we had already had lunch. Oh well!
We didn’t know anything about this visitors Centre and it was in the
wrong place on Mathew’s map – which turned out to be about 15 years old
haha! Well, we found it eventually and
although my decaf cappuccino was quite strong, it wasn’t too bitter and it went
nicely with my apple and cinnamon bar. I
spent much of the time in the café wondering if the guy who served Mathew was
either wearing a wig or had used and
entire tub of hair gel. Seriously – his
hair did not move at all!!
After our stop at the café, we continued on the Teifi River
trail, and although we were on the lookout for Otters, we didn’t see any – no
Kingfishers either! Hey ho. Along we went, and finally we had reached the
river and we could see it quite well. We
saw plenty of birds in the water, and some people canoeing, but no Otters,
Kingfishers or Red Squirrels which were apparently living in the trees around
here. We expected to take roughly an
hour or so to get back to the car…..but oh no.
The trail had other ideas!!
Mathew said at the point where the trail split into two, we should
follow the lower one because it was not only closer to the river edge, but it
would come out in the car park where we started.
It was a good idea, and at first it seemed like it was all
going our way and then things started to get a little more challenging. The trail started to go up and down much MUCH
more than we had anticipated, and I was SO glad I had my sticks with me
otherwise I would have got into a right old grump!! The ground was sloping up
and down, there were steps here there and everywhere, once we’d gone up it was
time to go down again, and the walk was turning into one more strenuous than we
had wanted to do. Even so, it was quite
fun tackling the foliage, ducking under and hopping over tree trunks. Admittedly this trail seemed to be fairly
overgrown and unkempt, but Mathew’s map and the maps which we had seen before
we got here all stated BOTH routes were available, and we saw no signs telling
us not to go along certain trails.
Suddenly it got even more strenuous, involving climbing over
tree trunks rather than just ducking under and hopping over, and we had to
start watching where we were putting our feet as we became seriously close to
the river edge and one wrong footing could have ended up with one or both of us
in the river! Finally we got to a point
where we scrambled up some lose ground using the tree trunks, an after Mathew
had gone ahead to have a closer look at the trail, we decided to go on. But we hadn’t gone very far until the trail
eventually stopped and we had no option but to turn back.
This was a little annoying as we had come all this way and
we were having fun with this trail, sometimes wondering if it was actually THE
trail we were meant to be on or not. We
were disappointed that it defeated us, but it was probably for the best – who
knows how long we would have been going on for, and who knows where we would
have ended up?! We turned back, and
fortunately it only took around 10 – 15 minutes to get back to the split in the
trail and we went up. This time on the
higher trail, it was more of an obvious trail, although it went up and down SO
many times I can’t remember, we were starting to get sick of having to go down
just to come back up again.
Unfortunately the rest of the walk was uneventful other than having to
go up and down all over the place, as we were much higher up than before – so
much so in fact that we couldn’t even see the river. Was this really a RIVER trail?
We returned to the car exhausted, and went back to the
cottage just outside Fishguard. On the
way, we stopped off at Newport to have a look at the restaurants there for
tomorrow night. We looked at three
before randomly seeing a chef eating a banana walking in the other direction,
so we decided to follow him to see where we’d end up – it was The Royal Oak and
the menu looked just right for what we were after, with a HUGE list of fresh
fish specials. We thought we would take
the phone number and reserve a table tomorrow for the evening, if we don’t find
something in Fishguard.
Friday October 7th
Today we decided to go to Picton Castle - we found a leaflet
for it earlier in the week and thought it looked quite fun...but guess
what? It was CLOSED from the beginning
of October until March / April next year!
And no, this wasn’t on the leaflet...!!
Not having much else to do, we decided to go to Haverfordwest
Castle and Museum which was small and sweet, and we actually saw a photo of
Elizabeth’s sister Margaret in there with the Haverfordwest Choir! So in a sense, we did see her hehe!
The country house was also quite small, sweet and simple –
unusual to me because I have been in so many which are so ornately
decorated. Mathew and I both said we
could have easily lived in this one as the rooms were nice and big, there was
plenty of light and very little fuss about the place! Somehow I doubt we would have been able to
have bought the place for £3,000 which was what it was originally bought
for....!
Disappointed, we tried Hilton Court Gardens and Crafts. When we arrived it looked quite odd, it
didn’t look particularly open nor did it look closed. It was very strange, and we weren’t quite
sure about the whole place. We felt so
uncomfortable, we abandoned the idea altogether and went back on the road.
Not having much else to do, we decided to go to Haverfordwest
Castle and Museum which was small and sweet, and we actually saw a photo of
Elizabeth’s sister Margaret in there with the Haverfordwest Choir! So in a sense, we did see her hehe!
After that, we stumbled upon Scolton Country Park and
Museum. I say stumbled upon, we had seen
brown tourist signs for it all the time we had been staying here, and it wasn’t
far from our cottage so we thought we would give it a try. The Museum was quite nice, and had traditional
things showing a simple Welsh life, a typical front room of a house, shops
etc. There was also a balcony level
which was mostly geared up for kids, but of course we went up there anyway and
played with the hands on exhibits – I rather liked the harp which had no
strings, but played when you moved your hand where they should have been. It was a little hit and miss though, I tried
to pluck individual strings but I don’t think it was quite that sophisticated!
The country house was also quite small, sweet and simple –
unusual to me because I have been in so many which are so ornately
decorated. Mathew and I both said we
could have easily lived in this one as the rooms were nice and big, there was
plenty of light and very little fuss about the place! Somehow I doubt we would have been able to
have bought the place for £3,000 which was what it was originally bought
for....!
Finally we got back to the cottage and packed our bags ready
for tomorrow.
Saturday October 8th
Today we had a quiet, uneventful journey hjme from
Pembrokeshire via Bishops Castle for lunch, where we met up with a friend of
Mathew’s who had an archaeological archive to give him for a project which they
had done together a little while ago. We
got home in the afternoon and settled in with a nice cup of tea and the last of
our Welsh cakes. Lucky for us, I bought
a book with the recipe in.... :)
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Come with me to China!
Hi folks,
I have finally been on holiday again - in April I went to China for a month and now I am inviting you to come with me and re-live my holiday in the comfort of your own home. My journal is below, with photos and as always I entered everything in reverse order so YOU can read everything FORWARDS, so just go to the Blog Archive to navigate easily, to "2011" then "May" and you should have a list of each entry titled and ordered by date.
If you would like to see my photo album from China, you're welcome to view it HERE or type this into your web-browser:
https://picasaweb.google.com/brocklehurst79/ChinaHighlightsApril2011
Let me know of any mistakes I may have made or any problems and I will try to amend as soon as I can.
Let's go to China!
Siobhan xx
I have finally been on holiday again - in April I went to China for a month and now I am inviting you to come with me and re-live my holiday in the comfort of your own home. My journal is below, with photos and as always I entered everything in reverse order so YOU can read everything FORWARDS, so just go to the Blog Archive to navigate easily, to "2011" then "May" and you should have a list of each entry titled and ordered by date.
If you would like to see my photo album from China, you're welcome to view it HERE or type this into your web-browser:
https://picasaweb.google.com/brocklehurst79/ChinaHighlightsApril2011
Let me know of any mistakes I may have made or any problems and I will try to amend as soon as I can.
Let's go to China!
Siobhan xx
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Saturday April 2nd / Sunday April 3rd
We got a lift to the bus station from Dad, although he couldn’t go directly to it due to random, never before seen bollards blocking the road (!). Anyway, we said farewell on a nearby street just a walk away from the station to get the National Express coach to the airport.
The journey was straight forward, pretty uneventful, and there was hardly any traffic. We dropped off our bags and went through security straight away – I was parched and starving! For once, I wasn’t the one who was searched – Mathew tried his best not to wear any metal, but his pockets had metal poppers, so he got ‘wanded’. Into the departure lounge, we immediately went to get some food. We weren’t waiting too long until our gate was open, boarding began, and we got a bus to our plane which we got onto outside on the tarmac. Take off was about 5 minutes late, but other than that, everything seemed to be going along nicely.
The flight was long at just over 10 hours! It’s certainly the longest flight I have ever done so far. The flight itself was fairly uneventful but the seats were quite soft and comfortable with built-in head rests to pull down to the shoulders to stop the head lolling to the side when dozing. We had a good amount of leg room too. Mathew and I both had a ‘roast beef dinner’ followed by what I think was a chocolate brownie with chocolate or fudge sauce!
Soon we began to fly into the night and after watching one movie, Mathew and I tried to sleep a little. I don’t think either of us was that successful – I decided to watch another movie after a while, as did Mathew. After that, I tried to sleep again and this time I think I may have managed about an hour. I thought we’d probably be sleeping off the jetlag in the hotel when we arrived anyway. We weren’t seated next to a window – Mathew was in the aisle seat and I was in the middle – so we didn’t see much in the way of any landscapes, OR Shanghai from the air.
5pm Shanghai Time
Oh My Goodness!!! It was SO good to have some fresh air after such a long long flight. Well, it wasn’t really that fresh due to the smog...but it was just nice to be out of the plane!
We landed in Shanghai around 8am, having only got about 90 minutes sleep on the flight. We were both very tired and parched, despite having had regular drinks but obviously aeroplane air conditioning never helps. We were served breakfast, although by this time and being sleep deprived, I knew my stomach wanted food but I wasn’t sure what bacon, tomato, sausage, mushroom and scrambled egg would do, as after a normal nights’ sleep I really can’t do a fry up in the morning as it just makes me feel very ill.
I decided to try it, as it didn’t really feel much like breakfast time and I thought it best to eat something. Surprisingly, it seemed my body really wanted the salt, but oddly, I couldn’t manage the mini muffin. I did, however, manage the orange juice and yoghurt – both from Wales so the labels said!
Going through Chinese Immigration was quick, easy and painless. It was all very civilized and polite, no large grins but no stern looks or accusing questions either. The first thing we noticed was the amazingly clean and shiny floor – shiny enough to see your own face in it! Yes, really! We collected our bags and found a ‘Wendy Wu’ rep who took us outside and onto the coach. We travelled about an hour to the Ramada Zhabei Hotel in downtown Shanghai and the traffic was calm and free flowing. Our rep told us that April 3rd is the Quing Ming Festival (Sweeping of the Tombs) therefore not many people were on the road today.
When we arrived in Shanghai, it was raining a little. On the coach, it was finally time to see what China was like. Closer to the airport, there seemed to be many areas in which housing developments were taking place, and these houses looked quite nice. The style was sort of colonial or incorporated colonial styles, surrounded by small gardens. The roofs were all tiled and they were never straight or flat – most of them had some sort of flying eave, typical of traditional Chinese architecture.
The further away we travelled from the airport, the more of a mish-mash of everything the landscape became. Nice new houses, run down houses, small slums, mini landfill areas, wasteland, and really pretty landscape gardening both for private and public use. It was as if the area was being developed in no methodical fashion whatsoever, but you could tell things were being done.
Upon our arrival at the hotel, we met our National guide who would be with us for the entire holiday, Jane. She was in the lobby and took our passports so she could do a mass check-in and give us our key-cards. She returned our passports to us and asked us all to meet up on the 2nd floor for lunch at midday. We got to our room and collapsed!! SO tired! We decided, as it was now 10:05am, to sleep until lunchtime.
After some sleep, we woke up and headed to the 2nd floor for lunch. It was a simple buffet and I didn’t eat much as my stomach was very confused as to what time of day it was and what meal to expect next. We discovered that our guide Jane would have a very long day today, greeting up to 30 people on this tour right up until midnight! We also discovered that we were mixed in with some Australians – it turns out they thought ‘Wendy Wu’ was just an Australian company, and weren’t expecting to meet any Brits! After lunch, we returned to our room and slept until meeting in the lobby at 6pm for dinner. We were told we could take a walk outside around town if we wanted to, but we decided that sleep is what we really needed.
We awoke at 4:15pm having slept since 1pm. I sent an email home after trying to call. No matter how many combinations of the number I tried (international codes, area codes etc) everything resulted in a message repeating “This call is barred!”. Perhaps the mobile network my phone had connected with didn’t do international calls?
We went to the lobby at 6pm, and boarded the coach. 15 minutes into town, we went into “Amanda Plaza” – a shopping centre, in which our first dinner was eaten in a restaurant called “Thai Riffic” (Yes, really!), and despite the name, the food was actually Chinese. It had a very cozy atmosphere with wooden and wicker decor. I particularly liked the teardrop shaped paper lanterns which glowed red, yellow and orange.
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| Typical food layout in Chinese restaurants |
We sat at a round table, in the centre of which was a large round rotating “lazy susan”, and we had our own small bowls, plates, and of course....chopsticks! A waiter appeared with a large bowl of soup which we all tucked into immediately, ladling it into our bowls. It had meat, diced potato and spring onions – it was very watery, but really tasty. As soon as we started with the soup, more and more dishes were set onto our table – rice, noodles, bean shoots, fish, chicken, omelette – none of which were spicy, all of which were full of flavour. I think I ate a decent amount, as I had caught up on some sleep, felling more awake and my stomach more settled. I was glad to have some food, and I really enjoyed it!
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| Shanghai from our hotel window |
This evening, Mathew and I watched a DVD before going to bed at 10:30pm. We had a wake up call at 7:10am, and the sleep would do us some good. My only worry was what the breakfast would be like in the morning...
Monday April 4th
This morning, we headed down to breakfast to see an array of several things on offer. I didn’t have a perfect night’s sleep, but I headed to the cereal and that went down fine. Jam on toast didn’t impress my stomach and I tried some orange juice but it was totally synthetic, possibly either cordial or diluted Sunny Delight! It turned out that most of the orange juice served in any restaurant here was just like this, so I decided not to drink any orange juice at all for the remainder of the trip. Stomach fairly satisfied, we left and upon exiting, I grabbed an apple on the way out to take with me for the day. We had a ‘briefing’ about our tour, which started me worrying about a few things but nothing too bad!
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| Shanghai Museum |
On the coach, we met our local guide, Lemon. She told us some facts about Shanghai during our journey to Shanghai Museum, facts like: Shanghai has a population of over 17 million people, and the name ‘Shanghai’ means “above the sea”. We joined the huge queue to get into the Museum, and while waiting, we were offered the opportunity to buy kites from local vendors as they were flying them. They love their kites in China! This one being shown was a giant red squid, and although a photo would have been good, it felt wrong to ask for a photo and not buy it..!
Inside the Museum, we had a brief security check, a bag scan, and we had to take a sip of water if we were holding a bottle, so they could see it wasn’t tainted with anything. We were given an hour and 45 minutes to look at the 4 floors of the Museum. It wasn’t a huge Museum, but it did have a collection of over 120,000 pieces spanning over 5,000 years! If we had our own time, I think we would have spent about 3 – 4 hours there. Mathew and I started at the top on floor 4 to look at Galleries of Chinese Ethnic Minorities’ Arts & Crafts (traditional dress), and Chinese Jade which was fabulous! Some of the jade was very impressive, some having multi-layers AND in different colours focusing mostly on animals and plants, with the odd landscape carving, as well as a few small idols. We decided to skip the currency and furniture and headed to floor 3 to see the Chinese paintings and seals, the painting gallery had motion-sensor lighting at each piece, so the lights only came on if someone was standing at a painting, which I thought was a very good idea and I don’t think I’ve seen it used before in any other Museum I’ve been to in the UK or elsewhere.
On each floor there were small themed gift shops, and on floor 3, Mathew bought a print of one of the paintings. I looked for one with animals on but I couldn’t find one I liked. I was sure I would find more of these within the next month!
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| Bronze Cauldron |
We skipped floor 2 which had a gallery of ceramics and lots of places to eat, and went to the first floor which we spent the most time on, as it had a nice collection of sculptures and a pretty amazing collection of Chinese bronze artefacts. I noticed the similarities of early Chinese sculpture with that of other cultures – I found myself comparing early wooden Chinese sculpture to Cycladic figurines! Oh dear....haha! But it’s true – I often find myself noticing lots of similarities in the art and design of objects created in the early stages of many civilizations, and I really find it interesting how two totally different and separate civilizations can create pretty much the same things, with almost the same patterns.
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| Bronze Urn |
The bronze gallery was the most impressive, especially if you compare what people in the UK were making at exactly the same time. Chinese bronze artefacts were displayed, the oldest having been made 4,800 years ago – firstly they didn’t look that old at all, they looked like they had been made yesterday. Secondly, there was no sign of corrosion either – not even a tiny tiny smidgen - and the detail of all of these bronze artefacts was absolutely amazing. It was hard to believe that here in the UK we were just learning to make spears and other simple weapons, while the level of craftsmanship in China was so skilled and advanced. Of course, I left a decent amount of time for the main shop in which I made my first purchase of a couple of bag/phone charms and a small guide book.
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| The Museum - square earth under round heaven |
Outside around the other side of the Museum in the ‘People’s Square’, we saw that the shape of the Museum itself was inspired by the shape of one of the cauldrons we had seen inside. Not only this but we learnt here that the Chinese see the Earth as square and Heaven as round, and this is seen in many places, and we were told we would see it later in the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.
Onward to lunch! We ate in the “Sea Palace Floating Restaurant” – yes, it was an actual boat! The majority of the rest of our meals on this trip at lunch and dinner took the same form as yesterday. This time, we all used chopsticks (last time, half the people grabbed the forks!), and I had some Green tea which in the UK I find very bitter and I can’t stand it, but here it’s SO much nicer. Now I find it hard to believe most people I know who drink Green Tea really enjoy the taste of it....I don’t think they would if they drank the fresh stuff here – they wouldn’t go back to it. I certainly wouldn’t!
We proceeded to the Jin Mao Observatory 88 which is on the 88th floor of the Jin Mao Tower (well, duh!). The building is just over 370m tall and is known locally as the ‘Pagoda Building’ due to its Pagoda like appearance on the street. Very imaginative here, obviously....! The elevator took 45 seconds to reach the 88th floor, so many ears were popping!
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| Jin Mao Observatory |
The view of Shanghai from here was brilliant, as it was a sunny day with blue sky. It was quite hazy due to the smog which we had been told about by Lemon. It was a layer of greyness lying over the entire city, and it was the first time I have actually physically SEEN smog like that. The most impressive thing was the number of high rise apartments across the city, which seemed to go on forever.
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| Shanghai and Pudong |
While we were up the Tower, we also saw the tallest hotel lobby in the World (!) at 152m high and 27m in diameter, and we had some (random) “Free Peearls” (!), fortunately drilled for free, unfortunately mounted for a price. I’m sure I can make something with them when I get home. I also decided to buy some stamps for our postcards as we were here at the “Highest Aerial Post Office” .... I guess I could say I got the highest “Peearls” up there, but there was no claim about that on the ticket.
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| The highest hotel lobby in the World! |
What was cute, was a little tree on which you could buy a red decoration and hang it there after writing either someone’s name, a wish, a good luck message or putting a photo on it. Or at least that’s what we all thought – that was before we learnt about the Chinese public dating service.....
Next, we went to Longyang Road Station where – if we wanted to – we could get the train to the airport and back. No, it wasn’t completely random – this was the MagLev (Magnetic Levitation) train experience we were being offered! Basically they boast that it takes 8 minutes to travel 30km at a speed of 431km/h. Mathew and I decided not to go, as we saw it as a bit of a pointless journey. Shame we couldn’t really see it levitating when it left and arrived though, as there was a shelf on the tracks to stop it falling off (!). We strolled outside and decided on a short walk through one of the sporadic landscaped gardens under the train tracks and the roads which make up the mixture of scenes of Shanghai.
After everyone had returned, we went back to the hotel, and went for our “Welcome Dinner” at 5:50pm....which was pretty much the same deal as last night!
Tuesday April 5th
This morning, we awoke, packed our suitcases and went down to breakfast after which, we checked out of the hotel and boarded the coach. We stopped off for the loo – my first experience of a Chinese toilet! Okay, it’s not THAT exciting, but for the remainder of the holiday, all the ladies were giving a star rating out of 5 for all the toilets we used after that point, and we became obsessed with talking about toilets from then on!
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| Silk Mill: extracting silk from cocoons |
We went on to Suzhou Silk Mill where we sat down to learn about the silk making process. I had been to a silk mill in the UK before but Mathew hadn’t, so he didn’t know anything about the process at all. It was very interesting as we were told that in China, silk worms eat Mulberry leaves and the examples of worms and cocoons which we saw looked far bigger than those in the UK – they were at least twice as large. Here, they boil the cocoons, remove the silk by unstringing in one length of silk, and the leftover pupae are used in the creation of cosmetics, said to be very good for the skin – a consequence of the silk worm’s diet of Mulberry leaves.
We moved on to an exhibition in the Museum where we saw examples of the process and some past and present silk weaving looms. We then moved into the factory, where we saw everything in progress, and we were told such facts as one strand of silk is one seventh the width of one strand of hair, and it takes 300 cocoons to make one tie!
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| Silk quilt making |
After this, we moved into another area where they were making silk quilts – yes, SILK QUILTS! I never thought silk was used to make quilts. It took 4 people to stretch one sheet of silk from a double cocoon over about a 2m square, layer up on layer upon layer, and it felt SO unbelievably soft! Some of our group tried having a go but it was obviously much stronger than it looked – it took about 8 of us to do it, much to the amusement of the people who did it every day!
Onto the shop, they sold quilts, quilt covers, cushions, table cloths....Mathew and I were looking for scarves and cushion covers but we couldn’t find any – until Jane pointed out to us that there were a number of shops in different areas all selling different things! We finally found them in the “Fashion” shop which was huge, more like a mini shopping mall, and it even had toilets. No, not silk toilets, I mean proper ones for customers! I ended up buying quite a lot of souvenirs here, 2 cushion covers, 2 bags and a tie.
We left for lunch (same deal as usual), and went on to central Suzhou. It was a short journey after the Silk Mill, and we stopped off to visit the Garden of the Master of Nets. On our way to Suzhou, we learned that it is well known for its gardens, and I have to say I prefer Suzhou to Shanghai – the streets look safer, and there are so many more gardens and trees on the streets, it’s very green. It’s a shame we had missed the blossoming of the Magnolias though – so see a street lined with flowering Magnolia would have been amazing. There were other plants in bloom though, such as peonies and peach and cherry blossoms which were very pretty.
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| The Garden of the Master of Nets |
The Garden of the Master of Nets was a typical Chinese garden which was originally created in 1140 but remodelled in 1770, and the furniture was Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644). It had a central large pond, surrounded by many roofed walkways and pavilions, decorated with rockeries, flowers and very old trees, some had been there for 700 years which would have been originally planted in the 11th Century (Song Dynasty). It was quite small and intimate, but there was so much to see as the paths and bridges took us in different directions where we could see a different view every way we turned – this is the object of a Chinese garden, the idea is not to see the entire garden from one point, but to see lots of different views from many angles. There were many pavilions, rockeries, fun pathways and bridges, and there were plenty of flowers out, it was a very nice garden to be in and anyone could have spent a whole day there.
After Lemon took us around, we were given time to walk and explore ourselves, after which we were back on the coach and off again to have a cruise along the Grand Canal in Suzhou which was great fun! Suzhou is affectionately known as the “Venice of the East”, and it is situated along part of the Grand Canal which was built over 1000 years linking Shanghai with Beijing. It consists of a network of canals, bridges and canal-side housing. It was very picturesque, and it was really like a miniature Venice. It was fun going along the narrow water-streets seeing typical Chinese houses and the people who lived in them, and all the people watching us watching them. One elderly lady even stood outside by the door smiling and waving at us.
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| Suzhou Canal |
One child policy is still encouraged in cities, but it is not so strict:
· If your 1st child is female, you can have a 2nd child
· If your 1st child dies young, is born with a disability, you can have a 2nd child
· If you have a multiple birth, you are truly blessed!
· If your 1st child is a boy you are not allowed to have a 2nd child
· If you live in the countryside you can have 2 children
· If you are of a Chinese minority, you can have as many children as you want
Also, in the city, a couple expecting a child would prefer a girl and in the countryside, a boy is preferred. This is because the boy’s family is expected to buy the house, the car etc for him and his bride, and the girl’s family is given quite a lot of money as a gift of thanks.
The boat trip in Suzhou was very enjoyable and too short! We disembarked and took a short walk to our hotel where our coach was waiting. We checked in and had dinner – this evening I played it relatively safe with sweet and sour pork and rice, some vegetable soup and....CHIPS!! Yes, chips! We weren’t expecting those!
In the evening, I washed my hair and the water was so soft, my hair felt just like silk afterwards....and no, I hadn’t pocketed any of those cocoons.....!
Wednesday April 6th
Today we went on our way to Hangzhou, which we were told was similar to Suzhou. Packed and ready to go, we first went to the Humble Administrators Garden which is one of the most famous gardens in China. It was built in 1500AD and covers 5.2 hectares, and was inscribed on the World Heritage List by UNESCO in 1997. It was much larger than the Garden of the Master of Nets and again, it would have been easy to spend an entire day here. Mathew and I personally preferred the smaller of the two gardens as we enjoyed the intimacy and appreciated how much had been fitted into small places while still managing to make the garden look quite big. The Humble Administrators Garden had a central lake surrounded by pavilions, rockeries, trees, flowers – it was great fun exploring along the craggy rocky steps. We had plenty of time to explore by ourselves after a 10 minute intro from Lemon and I think the amount of time we were given here was just about right for the size of the place. Whilst there, we stumbled upon a gift shop selling mostly artwork, but also silk (possibly silk, probably polyester!) items.
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| Humble Administrators Garden |
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| Humble Administrators Garden |
There was a painting there which I REALLY liked with herons and cherry blossom – not only was it 340 Yuan (£34) but I was wondering where I would put it at home. Just before we left the shop, I saw a much smaller one which was 68 Yuan (£6.80) which cherry blossom and flying bluebirds. The assistant told me it was painted on silk, but it felt more like paper to me, probably rice paper. It was so cute I decided to buy it, and she rolled it up and put it in a little box – very handy for packing away!
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| Humble Administrator's Garden |
After an entire morning at this garden, it was time for lunch, and the restaurant even had its own little garden – they just love their gardens here! After lunch and exploring the small restaurant garden, it was time to say our farewells to Lemon as it was time for her to leave us, and we would have a different local guide in Hangzhou. On the journey to Hangzhou, Jane told us a few things about Chinese culture – traditions, housing and employment. Many places in China are over employed resulting in people working just a few hours a day but get paid for the entire day, so they have a very easy life here, and in general, employees of the state / government are the best paid people. Jane also told us about the housing and how expensive it was to have an apartment in the city, and everything is valued at so many Yuan per square metre. It sounds like each apartment is quite big with a living room, 2 – 3 bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom and a utility room, some with a balcony on which to hang the washing. Many apartments in the city seemed to cost somewhere around 200,000 Yuan which is deemed incredibly expensive in China, but in the UK that currently equates to almost £20,000 which is really not expensive at all for an apartment to buy. The apartments and houses that cost 2 million Yuan equates to around the usual buying price for a nice country house or an apartment in London in the UK at around £190,000.
Something we all noticed was the laundry – not only people living in apartment blocks hung their washing outside (yes, even if they were on the 8th or 10th floor) but people who lived in smaller apartments hung their washing on racks just outside the windows overlooking the main roads. Some apartments had small balconies with washing lines, others had had pull-out frames to hang them on, or large racks with long poles to rest across. And if you were lacking room for putting your washing out to dry, you’d just find a place to hang it somewhere on the street – in trees, on traffic lights, street lights, telephone poles – anything you can string an ad-hoc washing line across or put a coat hanger on. Although I didn’t like the idea of having your washing drying over a stove in which a chicken was being boiled in a pan. I only saw it once, but I didn’t like the idea of having clothes smelling like boiled chicken...!
During the journey to Hangzhou, we were on the main roads with much farmland either side. Suddenly we started seeing small mounds decorated with colourful flowers in what seemed like very random patterns throughout some of the fields – some of the farmland had crops growing around the mounds, others had little copses of trees and mounds with decorations all around them. When we asked Jane about them, she told us these were very old graves and tombs. They had been decorated shortly before we had arrived in China – during the “Sweeping of the Tombs” or the Qing Ming Festival, where people go to their ancestors graves, take a picnic, tidy and decorate it and leave some food there as an offering. These ones in the countryside are very old – probably graves in the gardens of houses which were there long ago, but generations later they are still tended to today. Jane told us that since 2000, people can only be buried in designated cemeteries like we do in the West. In general, burying is not allowed and cremation is preferred due to lack of space, especially in the cities. However, minority Chinese are still allowed to bury their dead and usually this takes place in the countryside. Nowadays, people in Shanghai bury people in Suzhou due to the place having very good Feng Shui there.
When we began to drive past new housing developments on the way to Hangzhou, they took on a mixture of Eastern and Western architectural style. In the suburbs of Hangzhou, more high rise apartment blocks began to appear and Jane told us that most of the generic apartment blocks in the cities and suburbs are 6 – 8 floors high with no elevators – stairs all the way!
When we reached Hangzhou we noticed it was even more green than Suzhou – more trees and plants everywhere. There were many more tree-lined streets, and more grassy park areas too. The trees here (at least in Hangzhou) are protected, and it is illegal to uproot ANY tree without permission. If you DO uproot a tree, you must replace it with two new ones. It is said that in Hangzhou, each person owns 6 trees. They are well aware of pollution problems all over China, which is why if there is any wasteland anywhere, it gets planted on – for example, when we saw landscaped parks underneath flyovers and busy roads, this happens all over the country. Most parks are known as “People’s Parks” too, as most don’t have any gardens themselves so residents usually walk, dance, sing, exercise, play cards, and relax in the many public gardens around the country.
Off the bus in a well known market area, we were given quite a lot of time to walk around and explore. It was a very very long street and there were an incredible amount of shops and stalls selling all sorts of crafts and clothes, and frequent tea houses and herbal medicine stores. Mathew and I are not big market or shopping fans, but we strolled around because it was a very nice street and the buildings were also really very nice too, all historic and original, many had plaques just outside the doors explaining what they used to be, and most of the tea houses and herbal medicine stores had remained such. We even found some outdoor art at the end of the street, large concrete panels incorporating objects such as bicycles, doors and tiles which was quite fun!
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| Hangzhou Market |
There was a large pavilion overlooking the entire area, on top of a hill not too far away. I think we could have gone up there instead of strolling through the market if we’d noticed the steps up there sooner, but they were right at the other end of the street. We didn’t have a map and there was no information about the hill either, so it was probably good that we didn’t try getting up there anyway. A map or a display board would have been handy to find out how far away it really was and we could have figured the best routes. We actually thought it may have been much further away than it looked!
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| Happy Buddha in Hangzhou Market |
Back on the bus, we were introduced to our next local guide Aaron. He told us some brief facts about Hangzhou before we reached the restaurant, then onto “Lily Hotel”. He also told us that when the Chinese go to school, as soon as they begin learning English, they choose an English name, partly as part of their learning process, but also to make it easier for Westerners to pronounce. Whatever name they chose, they would keep the name for the rest of their life and introduce themselves with it to Westerners. We were told that tomorrow we would be tea-tasting, boat riding and visiting a temple and a pagoda. Should be a good day!
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