ALASTAIR + LALEINIA

For all those who want to know, this is where we are living in Luoyang, China. It is pretty nice, so we hope you enjoy the video. Soon we will show you around the town. Goodbye!

It all started with a morning trip to the Summer Palace. Summer home of the Emperor, built for his lovely mother, or something like that. Not a bad gift for your mother's birthday, although I am sure the Emperor himself did not get his hands dirty in its years long building process. The man made lake especially took a long time, fifty years or something. Pretty sure his mother was long gone by the time it was finished. But maybe all of that isn't true, we didn't really listen to the tour guide. One thing is for certain, it was a very picturesque place.   We did a lot of walking (as you will see later). Most of the walking at the Summer Palace was done in this corridor, which happens to be in the Guinness Book of Records for the World's longest corridor. Supposedly half a mile long, maybe more. It was amazing to see how intricate the whole thing was. If you look carefully in the picture, you can see that there are paintings everywhere on the corridor, Chinese s...

Mutianyu Section of the Great Wall of China Mao once said "If you haven't been to the Great Wall, you have not been a real man." How true that is could be debated until the end of the earth, but at the end of the day there is one thing that everyone with a brain should agree on, and that is that the Great Wall of China is incredible! We visited the Mutianyu 慕田峪 section, and we were absolutely amazed at how big it was, and we could probably only see two miles of it, and supposedly it goes on for thousands and thousands of miles! This was probably the one part of our Chinese adventure that we were looking forward to the most, and finally it was here. We had choices as to how to climb and descend the wall. Some people in our group hiked up to it (bear in mind that it is on the top of the mountains), some decided to take a cable car, but we opted to take the chair lift (aka. Ski lift) to the top of the mountain. Great choice number one of the day! We we...

  Ni Hao! We have touched down in China and by now our adventure is in full swing! After a LONG flight and a deep sleep in the hotel, we were off! First stop, Tienanmen Square! We walked there from the Hotel, down some not so quiet alleyways and side streets. People everywhere, scooters and bikes weaving past the thousands of people navigating the streets. Tonnes of smells, some good, some not so nice filling the air. The air is quite humid, and it is pretty hot, which Alastair likes, while Lain will grow to like it! After walking past 1.4 billion people, up and down steps for the underground road crossings, numerous security checks and I can't emphasize enough how many people, we arrived at the the largest public Square in the world! Half a mile long and I am not sure how wide (although it would be half a mile if it were a square) of... square. There was people absolutely everywhere, and I am sure between everyone there in the hour that we were, there must have been a few mi...

Let's be honest. We aren't too great at packing. Well, maybe it's not that we aren't good at it, but we just couldn't be bothered to spend our last Saturday in California doing it. That is what Monday is for. Instead, we thought it necessary to do something that we had never done, and walking across the Golden Gate Bridge seemed like a great idea. What a great decision it was, especially since we avoided paying for any parking the WHOLE day (we actually have a knack for finding free parking in San Francisco).   If you have never walked across the Golden Gate Bridge before (and this may or may not apply to all large bridges), you should know that the wind coming off the water can get quite nippy, and so we were certainly glad that we brought our sweatshirts. And don't even bother making your hair all perfect before you go, it wont last. But one thing is for sure, we were in awe of how cool the bridge was, and had such a great time just chatting and soak...

Well, we have had enough of roaming around the western United States, and so it is time to go East (ironically we have to fly west to get there). We are leaving on August 21st, and can't wait for a new adventure! We will be heading to Luoyang, China to teach English, and will be spending some time in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and wherever else the wind takes us!      ¡ Knee How !