It is Thursday night and we are in Luoyang, which is southwest of Beijing. We arrived here late last night after a 10 hour train ride in “hard class.” Hard class is not necessarily the seats (they were padded) but it refers to the cheapest seats of travel – one the Chinese use.
After some rough traveling, we first visited the pandas in Chengdu and then relaxed in Dali. Among the highlights there was a visit to a local market.
After leaving the relaxation of Dali, we visited Kunming, another large Chinese city. The major highlight of this visit was a day trip to the Stone Forest.
Our last stop in China proper was in Yangshao, a short distance from Guilin. Here we enjoyed a variety of activities, including biking and hiking.
Our last stop was Hong Kong, which we reached after an all-night bus trip from Yangshao to Guangzhao (Canton) and a hovercraft voyage down the Pearl River from there. We spent a day and a half in the area before flying back to Los Angeles.
We took a three-week trip to five countries in Europe, using the train and bus as our primary modes of transportation. Our children were six and nine during this trip, which was their first taste of extended international travel in a hostel setting.
Zermatt is a classic Swiss town in a fairy tale setting with views of the Matterhorn mountain in clear weather. We were fortunate to see the mountain from the town center as well as during day hikes.
After spending time in the German speaking portion of Switzerland, we made a short stop in the Italian section of the country, in Lugano, before continuing to Milan, Italy.
Paris was our last stop on three week European journey. We met Sandy’s parents there and the six of us spent four days seeing many famous sights This included Notre Dame, Versailles, Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, the Musee d’Orsay and the Louvre.
