Nearly everyone has heard of Japan’s famous bullet train. Our first experience was not actually riding one. Instead our first experience was in a train station. We were waiting for our train to come when, whoosh, one flew by at full speed.
China is a unique destination and we spent three weeks exploring this country. Our goal was to go from Beijing to Hong Kong, relying primarily on trains.
Beijing was the first stop on our three week trip. We visited the Forbidden City in addition to our day trip to the Great Wall.
We left Beijing’s West Train Station at 12:45pm on Wednesday to begin our ten hour journey to Luoyang. We were able to get hard seats (for about $12 each) on a ‘K’ train, which is an express that makes very few stops.
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.
We are now in Kunming, which is in the southwest corner of China, very close to the Laos and Vietnam borders.
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.
Munich was our first stop on our Europe trip. We stayed with a family friend and spent time in the city center as well as a church and beer garden just out of town. We then began our time in Switzerland by visiting Lucerne.
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.
