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Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts

Tuesday, 30 September 2014

Hangzhou - Day 9, 10 and 11


The ride to the islands confused us a bit. There are many places to hire boats. We got off at the Longxiangqiao (龙翔桥站) subway station and walked over to the river (passing the Gucci store!). The best one to take is the really fancy air-conditioned one that will take you to the island. What we didn't realize is that this is the ONLY fancy boat and it just goes to the island and back to the shore. It doesn't do a round trip.



Each route is run by different boats and they basically go back and forth. They also leave the island in different places. So wherever you arrived (unless you want to go back where you came from) is not where you need to catch the next boat. In the middle of the island is a place to buy food and drinks.
Don’t forget to see the reflecting moon thingy’s. Not much to look at but just don’t miss them.


The island is actually really pretty and it's a very nice walk around with lots of opportunities for nice photographs. You can also see the whole perimeter of the lake so its good to get a good orientation. For example, one of the pagoda's we wanted to see turned out to be on the top of a hill and because of the hill and the fact that the pagoda looked like all other pagoda's we decided not to visit it!



Catch the boat to north-western corner of the lake and visit the Quyuan Gardens. They are bounded by the lake, Beishan Rd. and Yanggongdi Rd. We were going to go here but didn't have time. I'll definitely go next time because it looks like a really beautiful place to visit especially in the summer.

You can then head back to Beishan Rd. and go and visit the Yuewang Temple. We enjoyed roaming around in this place although it does look like many of the other temples in China!



And of course my favourite photograph that I now use as a background on my smart phone:


All of this should be enough to fill up your day! But if it's not there are always the shopping malls to take in :)

Day 10:


I would suggest biking around the lake on day 10. That is what I had planned to do :( Was really ticked that I didn't get to do that especially since the girls had practiced AND they had kids bikes for rent. 

There are oodles of things to see around the lake, like:
Orioles Singing in the Willows 杭州--柳浪闻莺
Hangzhou Underwater World 杭州海底世界
Chinese Silk Museum 中国丝绸博物馆 (I really wanted to go and see this one)
Leifeng Xizhao (a pagoda on top of a hill)
Jingci Temple
Taiziwan Park
Viewing Fish at Flower Pond 花港观鱼. 

And if you have any energy left take a trip to the China Tea Museum (88 Longjing Lu) and drink Hangzhou's most famous tea "dragon well".

Day 11:


Take time to chill before you catch the night train to Xi'an.

Catching the overnight train was relatively simple. We just had to get to the main train station and find the right waiting area. There was no good food or drink in the waiting area so make sure you get something before you go through security. We had decided to have instant noodles for dinner. These things are great, everyone eats them. You just buy a Styrofoam soup bowl, they are available absolutely everywhere, and then all you have to do is find hot water. This is not a problem in China. Every (train) car has a tap which serves you “scalding” water. So all you do is take your bowl to the tap, open the lid halfway (very important), remove the foldable fork, fill the bowl with adequate water and then close the lid using the fork to hold the lid down. If you've no idea how to do that just look at all the other peoples bowls and copy them. After 5 minutes or so you have yourself a hot meal albeit not so tasty.

You can see the noodle bowls in the bottom left hand corner!

Overall the train was great. The one problem we had was that people smoke in the train. It’s a non-smoking train but no one objects to people smoking between the carriages. The only problem with that is that the trains are sealed because they are fully air-conditioned. The smoke invariably seeped back down the corridor and into the compartment via the vent under the beds. Not nice but once you are asleep you might not even notice it! Once the staff had put the lights out, at around 9:30 pm, it was amazingly quiet. No more loud movies, chatting, or cell phones ringing. We were totally amazed and all slept relatively well.

And now on to Xi'an. Probably where we had the most fun of all :)



Monday, 25 August 2014

China

I was going to blog while I was on vacation in China but the government had just blocked all access to Google :( That was certainly a blow to any attempts. Another problem that occurred was the lack of time. We were so busy every day that there was no time to blog even if I had had the capability! So I’ve decided to put a few things together.

First of all an itinerary.  This itinerary is not exactly what we did. Mainly because we added in a trip to my father-in-laws village. The trip cost us 3 full days and unless you are interested in carved rock it’s probably not worth the time. I’ve also taken out a few things that we visited and thought were a waste of time and added some places that were on our itinerary but we never got to. Also keep in mind that we traveled with two children which means that if you don't have children you can probably fit more into a day!

This is a very sparse outline. I hope to add further blogs with more details about what to look out for and how to get to places. 

Our travel plans took us first to Hong Kong then to Shanghai, Hangzhou, Xi’an and finally Beijing.

Hong Kong



Day1: Victoria Peak Garden. The Edward Youde Aviary. The museum of tea ware. Pool.
Day 2: Walking Tour. Western Market. Cat street bazaar. Man Mo Temple. Pool. Star Ferry. Light Show.
Day 3: Pak Tai Temple, Wanchai. Bank of China Tower. Chi Lin Nunnery. Nan Lian Gardens. Temple Street night market.
Day 4: Hong Kong to Shanghai (by air)

Shanghai


Day 5: Yuyuan gardens and bazzar. Shanghai Town God’s Temple. Shanghai Museum.
Day 6: East Nanjing Rd. The Bund. Shopping.
Day 7: Shanghai zoo. Shanghai to Hangzhou (by train)

Hangzhou


Day 8: Lingyin Temple. Ziyun Cave, Sunrise Terrace, Baopu Taoist Temple, Baochu Pagoda.
Day 9: Boat trip to the island “three pools mirroring the moon” on the Hangzhou lake. Quyuan Gardens. Yuewang Temple (Mausoleum of General Yue Fei).
Day 10: Bike around southern part of lake (Jingci Temple, Leifeng Pagoda).Tea plantations.
Day 11: Free day! Catch the night train or a plane to Xi’an.

Xi'an


Day 12: City walls. Muslim quarter. Great Mosque. Muslim quarter by night.
Day 13: Terracotta Warriors.
Day 14: Bell tower, drum tower, ice skating! Catch the night train to Beijing.

Beijing


Day 15: Lama Temple, Confucius Temple and Imperial College, Hutong alleys.
Day 16: Great Wall
Day 17: Tian’anmen Square, The Forbidden City.
Day 18: Temple of Heaven Park, drum tower, bell tower.


Thursday, 17 July 2014

A weekend in Hamburg, Germany with Kids - Technical Details

Hotel: 

  1. Holiday Inn Express Hamburg City Center
    • Pros: you can sleep 2 adults and 2 children in one room; very close to the subway station;literally across the road from two grocery stores; restaurants nearby; free wi-fi and free breakfast. 
    • Cons: the beds are not comfy and once the sofa bed is down there is not much space to move.
    • Overall: A great location and price for a family of four.
  2. Suite Novotel Hamburg City Hotel
    • Pros: you can sleep 2 adults and 2 children in one room; very close to the subway station; rooms are large with a screen to divide it into two sections.
    • Cons: books up really quickly.
    • Overall: better than the holiday inn if you can get a room. Not sure how the prices compare. Stayed here when our kids were really small and really loved it.


Transport: 

  • Car: We drove into Hamburg. The hotel has it's own garage which costs 10 Euro a day but we found free street parking pretty easily down a side road on the same block. On the main street you have to pay for parking but most of the side roads seemed to have unrestricted parking. 
  • Subway: While in Hamburg we almost exclusively used the subway. We bought a group day pass for 5 people and this worked out great. The subway can take you close enough to most places. 
  • Scooter: My friend from Geneva suggested the scooters to us and they worked out perfectly. We took the kids scooters and they were happy to scoot along. I think for the first time there was no whining about how far they had to walk. Beware, at the fish market it is really difficult to ride the scooters because of the cobble stones. Otherwise we had no trouble. All the places we visited where we could not take the scooters in held them for us either at the coat check or at the gate. 
  • Train: We didn't use the train but our friends did and they said that the trip from the airport to downtown Hamburg was a piece of cake. So getting the train is also not a problem. Almost all the subway lines run past the main train station. 

Itinerary will follow shortly (and maybe some pictures)!