Around Beijing

Sleep didn't last very long last night. We were both ready to go at 1:30 a.m. We managed to stay in or around bed until 5:30, but it was no problem getting fed and ready to go by 7:30.

Beijing is even more crowded than usual this week. It's National Holiday week, 7 days to celebrate the founding of the People's Republic of China. Most people have time off work, but it looks like everyone in the outlying provinces makes a pilgrimage to the capital for this week. So, taking advantage of the jetlagged condition of our group of tourists, we got underway early.

First stop was in one of the hutongs. There are a few of these neighbourhoods left in Beijing, mostly (I think) for tourists. They're very Turkish-feeling warrens of narrow streets and low houses built around courtyards. We were driven around one by pedicab and visited the home of a retired lady who makes a little money on the side talking to tourists about life in the hutong. She seems comfortable now, although in the bad old days of the Cultural Revolution there were an awful lot of people jammed into her group of three homes.

Then we headed for Tiananmen square, along with half the population of China. Main impression: thousands and thousands of people in a square ringed with incredible flower displays. I could tell that people came from many different parts of China; they looked as different from each other as Scandinavians look from Italians. Most were dressed in fashionable, Western-looking clothes, but a few still wore more traditional clothing - Mao suits, sort of. We all found ourselves the objects of curiosity. Several families wanted us to pose for pictures with them. These, our guides said, would be people from small towns and remote regions who weren't used to Westerners yet. They were lovely people. Laughter crosses all language barriers.

Lunch was at a restaurant with another remarkable washroom. Going up to it you just noticed a large mirrored wall facing the stairs. The back wall of the cubicles (or the wall behind the urinals in the men's room) turned out to be the transparent part of this two-way mirror. The oddness continued in the sink area, shared by both genders. The sinks had female legs.

No time for admiring such things, though. There was serious tourist work to be done. We had to explore the Forbidden City, the home of the emperors from the 15th to the early 20th centuries. Gorgeous. Vast. Beautifully restored and maintained. Utterly spotless and litterless grounds. Really, really beautiful. And very crowded. We need more time there; we couldn't go inside any of the buildings or do more than get shepherded through the mobs, following our fish flags faithfully. I'm glad we saw it, but it was (necessarily) just like looking at a gourmet meal through a restaurant window.

Just time enough back at the hotel to freshen up, and we're off again, this time to a Peking Opera performance (shortened and simplified for tourists). Another appetizer experience. This isn't your Italian nonna's opera. It's a combination of martial arts, acrobatics, and music that is utterly foreign and totally entrancing. I could have watched all night, but first I would have liked to have known more about what was going on. Maybe next time.

Back to the hotel for a small bedtime snack and our first experience of "kung fu tea" (I'm not sure if that's the proper name for it). A young man in traditional costume poured hot water onto leaves in a teacup from a long, long, long-spouted pot using a variety of extraordinary positions - over his shoulder and behind his back, among others. Good tea; great show.

And so to sleep (hopefully).

First day in China

So we finally got to Beijing! We left Canmore on Monday the 29th and stopped over in Salmon Arm so we could enjoy our new favourite Barley Station Brew Pub. Tuesday we had lunch with Ron's cousin Rae, catching up after years and years. We were in Vancouver in time for dinner with Rachel - Chinese dumplings at her favourite place (and now ours) on Broadway. And Wednesday we caught the plane.

Flying is not the best way to spend half a day, in my opinion. Especially not when you're crammed in between two families with toddlers on their way to visit grandma. The problem with little kids is they're not civilized enough to pretend that they're enjoying something as dreadful as flying. At one point I was managing to drift into sleep when the kidlet behind me decided to lay some mighty kicks on my seat back. I don't know what happened - maybe I have a secret kung fu warrior within - but my arm whipped out around the seat and whacked her on her precious little legs. She stopped. The guy in the seat across the aisle gave me a thumbs-up. I was very embarrassed.

So we staggered off the plane into mid-afternoon Beijing, and this is what we saw through the airport windows:

It was a sunny day. Really.

We made our way through the passport check (very politely and efficiently done), and found the baggage carousel. I visited the washroom while we were waiting and was greeted by no fewer than 4 attendants. When I was done one hurried into the cubicle to wipe everything down and refold the toilet paper while her colleague ushered me to the sink. When my hands were properly washed another lady handed me a paper towel while the fourth wiped the sink. That was one clean washroom.

The redoubtable Jessie met us as we emerged from the bowels of the airport and, together with guides Kevin and Eric, introduced us to our new standards, the red fish and blue fish we'd follow for the next 12 days. We UBC and University of Saskatchewan alumni followed Kevin with the blue fish into one bus; the University of Alberta grads were in the red-fish bus. And soon we were in our comfy room at one of the four Hiltons in Beijing. We had just enough energy left to go to the welcome reception, learn the basic ground rules from Jessie and meet a few of our new friends. Then - crash! into bed.

A Day Redefined

For the last 7 years September 11 has meant terror and death to me. Yesterday all that changed. Our grandson, Dimitry Joseph Fisher Lewis, was born. Now September means hope and life and new beginnings. Only problem: I'm not sure how to spell his first name yet! That's what you get when your children have diverse heritages to celebrate.

Meanwhile, Ron and I are busy getting shots and things in preparation for a trip to China. We leave September 28 and get back on Thanksgiving. I can only imagine how many cute little baby things we're going to pick up there.

Up to date

Just a note to let you know I've finally got all the pictures from our trip uploaded to Flickr. The easiest place to start is here. They're a lot more informative than I've been able to make this blog - have a look. (I'm still adding comments and putting them on the map.)

Home

It's 8 a.m. on Tuesday, and I've been up since 5. Not bad for the second morning home, I guess. And the advantage of still being on a time somewhat east of us is that we get to watch the glorious sunrise light our wonderful mountains. Driving home from Calgary Sunday evening we were both struck by the beauty of our own part of the world: the mountains in the evening light with scattered patches of rain equalled anything we had seen on this or any trip. Prince Christian Sound in Greenland comes close, but only close.

The flight home followed the great circle route, of course, which meant we flew over Greenland. We've done that many times before, but this time we had some sense of what we were passing over, and it was lovely. We also got a good look at Baffin Is., which a lecturer on the cruise had talked about quite a bit, and we could see what had moved and excited him - huge mountains with deep U-shaped valleys, barren and beautiful. I for one want to see that from the ground. It might even beat the scenery around Canmore.

One thing about Europe that I miss here is the efficient and convenient public transit. In Amsterdam in particular - and also London - I was struck by the small number of private cars cluttering up the city centre. Of course it's expensive and inconvenient to drive downtown there, but it's also quite practical not to. Amsterdam has the advantage of being flat, so bicycles are a practical alternative, but there are buses and trams everywhere. You don't have to walk more than a couple of blocks or wait more than 5 minutes to get where you're going. For out-of-town travel there are trains every hour or less going just about anywhere. Why can't we do that here? I know we don't have the population density and people are attached to their cars, but this is a rich province in a rich country - build it and they will come. It particularly annoys me that Canmore has a major railway line going right past our house, but no train station and no way of using the train to get to and from Calgary. What would it take? harumph.

Anyway, it's nice being home. Our apartment and our cats were well taken care of while we were gone, and it's so great curling up in the comfy chair with a couple of purring cats.

On the way home

I'm sitting in the Air Canada passenger lounge at Heathrow (thank you, Evan!) enjoying their free coffee and internet and catching up with a bit of Flickr picture uploading (we're all the way up to the second stop in Iceland - just wait for the Greenland pictures!). We left the ship Thursday morning, not without a sense of relief. Three weeks is just a bit long to be cooped up with a couple of loud Texan war veterans. We met some thoroughly enjoyable people, too, of course: Doug and Helen, Larry and Linda (thanks for the meditation sessions), but the others begin to oppress me after a couple of weeks.

We had three days in Amsterdam in a great little hotel Ron found just a block from the Rijksmuseum and the Concertgebouw. We didn't get any museums visited, but we had our share of concerts: a youth orchestra on Thursday and the Rosenberg Trio + friends (Stephane Grappelli / Django Reinhart style jazz) on Friday at the Concertgebouw, and a Bach recital on the magnificent organ of the Westerkirk Saturday afternoon, so we did get cultured up. Friday we tried to get to a cheese market in a small town to the north, but we missed it by half an hour. Never mind, it was a pretty train trip. We also nibbled on a hemp-seed chocolate bar we picked up at the flower market Saturday, but we didn't really enjoy the effects. I got even more sleepy and stupid than usual, and Ron turned bright red. So we're not tempted to add to our list of favourite intoxicants yet. But we like Amsterdam.

So we're heading home. I for one am looking forward to a bit of utter torpitude and some catching up with email, pictures, knitting and other good stuff. Stay tuned for a knitter's view of the North Atlantic and a couple of patterns I came up with while we were away.

Iceland again, Scotland and beyond

After two days of rough sailing we were in Iceland again, this time in Reykjavik (smoky bay) in the south-east. Didn't spend long there, though - we boarded a bus right away and headed out into the countryside again for more waterfalls, plate tectonics and geothermal stuff. We saw the original Geysir, but he's not spouting any more - tourists threw too many rocks into his mouth. His neighbour Strokkur goes off every 5-10 minutes, though, so we saw lots of geiser activity.

We continue to think we need to spend more time in Iceland. It's beautiful, the people are pleasant, there's a manageable amount of interesting history - we definitely need to go back. And the next stop needs to be revisited, too: Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. Lots of wool available, of course, and I'm bringing back some along with a £10 Shetland wool pullover. But the best thing was the museum. We had time for only a quick survey tour, but it was enough to convince us we need to spend a day in the museum and a week in the islands. Beautiful, beautiful place.

We got to Edinburgh the next day (yesterday). It's in the midst of its annual Festival, with odd-looking people doing interesting things on the street and handing out invitations to the events they're involved in. There are so many plays, concerts, art exhibits and stand-up comics happening in so many places that there is a Sears catalogue-sized book giving all the details, a smaller book listing events by date and time in 10-minute intervals, and a map showing the hundreds of venues around the city. We went to two: a play that was the next thing happening at a venue we stumbled into, and a free stand-up comic performing near where we were when we were browsing the book trying to figure out what to do next. We didn't see any of the standard Edinburgh attractions - Holyrood palace, the Castle, museums, or anything else except from our hop-on hop-off bus tour, but they'll keep until next time.

We did manage to get to the Tattoo, however. It's definitely the best of its kind of event - bagpipes, marching bands, Scottish dancers and the like - and definitely worth doing. For me, once is enough. The seats are intolerably small and squished together and it's coooooolllllldddd. I was dressed for iceberg viewing and still freezing. The woman next to me moved, I think because I was shivering too much! But the music and the marching were superb.

It's looking like we're going to have to spend a good bit of time next summer doing Britain. So far the itinerary includes Penzance, Edinburgh and the Shetlands, and I'd like us to do Plymouth, Stonehenge and places around there as well (I saw them with Rachel's choir 15 years ago, but Ron hasn't been there yet).

It didn't rain in Reykjavik, Lerwick or Edinburgh, although it tried. Now we're back on the high seas - well, the North Sea anyway - and we're back into fog and rain. Perfect planning, I think. Tomorrow it's Amsterdam and the end of the cruise. I expect a return to summer, which we've managed to avoid so far on this trip. It will be a shock!