If it’s true that an army travels on its stomach, our tour group is a mighty army. I’m going to look at our food from a bunch of different angles … for any of you reading this who might take offense, sorry / not sorry. First off, this is China, if you’re coming here for…
The Buddhist pagoda was built between 649 and 683 for the Emperor Gaozong during the Tang Dynasty and stood 177ft tall. Empress Wu Zetian had the pagoda rebuilt and added 5 new stories by 704. In 1556 it was damaged by an earthquake and 3 stories were lost. It has not been rebuilt since then….
Before going any further, I would be remiss in not talking about the driving in Beijing and Xi’an. We think drivers in the US are crazy, here there seem to be no rules. Staying in your lane does not happen, they literally drive right on top of each other. Crossing the street you have to…
After we returned from a full day of sightseeing we went for a walk just a few blocks from the hotel to the Wangfujing Market. The market is actually a huge pedestrian walkway that looks much like Time Square in New York. It’s filled with very polished high-end stores, huge indoor shopping malls, and lots…
After a very busy morning and another awesome lunch we headed to the Summer Palace. We were fortunate that the drizzle stopped and we just ended up with a cloudy day. The crowds were very heavy today and it is still hard to get used to how the Chinese culture is so different from ours…
So, as you probably noticed Chuck is tackling all of the touring and I’ll be working on the hotel and food posts… Our first experience with Gate 1 Travel was our trip to Thailand a few years back and we found that the hotels and meals were very good. We were actually REALLY surprised when…
We started the day at 7:45 and were at Tiananmen Square by 8AM. We had a light drizzle to contend with but we were fortunate that it never got worse, just very gray. Between the drizzle and the cloud cover pictures seem a little dull. Smog was not bad today, they say the rain helps…
After our visit to the Temple of Heaven, we stopped at a local eatery and had an awesome lunch. Mark is posting about all the food. The next stop was the Great Wall; we were so looking forward to checking off another item from our bucket list to see all of the modern-day Great Wonders….
The morning started off with a hearty breakfast and we had the opportunity to meet many of the people from our tour group. One crazy thing happened; I saw someone who looked familiar but then I thought, nah, can’t be. But sure enough, a co-worker was on the same tour and we didn’t even know…
If you are like me you grew up hearing your mother say ‘ Clean your plate, there are starving children in China!” Yesterday was day one of our China vacation and I think Gate1 Travel and our Chinese hosts are out to prove that theory wrong. Our first function of the trip was breakfast in…