We went to Copenhagen for Christmas for a lot of reasons but the best reason of all was probably because if you can visit three countries in a trip instead of one, why not? There were other reasons too, like I had wanted to visit Copenhagen in person ever since I visited with Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown a few years ago. Copenhagen is after all, the...
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My husband and I always get into a heated discussion about this time of year. It goes something like this. Me…. “Let’s go somewhere for Thanksgiving.” Him…”I’d be happy to cook Thanksgiving dinner at home. You know our kids really miss out on traditions.” And then in his mind he adds, “They miss out because of your holiday issues.” From there, the discussion goes downhill...
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Our year of traveling the world is over and the kids are back in a “brick and mortar” school. We’ve been home for about three months and I just finished the last of the my travel blogs about all of our activities and what I think about them, but Scott has been telling me that I should write about the “other stuff,” the more reflective...
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Something that I notice right away as I look through our pictures from Shanghai to refresh my memory and get ready to blog my heart out…our pictures are not stellar. Shanghai was days 16-19, our last three days in China, and we were tired. China had been nonstop tourist-ing every day and after our first four nights in Beijing we were staying two nights in...
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I didn’t know a whole lot about China when I was planning our trip. Heck, I didn’t even want to go to China so I’m not sure how it turned out that I was in charge of planning, but I did know that China had Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, the landscape that inspired The Hallelujah Mountains in Avatar. If I was going to China, that sounded...
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Our journey to Shangri-La began in Hutiaoxia or Tiger Leaping Gorge Town, where we pulled over in a busy parking area, hugged Denise good-bye and met Sarah amid cars honking and trying to back out of spaces and the couple that ran across the street to ask us about bus schedules and hiking…in Spanish. Scott and the kids were able to not only have a conversation, but...
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This year has taught me that when we disembark on the tarmac it is usually a sign of impending good adventure. This was true in Tanzania, the Galapagos and now Lijiang in China’s Yunnan province. Yunnan is located in southwest China in the eastern part of the Himalayas, sharing a border with Burma, Laos, and Vietnam in the south and Tibet in the northwest. The...
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We arrived in Xi’an on our seventh day in China. Even if you have no interest in China you’ve probably heard of Xi’an. No? What about the Terra Cotta Warriors? I thought so. Even my kids knew about the Terra Cotta Warriors and listed them as a reason for visiting China. Obviously, Xi’an is very popular on the Chinese tourist circuit because of the Terra Cotta...
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Two and a half hours out of Beijing on a bullet train and there is still no sky visible. It looks like June gloom in Central California but it is smog, laying on the ground. Scott points outside and says to the kids, “See the pollution?” Grant replies, “I thought it was fog…are you sure?” It took us three and half hours to finally...
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For me, being in China was like being on another planet, but a vaguely familiar planet. China is a very complicated place; a lot like an episode of Star Trek Voyager where past, present and future are all tangled together in some sort of Delta Quadrant wormhole. For those of you who are not Trekkies, suffice it to say that Beijing was our first taste...
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