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As we say in the South-bless her heart…

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Cool sugar artist in Chengdu…

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You order 7 beers at a restaurant and this is what gets set next to your table…

Haha!

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I don’t know if you could pick a less practical outfit for visiting the Leshan Buddha…

Okay, well, maybe a wet suit would be a bit less practical, but not by much.

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I don’t know if any city is going to be able to compare to Chengdu…

flashback friday

We’ve been really blessed to be assigned to Europe so much over the past 3 years.  We’ve seen so much and visited almost every country we ever hoped to visit on the continent.  It’s disgusting really how lucky we’ve been.

We fell in love with so many places in Europe, but I’d say my favorite was probably Iceland or Island as the locals spell it.

Today’s flashback takes us back to last year’s visit to this incredible country. We had crap weather the entire time we were there, but nothing could take away from the sheer beauty of this place.

I still believe everyone should put it at the top of their vacation wish lists.  If you do want to plan a visit, be sure to check out the travel piece I did for EW on it. 

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Island

Even rain couldn’t take away from the beauty of this country. Blast this rain! I think God is trying to get us ready for living in Ireland.
Anyhoo, back to our weekend…

We arrived early morning on Thursday and headed directly to the Blue Lagoon from the airport. Almost immediately you feel like you’ve landed on a different planet with all the green spongy moss covering fields of black lava rocks. Then you see the ethereal blue water and you’re even more convinced you’ve left Earth...

The Blue Lagoon is a hot spring and full of silica which makes it delightfully relaxing and leaves your skin super soft. I think it may be the best thing we’ve ever done after a long and early morning flight. Very relaxed girls...

After we were done soaking we made our way to Reykjavik and to our hotels. We quickly popped out to grab some food and see the town. I know it is technically the capital of the country, but I just can’t call it a city. Reykjavik feels far more like a college town than an actual city and not at all like a capital. Cute little restaurants, bars and stores selling Icelandic “woolens” (sheep outnumber people in Iceland) fill the small streets and thanks to the earthquakes there isn’t a building over a few stories high. It was ridiculously quaint.

We had one of those weird too late for lunch but too early for dinner meals and after milling about had a couple of local beers (Gull-not bad, not bad) and went to bed. We had been up since 4:30am so our 10pm bedtime seemed more than reasonable.

We set off after breakfast on Friday for the golden circle tour. This is kind of the quintessential tour in Iceland since it covers some of the best of their natural sites. We first stopped at one of their newest geothermal energy plants. What a snorefest. I’m all for being green and I actually find the concept interesting, but it was a bore of a tour. We then hit the Gullfoss Falls- really beautiful and we even had about 5 minutes where it wasn’t raining...

We saw 2 of the world’s 5 geysers although only one blew…or spurted…or erupted or whatever it is they do. Very cool...

Then we ended our day visiting the site of the world’s oldest parliament. Iceland was founded by Norwegians that wanted to escape their king’s rule. AKA- they were over the taxes. With no monarchs to rule them they created the world’s first parliament to still keep it somewhat civil, keep in mind they were Vikings. They chose the site due to the large amount of space, grass to feed the horses and available drinking water. No building was ever erected as the chieftains stood on “law rock” to announce new laws to the citizens each year. It is a place dear in the hearts of Icelanders as the birthplace of their country and government. Just so happens this is also where you can see the tectonic plates of North America and Eurasia which was just freaking awesome…

Saturday we headed to Southern Iceland where drove through awe-inspiring farmlands to see waterfalls,tons of ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, a glacial tongue (also covered with ash from Eyjafjallajökull), some black sand beaches (one with very cool basalt formations) and visited a little museum founded and still run by the cutest little old Icelandic man you could imagine that focused on the culture of the Southern way of life complete with farmhouses from the 18th century…

It was a really great, but also long day- made even longer by our 1am flight out.
Iceland is just so unique and truly breathtaking. I’m sure many of you have never even thought of visiting it. God knows I didn’t a couple of years ago, but really you should put it at the top of your travel wish list. There is no other place like it.

This weekend is our last in Germany and we’re actually staying in the country to spend some QT with KS in Berlin. Can’t wait! And I’m sure I’m cursing us right now by typing it, but the weather called for rain all week but is now saying an entire weekend of sunshine. I’m still packing the umbrella.
**more photos to come as soon as i get them from our travel companion who played personal photog all weekend- thanks, v!!**

Posted by MAV at 9:38 AM

the daily(ish)

The smoking in China is really out of control.  Out. of. Control. You can’t even go to the bathroom stall without finding an ashtray…

Seriously?  People can’t even stop smoking long enough to go to the bathroom?

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You know you’ve arrived in panda town as soon as you walk right outside the Chengdu airport…

Chengdu (aka- Panda Extravaganza)

This story really begins about 3 1/2 years ago with me sitting in our living room watching the Travel Channel and screaming across the house to Julie about holding a panda.  It’s all right here.

China has eluded each time it came up on the schedule and when we finally got it, all I thought about was that I was finally getting to hug a panda.  Seriously.

#1 on my life list is officially crossed off!!!  And so is #70, although I’ve added like 7 new ones.  I digress.  

We spent about 6 hours at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding on Saturday…

Yeah. 6 hours of pandas- it was beyond incredible!!!!  I mean, look at this guy…

Are you kidding me?? I can barely handle the cuteness of this photo, so you can imagine what I was like seeing it in person.  I thought my head might explode at any moment from sheer joy.

We were the very first in line to do the holding.  Unfortunately, it didn’t go quite as planned. We were disappointed  because we weren’t told until we got into the room (and had paid a lot of money) that we couldn’t actually hold the panda.  A person had been hurt by a panda and they decided the pandas were much more comfortable sitting on their own.  Fair enough, panda.  Fair enough…

Now, I realize anyone sitting next to a dang panda shouldn’t be complaining.  The thing that bothered us is that we had paid the same price they use to charge for holding a panda and the charge for sitting next to one used to be half of that. And since we were the first ones in a long line, we only got about 10 seconds next to the little guy before being ushered outside.  We’ve just been hustled so many times since arriving in China and well, we’re just tired of feeling cheated all the time. 

As we were about to leave we decided to ask them about it and they eventually (read: after a whole lot of pleading)  let us each have 4 more pictures with another panda.  Hugging 2 baby pandas in one day was more than enough to make up for not physically holding one…

It was just an awesome, awesome day. Awesome.

That night we somehow missed out on what is supposed to be amazing Sichuan food and went to yet another hot pot.  This one being the worst one yet.  The restaurant was a beautiful area of Chengdu though and the majority of us enjoyed walking around the cobbled streets after dinner.  You never know what you’re going to run into in China and in just a few short blocks we saw some bbq-ed rabbit heads for sale, people getting their eyes cleaned with really long metal needle-looking things and I was randomly handed a baby to hold for a picture.  Good times.

Sunday we made our way to Leshan to see the giant Buddha.  It was a 2 hour ride, but totally worth it…

He’s the largest pre-modern statue in the world and the largest carved Buddha anywhere. 

The line to see him was both hilarious and painful.  You are reminded very quickly just how few Western tourists really come to China, especially to cities like Leshan.  A little boy came right up to me and pointed at my face screaming something in Chinese to his mortified parents.  Everyone stared at us like we were aliens.  As the first American they’d ever laid eyes on I found it my duty to represent us as a cheerful, friendly people. What they don’t know won’t hurt them, right? They would stare at me and I would just smile and say “ni hao”.  They would laugh, embarrassed and excited, and say it back with huge smiles on their faces. Moments like this, when two strangers so different and so unknown to one another find common ground through smiles and shared laughter, those are the moments I truly love most about traveling.

The painful part was the crowd (personal space doesn’t exist here) and the snail-pace movement of the line as we made our way down the narrow staircase…

Once you get to the single file area of the stairs it is much more pleasant though…

and being at the foot of this Buddha you can’t help but be in awe of the sheer size…

We ended up getting very lost on our way out and wound up about two kilometers away from where we needed to be. And no, I have no idea how this happened, except to say really bad signage and maze-like staircases don’t usually make for an easy exit. Just as I was on the edge of panic we found ourselves in a fishing village.  It was so pretty out there and through some creative charades we negotiated 3 tuk-tuks to take us back to the ticket office.  As we sped along through the village and then through the busy highway on this rickety little tuk-tuk we were quickly reminded how getting lost can lead to the best unexpected experiences…

This was by far my favorite weekend in China.  Obviously, the pandas had a lot to do with it, but I think they’re all going to be amazing going forward.  We’ve got a friend coming in from Atlanta (yay!!!) this Friday and we’re headed off to Guilin this weekend to float down the river and hopefully see some rice terraces! Can’t wait!!

Pics from the weekend…

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Pictures from our weekend in Chengdu are on their way.  It’s been a while since I’ve taken over 600 photos in a weekend, so editing is slower than normal.  The fact that I have to “ooh and ah”  at every single photo of the baby pandas isn’t helping things either.  This is going to take a while!

Until then, here’s the cutest panda we saw all weekend…

The best part is they only had this cape in adult sizes. Oh, Asia…

 

photo credit: mm (thank you!!)