Onto China... Here's my itinereary

We have one free night in Shanghai so we booked a hostel for tomorrow night, then the next afternoon we fly to Beijing for our tour...here's the itinerary:



Wednesday, Feb. 17th: Shanghai - Beijing
Flight Shanghai - Beijing (transport from ship to airport is taxi on your own, most economical)
Pickup at Beijing airport by your guide and driver, transfer to your hotel and check in
Evening free


Thursday, February 18th (B, D): Sleep on the Wall
Check out of the hotel, meet at 9am in the lobby
Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City
Xiushui Silk Market: shop and bargain for souvenirs and clothes. This market is a favorite for students. Purchase your own lunch - western and Chinese available.
Drive to Jinshanling Great Wall
Dinner near Jinshanling Great Wall: local Chinese dishes
Sleep on the Wall: beer, soft drinks and snacks provided overnight, we provide all the sleeping gear too.


Friday, February19th (B, L): Sleep on the Wall
Breakfast on the Wall: Muesli and fresh fruits
Hike Jinshanling to Simatai Great Wall
Lunch: at Simatai Great Wall
Drive back to Beijing
Stroll on the Olympic Green and view the outside of the Swim Cube and Birds Nest Stadium
Check into hotel
Rest, then enjoy Friday night out on the town


Saturday, Feb. 20th (B, L, D): Beijing
Visit a Chinese New Year Temple Fair: A cultural New Year's experience, see some exciting performances and visit the stalls set up to sell traditional arts and crafts. There are plenty of games to play and traditional food and snacks to try.
Hutong Tour: includes a cycle rickshaw ride through Beijing's historic hutongs. Stop to go up the Drum Tower and enjoy tea in a traditional style courtyard family home.
Enjoy a local lunch in a Hutong family's home: participate in making Chinese dumplings (jiaozi)
Summer Palace
Peking Duck Dinner: try Beijing's famous and traditional cuisine
Chaoyang Acrobat Show (7:15 to 8:30)
Drop off to hotel


Sunday, Feb. 21st (B, L): Beijing
Panjiayuan Weekend Market: Beijing's famous weekend market with over 3000 stalls of vendors from all over China selling their wares and antiques.
Hotpot Lunch: the best winter meal in Beijing
Temple of Heaven
Hotel Drop off/Airport Drop off

The rest of Japan..

We woke up around 9 30 or so and checked out of The Ace Inn. We got to the main train station to transfer to the main JR lines that take longer distances. The train was really nice actually, we had reclining seats that were really nice to rest in on the 2.5 hour ride from Tokyo to Kyoto. The ride was rough, we all didn’t feel our best after a long night in Tokyo. It was really nice though, it felt so good to just relax and not just constantly on the go. I was so glad I brought my ipod, it made the ride go so fast. When we finally got to Kyoto we took a different subway to the main station of Kyoto. It was seriously POURING out, it poured the entire day, it was miserable. Kyoto was really cute though, it wasn’t built up like Tokyo at all, it was a smaller, but still large city. It kind of reminded me of Europe with all the back little roads, it was quaint. There was a big river that ran right through the middle of it. Some of my other friends told me about how they went to a public bath—it sounded cool, but definitely very different. After we walked for a little ways into the city, we decided to get lunch (a very late lunch), it was a really small Italian place, it was cool though because their version of Italian food is much different than ours. My friend got the pizza and the crust was like a tortilla, it was soooo good. After lunch we just walked around for a while trying to find the hostel we looked up, but it was really hard to find, so we ended up finding this huge internet café to look it up. When we got to the internet café the people made it seem like you could sleep there, it was really funny because our communication was a little off, so we said why don’t we just stay here, when they took us up to our “room” we realized it was like a little cubby wehre you rent out for 12 hours at a time and it was just like a tiny mat with a computer, tv, and playstation. There was no where to keep our stuff locked up and there were no blankets, we ended up just staying there for like an hour and just used the internet for a while. The lady at the hostel finally emailed my friend Anne back and we ended up making our way over there (in the pouring rain, so miserable). The hostel was really cute, we got two rooms—Me Lindsay Laurel in one; Em and Anne in the other—the hostel was called the Bak Pak Hostel, it’s like made for young travelers. We got ready for dinner at the hostel and went to this cute restaurant. It was one of my favorite restaurants we went to. They had a really nice English menu it was so cute inside, they had really cool pictures all over, it was very modern, but the food was very authentic. After dinner we just walked around a little bit then went back to the hostel to sleep—everyone was SO exhausted and wanted to get a good night sleep.

The next morning we packed our stuff up and checked out of the hostel around 930-10. We got breakfast at this cute little coffee place. I only got an apple because I wasn’t very hungry. After breakfast we walked to a Shinto shrine, it was similar to the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, but a lotttt smaller. There were some people there doing some type of religious ritual where they rang these bells then bowed, it was cool. After the shrine we walked to the largest/oldest Buddhist temple in Kyoto. It was sooo cool. The whole place itself was free, but to enter the temple costed like 5 dollars, which was totally worth it. It was so pretty inside, there were people doing some sort of Buddhist ritual with a monk. I have so many pictures of the temple, it was pretty big and really cool to see. There was this small pathway we took to actually look at the Buddha.. It was so cool, it was all gold and up on this throne type thing. The ceiling was so beautiful, it was all black and white with really cool paintings. After we finally left the temple, we walked around, stopped at Starbucks (dumb Americans) to get some coffee, and got on the subway to get back to where the JR lines are to take it back to Kobe (where the ship moved to while we were independently traveling)…we had to get back a little bit earlier (before 5) so Anne could make her FDP(it’s an SAS trip she signed up for, stands for Field Directed Practica..most are for classes). The train to Kobe was only an hour, and we were back in Kobe around 3 pm or so. At the station Anne left us to go get ready, and the rest of us stayed in downtown Kobe to look around. We went to this huge mall that had EVERYTHING in it. We stopped and got lunch at this small little Japanese place, it was okay, but at that point we just wanted anything to eat. We walked around the mall for a while, and two of my friends (Emily and Laurel) got the funniest care bear onesie outfits, they are so ridiculous, and they put them on and wore them after we left the mall, and wore them back to the ship…EVERYONE was staring, it was soooo funny. I have pictures and a video of it. We took the subway back to the ship (it felt sooo good to be back, it was like being away from home for sooo long) and unpacked our stuff and showered and got ready for the night. After we we got ready we met up with some other people and took the subway back to downtown Kobe. We went to dinner at this really cool restaurant that was very modern and open. We sat at a huge table for all of us and the food was really good. After dinner we went to a Karaoke bar…its soooo awesome. You rent our a room, its pretty small, but big enough to fit like 20 people or so, which we did. There were some SAS kids already there that we met up with, a handful of them I didn’t know, which was cool because I love meeting new people. We had to pay a little under 30 bucks for the whole night and it was open bar…we had such a blast. Everyone was singing every type of music…karaoke is definitely a must-do in Japan. We left pretty late and took a cab back to the ship, where we slept that night. The next morning we ate brunch on the ship, then me Lindsay and 2 of our guy friends took the subway to walk around Kobe. We just walked around the streets trying to find a place for the boys to get the famous Kobe beef, but everything was so expensive, we decided to not get it. It was so funny after that we were desperate just to find any restaurant we could, but since there was something going on (not sure what) everything was closing! We could not find anywhere that accepted cards (we were out of yen pretty much) that was open—so after about an hour and a half of triyng to find somewhere we ended up just going back to the same restaurant we ate dinner at the night before, which was fine because I really liked the restaurant, I just ordered something different. On our way back to the subway we saw this guy singing and playing guitar in the street, it was really funny watching all the Asians clap and wave their hands in the air to the song. This one Asian was with her friend who was loving it and the other Asian looked like she hated life. We could not stop laughing, she was like barely waving her hand (it look like she was trying to have a good time, but she was absolutely hating it and totally did not want to be there). We were about to leave then we saw this other guy who had this boombox type thing on his waist and was playing this really loud techno music, and he started setting up his stuff to start painting (so we decided to stay and watch). It was so cool, he like spray painted really cool pictures and danced to the music as he painted, it was the coolest way I’ve ever seen to paint. The first picture he did was seriously amazing of this woman’s face, after he finished it he wrapped it up and he gave it to Lindsay, it was so cute…Linds was SO happy, she cried because she was so happy. He did another one and it was of this guy running and after he held it up in the air for someone to grab and no one took it right away so I just walked up and took it (I really wanted it)…its so awesome I’m so glad I have it as a souvenir. I have a video of him doing it…it’s really hard to explain, but it was one of the neatest things I have ever seen. I think it was my favorite part of Japan. Anyways, after that it was around 330 and we had to be back on the ship by 6 and the lines take FOREVER, so we took the subway back to the ship. I feel so lucky to experience so much in such little time, it felt like I learned so much and took in so much it’s crazy it was only a few days. It was so nice to rest, but now we get into China tomorrow morning and I still don’t know if I’m ready. I’m signed up to do this like 5 day tour with this program called the China Guide…I’ll post my itinerary.

Japan-night #2 in Tokyo

The next day when we woke up we went to this little café across from our hotel. It was really good actually, I got an egg sandwich and a waffle with whip cream. After breakfast we got all of our stuff together in the hotel and took the subway to another district in Tokyo (I want to say Rupungai, but I’m not completely sure) Anyways, it was such a cute area, there were cute little shops all over. We went there specifically to see Meiji Shrine, it’s a famous Shinto Shrine in Tokyo (Shinto is the main religion, along with Buddhism, of Japan). It was really cool, it was kind of cold though, I wasn’t dressed warm enough really, but I was fine. It was in the forest and there was a huge loop you could walk around. We walked a little less than a mile to get to near where the big part of the shrine was, and there buildings where people go to pray and such. It’s really hard to explain what it looked like, I have pictures, if I ever get the chance to post them. Oh, it was so cool this is a famous place for people to get married and we saw a Japanese bride..she looked so beautiful, and so young. I have pictures of her, it was really neat to see. Both the bride and grooms family was there, it was relatively small. Another thing REALLY funny, SOCKS WITH FLIP FLOPS, I got a kick out of it. It was really common for monks/religious figures and wedding parties to be wearing socks with flip flips. The flip flops are really funny too, they have a thicker heel and really thick thong part. I saw one monk with these like platform wodden ones, it’s so great. The whole wedding party was wearing socks with flip flops, I took like 4 pictures of it, its so funny, Linds pointed it out to me and we both were laughing so hard, it’s awesome. Anyways, when we were at the shrine it was so cute this Asian that looked around our age came up to us (with very broken English) and said he was from South Korea and asked us where we were from and we said the U.S, I think he just about died.. his eyes lit up and he was like “USA??? Can I please get a picture?” His friend took his picture with us and he was so thankful for the picture, he was so adorable. After we heard him talking to his friend and he kept saying U.S.A, it was so cute, it was obvious he had never seen an American before. I’m sure it’s going to be like that in some of the places I go to next. We walked around the shrine for a while and when we left we walked around the district and some of the shops, looking for a place to eat (it was past lunchtime and we were starving). We ended up going to this place that looked like it was good from far away, it was in the middle of this huge intersection on the second story of a building. We all just wanted to sit down so we just went there to eat, it turned out to be the Denny’s of Japan..it was called Jonathon’s (don’t go here if you’re ever in Japan). It was so awful, I couldn’t find anything I liked so I got French fries and I think Kalamari..it was like 2 side orders. Oh yeah, another weird thing Japanese people do..most restaurants, well a decent amount, have a button you can press so your server knows when to come over. We figured that out the hard way. There’s a huge language barrier with Japanese people (most don’t speak like any English).. we got really used to pointing at pictures on menus (almost all restaurants have pictures of the meals) Also, in the front of almost every restaurant they have plastic food of what their meals looks like, its seriously looks so gross and unappetizing. ANYWAYS, after our horrible meal at Jonathon’s we decided to look around at all the shops/stores on the street. We went to a ton of stores, they were all really cute, but pretty expensive. I didn’t really buy anything, I bought a pair of really cool shorts from this thrifty store—it was awesome. We also went to a forever21, hoping to find some cheap boots because we were freezing our toes off, we all ended up not finding any boots and we all bought some type of clothing. By the time we were done it was getting pretty late, probably around 7:30 or 8, so we took the subway back to our hotel and got ready for the night, I finally showered for the first time in like 2 days. When we were ready we went to dinner at this Chinese food type restaurant (we were desperate because a lot of places were closing because it was getting late), but it was actually really good. I got shrimp dumplings and this Cajun shrimp. The waiter was so cute, they ran out of the white wine we were drinking and he felt bad so he gave us a free bottle of a different white wine. In Japan you’re not supposed to tip, but we did at the end of this meal, like barely anything at all because we didn’t want to offend them, and we just told him to keep the change and he was soooo happy, he said thank you very much and was all smiley. He was young and it was obvious he had never gotten tipped before. After dinner we went back to the hotel for just a little bit to finish getting ready and grab a few things we forgot, then we took the subway to downtown Tokyo and went to this nightclub called Feira. It was really cool and it seemed really exculsive. We had to pay to get in, but it came with a free drink ticket. There were tons of SAS kids here because that’s where everyone was planning on meeting up. My friend Eric had his 21st birthday on the ship, so he got VIP to celebrate, and he let us come up there, it was really cool. There were tons of people from all over here, we met people from London, Russia, Brazil, and tons of Japanese people. Some of them were models I’m pretty sure, but we didn’t really talk to them, they were all in their own little group off on the side. We took a cab home late that night and when we woke up we went to Kyoto.

Japan-night #1, Tokyo

Japan!

…Where do I begin? I feel like I experienced so much it’s unbelievable. First of all, in general, Japanese people are sooo friendly and nice. They are also very quiet. Everywhere we went it just felt like no one was talking. In the US cities always seem so loud and obnoxious; Japanese cities are way different, there was no honking and no people talking really loud all over the place. Oh my gosh and holy crap Japanese people are sooooooooo clean. I felt like I was in a video game when we first got off, the streets have no gum on them, it looks perfect. It is SO weird being in these cities and everything is soooo clean, it felt so fake. And it makes no sense because it seems like its SO hard to find garbage cans if you ever want to throw something away, where do they put all their garbage? Japan is so awesome though, it really exceeded my expectations.

Anyways, we pulled into the port of Yokohama around 9 30am. We were the first sea off the ship (they group wings of the ship by a “sea”; for example we were in the Mediterranean sea) so it took a little bit to wait for our friends to get off. Lindsay (roomie) got a few drinks at this little café around the port. We finally got our friends, I was traveling with 4 other girls-Lindsay, Emily, Anne, and Laurel (They’re all so cool)-we weren’t in Yokohama for very long. Yokohama was pretty built up but it didn’t seem like anything too special. So we took the subway from a small station in Yokohama to the main Yokohama station. From there we transferred to a line that took us to Tokyo. It wasn’t that far, it probably took us about 20 minutes or so to get to Tokyo (plus the time it took to figure out where the heck we were going). We got off in Tokyo to what we though was the heart of Tokyo, only to find that we were in the business district and it was nothing we wanted to see. By this time we were all tired and hungry so we decided to eat lunch (or so, it was around 3pm). We ate at this little place that was sort of connected to the train station. It was good though, we got beers and had our first authentic Japanese meal. Oh we also discovered that Japan still allows smoking indoors. It was weird because they are such health freaks and so cleanly—you can’t even smoke outside in most places unless it’s a designated smoking area. Oh, also Japanese people are so weird—I’m not kidding literally everywhere you go people are wearing those like masks that cover your face that like doctors and stuff wear. They’re such germ freaks, I bet at least one of every twenty people had one on. It looks so ridiculous, but you kind of get used to it after a while. After we finished our meal we took the subway to Akbonoboshi (not sure if I spelled that right), it’s the station our capsule hotel was in, right near downtown Tokyo. Our capsule hotel was so great, we stayed at a place called The Ace Inn—the capsule was great. There were a bunch of floors (some men floors, some women) and there were like bunk bed type things all over the room. They were actually really big. The floor had a community bathroom in the room and a big area where the lockers were to put our stuff in. The capsules themselves didn’t lock, there is just a curtain over your bed. The capsule was so fun. The showers were downstairs in the basement and it cost 100 yen for 10 minutes. 100 yen is about equal to .85 US dollars. After we got into our hotel and situated we got ready and went to the main downtown Tokyo for dinner. We ate at this very authentic, very nice restaurant we came across. Every table was line enclosed in a little area. I got some kind of meal with shrimp, I can’t remember exactly what, I remember it was really good. This was probably the most expensive meal we ate, but it wasn’t too bad, I spent probably a little over $20, maybe 30. After dinner we walked around Tokyo and we went to this bar called Muse, which a bunch of SAS kids were going to apparently. We got there a little early and it wasn’t that crowded yet so we decided to go walk around more for a little while. We ended up going to this place that looked like it had drinks (it was one like the 4th floor of a building), but we accidently walked into the wrong building and my friend Emily said her father was here so she let us up in this elevator and it turned out to be a totally different place than what we wanted. It seemed really exclusive and we were like boxed in in this area and we got a bottle of wine and some more food (dinner #2?) After we left we went back to Muse and there were tons of SAS kids. We stayed there the whole night, really late, we probably got home around 5 am. There were TONS of people out in Tokyo on the streets still, there were a lot of really creepy African men. We took a cab back to our capsule hotel, which Lindsay and I both paid for because everyone else ran out of yen…I only spend like 8 dollars though, it wasn’t too bad. We got back to our capsule safe and sound and we woke up around 10 or so the next morning to travel around Tokyo. I signed up to workout at 1:30 so I have to go get ready, I’ll post more later about the rest of Japan. Were also going to be in China not tomorrow, but the next day! I can’t belive we only have two days in between Japan and China, I’m exhausted. Ps-we only have 4 days left of classes total in February-including today, so weird/awesome!

Sorryyy

I have no idea why that link was posted in the previous page, sorry I posted that so late, I typed it so long ago, but I haven't hhad internet to post it..I just bought more minutes.

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Oahu/Honolulu

When we got to Honolulu we ate breakfast on the ship and then took a really long bus ride to the North part of the island. We got on one that took like 30 minutes or so and then transferred to another that took like an hour and a half. It was so cold and there were some weird people on the bus. When we got off we walked down to the beach which was so pretty, I don’t remember what it was called, I have amazing pictures though. It was overcast and really windy, unlike Honolulu, which was SO hot and sunny. The waves were really big and there were cliffs/valleys all around it was seriously so pretty, it looked like a movie. To the right there was a lighthouse which was so cool. There were people surfing way off in the distance, but the beach had huge waves and there were rocks and stuff so no one is allowed to swim or get in the water at the beach. The waves were seriously the biggest waves I have ever seen it was so cool. Across the road right behind the beach was this huge valley type thing it was SO cool, it’s where they filmed part of Jurassic Park, I’ll hopefully post pictures of it but I don’t know when that will be. There were a ton of beaches that were similar to this one (the only name I remember was Pipeline Beach) for miles and we kept walking for miles and stop every half mile or so to check it out. All the beaches had huge waves, and each had such an amazing view with rocks and coral and such. We spend a long time walking down the coast line but it was so cool to see all the scenery. We finally took the bus back around 430 or 5 or so, half of us took the bus back and the other half went to this place called Turtle Bay, I regret not going but it was just getting late and we wanted to get back with the long bus ride ahead of us. My friends that went to turtle bay saw Helen Hunt, they have pictures of her, she was filming some movie and they have pictures of the set too, it’s really cool. They also saw the condo things where Forgetting Sarah Marshall was filmed, I saw their pictures of that too. Anyways, we finally got back to Honolulu near where the ship was and there was a group of like 9 of us that went out to dinner. We were in Chinatown which was kind of cool, but weird at the same time. Everything was Chinese, obviously. We went to some random Chinese restaurant and my lemon chicken was awful, hahah. Everyone else seemed to like their meal though. We were like one of the only ones in the restaurant and by far the loudest. I think we intimidated the workers there. After dinner we went back to the ship to change and get ready then we went to this random bar called Zanzibar, it was another SAS fest, SAS kids were everywhere. It was really funny though because the bar was being super lame and like looking for any reason to kick people out. I honestly think like 40% of SAS kids were kicked out for no reason (I didn’t get kicked out). When we woke up we spend forever trying to figure out how to get a rail pass for Japan because that’s the easiest way to travel around Japan and you can’t buy it once your in Japan. We asked random people who told us to go all different places, it took us like 2 hours to finally get there and purchase it. By the time we got the pass it was around 1pm. Waukiki (I don’ know how to spell it) is like a famous beach, which is in Honolulu about 10 min away by bus from the ship, so we went there to meet up with some of our other friends. We were there for a few hours before getting on the ship. It was really hot and sunny and really crowded. You can definitely tell a lot of tourists go there. I have pictures of it too, it was really pretty, in a different way than the beaches on the North side of the island. We went back to the ship around 4 and 2 of us got our laptops and came outside to use the internet but the internet café we were using wasn’t working so I didn’t even get to use the internet, hence why this is being posted so late. I also got some Ahi tuna at this little bus right next to the port and it was seriously AMAZING. Coming out to use our laptops was a bad idea because it didn’t even work and when we got back in line to get on the ship there were TONS of kids and the line was so long to get back on. If you’re late on the ship (6pm) you get 3 hours dock time at the next port for every 15 minutes you’re late. And that means ON the ship, not in line being checked by security. Okay it’s like 11:15am here and lunch is in 15 minutes and I feel like I’ve been typing forever so I’m going to go eat. PS I’m so used to the rocking now it’s so weird being off the ship, its actually kind of nice when I’m sleeping, it puts me to sleep, I’m always tired. I’ll try and post soon about ship life.

Oahu