Honeymoon: Days 14-16

The Maglev to the airport

23/04/12 - We got up for breakfast and packed before getting a taxi to the Shanghai Maglev station. This train just runs from Shanghai to the Shanghai Pudong International Airport and covers the 30km to the airport in just over 8 minutes. The journey was really smooth and looking at the scenery go past you wouldn't have realised that you were travelling at 431kph - other than the LCD display in the carriage. The airport was very modern and nice and we had no problem getting our flight.

Arriving at Hong Kong we had to queue at immigration, but it didn't take long to get through. We bought ourselves train tickets that would get us too and from the airport and allow us on the underground in Hong Kong during our stay. We then got the train to Kowloon Station. From there there was a shuttle bus that took us to our hotel - it was almost the last stop, so we got to see around Kowloon.

Our room at the Hotel ICON

The hotel we were at was Hotel ICON - a new hotel who's designers included Sir Terence Conran and is ranked very highly on Trip Adviser. It was very impressive on entering, but slightly strange in that the porters were wearing beige combats and tops. We were staying in an executive room, so on going to reception we got whisked away up to the top floor to check-in there instead. They told us that between 4-6pm we got free afternoon tea, and from 7-9pm there were free cocktails and snacks. We went to our room (on the twenty-something-th floor), which had a massive window overlooking the harbour, and were able to check facebook and twitter for the first time of the holiday.

After settling in we went up to the cocktail bar for our free cocktails and filled ourselves up with very nice cheese and biscuits. We then went out to explore a bit. Firstly we went to a restaurant called Lei Garden (on Tsim Sha Tsui) to book dinner for the following night - it was in a bit of a strange location in the basement of a slightly run-down looking shopping arcade, but supposedly did very nice food. We walked to the Peninsula Hotel and then along the Avenue of Stars (like the Hollywood version, but with famous Hong Kong actors and I got photo's of the ones I knew). We then waited around for the famous light show - a laser and light display using a lot of the tall buildings around the harbour. It started raining, but not too heavily and it was still nice and warm, and although the light show was a bit of a let down the view in general was still very good.

We then got the Star Ferry across the bay to Hong Kong island and walked to the covered escalators. We had a look at a variety of bars/restaurants and eventually decided to go in a place that had a beer and pizza deal. We weren't that hungry after filling ourselves with cheese earlier, but it was good pizza. We stayed for another drink and to people watch. When we got back to the hotel we found a bottle of wine and wedding card signed by a lot of the hotel staff in our room. I had a glass before going to bed.

Hong Kong view from the Peak

24/04/12 - We had two options for breakfast in the hotel - downstairs in the main buffet area, or up in the bar where cocktails were served. We decided on the first option and were very impressed, filling up on a lot food.

We got the underground to Hong Kong to go on the Peak Tram. It was busy and I had to stand, which required leaning at quite an angle due to the steepness of the ascent. We followed a route around the peak, which had exercise areas set up around it. It was quite overcast, so there weren't any distant views, but there were still nice views back over the city. We saw lots of interesting butterflies and birds of prey riding the thermals around the peak.

On descending from the Peak we walked to the zoological gardens next to the Government House. Until we got there we hadn't realised there was a zoo, but they had quite a few animals - we saw baby (and adult) orang-utans, various lemurs, monkeys, gibbons, and a raccoon (there was also a ginger cat on the prowl, which seemed to disturb some of the lemurs). After that we had a brief wander around some of Hong Kong, but wanted to get the ferry back to the hotel in time for afternoon tea.

A gibbon in the Botanic Gardens

After some snacks we decided to go for a swim in the hotel pool, which was on the roof above the buffet area. The pool (and changing facilities) were very nice, but the wind had picked up, so it wasn't that warm by the pool. I swam for a bit, but Jen went back inside to the sauna fairly quickly.

We went back for free cocktails, where we chatted one of the staff (who was an American girl who'd studied hospitality and was experiencing working in hotels in China) before heading to dinner at Lei Garden. It was only 9pm, but like in Beijing it seemed that service was almost over as there were very few other tables with people at them and a lot of clearing up was going on. There was a lot of exotic stuff on the menu including sharks fin and birds nest soup, but we played it safe. The service was quite brusque, but the food was decent enough - although not as good as a lot of what we'd had in Beijing.

Cable car on Lantau

25/04/12 - Our final day of honeymoon gave us a full day in Hong Kong before catching our flight just after midnight. We went for breakfast in the upstairs bar area, then got packed and left our luggage at reception. We then got the underground out to Lantau island. We took the cable car up to Ngong Ping villiage where there was a Buddhist monastery and giant Buddha statue. We didn't opt for one of the Crystal Cabins with a glass floor! It was an impressive ride, but quite daunting when the wind picked up. There were good views back down over the airport, but we soon got up into the clouds and couldn't really see anything except the forest below us. The village had tourist attractions and shops, but we walked straight to the Buddha, which required a bit on an ascent up stairs - the cloud hadn't really cleared, so we didn't really see the Buddha until getting up close. It was quite impressively large. We were able to go inside, which had some exhibits about Buddhism and history of the big Buddha's construction in the 1990s.

The Big Buddha in the clouds

After this we wandered over to the monastery and found that there was a display of acrobatics followed by a Shaolin Kung Fu demonstration. This included a guy being lifted on the points of spears and one breaking a metal rod on his head. The temple still had parts under construction and you could pay for new shrines to be dedicated to you. The entry fee to go up to the Buddha included a snack at the monastery (or you could pay more for a larger meal). The snack was in fact rather substantial including some stir fried noodles and vegetables and several sweets. There were a lot of dogs wandering round the temple and village and we spent a couple of minutes petting a puppy. We then went to the bus stop to get a bus down to Tai O, but it wasn't for another half hour, so we managed to catch part of a pogo-ing demonstration by the Pogo Dudes.

When we got the bus the cloud was really thick and visibility was down to a few metres, but we made it down to Tai O fishing village (and out of the cloud cover) safely. The village has large parts constructed on stilts and lots of small alleys. It unsurprisingly smelled quite heavily of fish as most of the shack-like houses had dried fish of many varieties hanging outside of them. There were also a lot of small shrines outside the houses. It was an interesting place. We walked out to what was a former police station (passing a post office with many stray cats outside it waiting to be fed by the postmaster), which had very recently been turned into a fancy hotel.

Tai O fishing village

We got back to the bus stop just in time to catch the bus back to Mui Wo (on the other side of the island) where the ferry ran back to Hong Kong. It was the end of the school day, so the bus was full of kids squeezed into all the seats and sitting along the floor - they were all of varying nationalities and mainly spoke English. The journey took about an hour. We didn't have to wait long for the ferry and once back in Hong Kong we got the Star Ferry back to Kowloon.

Back at the hotel we were still able to use the showers, so we washed and were able to change clothes. We also were still able to get the free cocktails and snacks. We got the shuttle bus to the airport express station where we were able to check-in our luggage and then got the train to the airport. At the airport Jen bought some sunglasses and we went for some dinner at Pizza Express. A thunderstorm had come in over Hong Kong, so planes were being delayed, but it only held up our flight by about an hour.

The flight back was quite uneventful. And that's it!

Honeymoon: Days 9-10 (Shanghai)

The bullet train

18/04/12 - On Wednesday we were travelling to Shanghai. Jen was starting to feel better, but still had a sore throat. We had the good breakfast buffet again and then went back to the room to finish packing. We then got a taxi to the train station. At the station we had to go through security, with an X-ray scanner checking our luggage. We'd got there in plenty of time, so had to hang about for 45 mins before the train departure. They didn't allow you to wait on the platform for the train, so we waited in a departure lounge, which gradually got busier and busier. About 5 mins before departure we were allowed through the barriers to the platform. There were a lot of people, but the (bullet) train was so big it didn't seem too busy. We didn't need to worry anyway as we had seats reserved in first class. The seats were huge and were able to recline quite far, and the atmosphere in the carriage was nice and calm (especially compared to trains in the UK). Looking out the window during the journey we noticed that there was barely any countryside between Hangzhou and Shanghai, with the only agriculture in the form of some poly tunnels. The trip took just over an hour and a half.

On getting to Shanghai station we were initially thinking that we'd get the underground to our hotel, but after wandering around the massive station for a bit we decided it was probably a better idea to get a taxi.

Our hotel room in the Astor House hotel

Our hotel in Shanghai was the Astor House hotel - established in 1846 it was the first Western operated hotel in all of China and has had many uses over the years, and many famous residents (including Albort [sic] Einstein). It was a lovely colonial-style building and had a good feel about it - definitely a lot more character than the Hyatt in Hangzhou. They didn't have the room we'd originally booked, but (as in Beijing) we got put in a far bigger room instead - it was huge! It was obviously very recently renovated and other rooms on the corridor were still being done up - in fact the first two rooms on the corridor were being operated as offices for businesses! After settling in we briefly explored the hotel - during this we encountered the first (of many) Shanghai wedding photo shoots. On leaving the hotel we saw more wedding photos on the bridge opposite the hotel - this proved to be a very popular location for photos. [These photo shoots did seem very elaborate and lasted for hours without any obvious sign of the rest of the wedding party and with the brides dresses often pinned. We later found out that a lot of couples have their photos taken months in advance of their weddings, so they can use the images on the day itself.] It was drizzling a bit and quite overcast, but we had a brief wander up and down the Bund (the main promenade along the west of the Huangpu River) to get our bearings.

Despite the day of travelling we weren't feeling tired (I suppose we'd only had a short train ride to deal with) and decided to be a bit more adventurous by heading for dinner in the French Concession, which required an underground journey. The Shanghai underground was more comprehensive than the one in Beijing, but also a bit more expensive (maybe an extra 10p!). It wasn't quite as obvious how to buy a ticket from the machine as rather than the single fare that existed in Beijing there were different fares depending on the destination (and the machine required the correct change, which we didn't have, so we had to go and buy a drink [and cake] to get some coins), but we figured it out and bought the correct tickets. The underground was still very modern and clean.

In the French Concession it took a couple of minutes to get our bearings and work out which side of the road we were on on our map. Once we'd sorted that out we decided to head to The Boxing Cat Brewery (the best microbrewery in Shanghai), where we had beer and burgers (including a pint of Glasgow Kiss Scotch Ale). The rain had picked up, but we decided to explore a bit more and headed for another drink at Abbey Road (which was so busy that we had to sit outside on a table with an umbrella), and then another at a huge Irish Bar by the US consulate called O'Malleys. In general around the French Concession, due to the large number of consulates there were a lot of non-Chinese people and a lot of English being spoken - the area felt far more western in general and compared to Beijing there were far more pubs!

The Sightseeing Tunnel

19/04/12 - Today was going to be a day of sightseeing - starting off with the Sightseeing Tunnel! This is a tunnel under the Huangpu going from the Bund to Pudong (the financial district) - it consists of a small carriage that takes you on a "journey through the Earth" consisting of a mental psychedelic light show. It cost far more than it should do (especially when compared to the price of the ferry), but it was an experience, and the epic surrealness meant that it had to be done - just the once though! The tunnel complex also had lots of other kitschy exhibitions, but we decided that the tunnel itself was enough for us. Prior to taking the tunnel we'd briefly wandered down the Bund to find the location of a restaurant we planned to go to. During this walk we were accosted by two girls asking us to take their photo and then chatting about where we were from - eventually they asked us what we were doing that day and whether we wanted to join them for a traditional Chinese tea ceremony. Our guidebook had warned us about these being scams to bilk tourists out of large sums of money, so we declined and walked on. Once this had happened we spotted many other pairs doing similar things to other tourists.

The Jinmao Tower from the SWFC observation deck

Pudong is full of skyscapers and we had tickets to go up to the top of the (currently) tallest one in China - the 101 storey Shanghai World Financial Center, or the bottle opener as it is sometimes known due to the hole at its top (this is soon surpassed in the tallest building category by the under-construction Shanghai Tower). Going up to the observation deck was another surreal experience, which felt like we were travelling into some futuristic sci-fi universe. On going into the entrance to the lift up to the observation deck we were the only people there and were greeted by three women wearing identical futuristic clothes who guided us through slick and sparce white rooms to a model of Pudong, which featured a lit-up night time mode with a firework display. We were then led into the lift, which was a creamy white colour, with smoothed corners and a pulsating light on the ceiling. It felt like we were ascending into a space ship, and the longer we didn't see anyone else the more strange it got. The ride was very quick and smooth and when we arrived at the floor 100 observatory the sci-fi illusion was broken as we encountered other regular looking tourists (and a cleaner). It was quite misty, so we couldn't see that far, but it was still very impressive being that high. There were some glass panels on the floor that I walked over, but Jen wasn't so keen.

The tunnel in the Shanghai Aquarium

After the tower we headed to the Aquarium via a fancy supermarket in the IFC Mall (to get washing powder to clean our clothes). The aquarium was impressive and had a very long underwater tunnel - as would be expected we saw a variety of fish, sharks, turtles, seals etc, but the penguin exhibit was closed. We then walked down to the ferry terminal (which was further than we expected) to cross back to the Bund.

For dinner we went to a mall on Nanjing Road East. After checking out all the food options we decided on a Japanese BBQ banquet place, because it had an all-you-can-eat (and drink) option. We weren't sure of the etiquette of ordering, so we started out not getting that much food, but after seeing others ordering a lot more we happily got extra (although there was some confusion with one of the dishes, which I wasn't sure if I'd ordered and sent away, but it turned out is was mine). The food was very nice, especially the strips of beef.

Honeymoon: Days 7-8 (Hangzhou)

16/04/12 - We got a private car rather than taxi from our hotel in Beijing to the airport for out trip to Hangzhou [Hangzhou, which is relatively near Shanghai, is reputed to be one of the most beautiful cities in China and is a popular tourist destination for the locals]. It was with a guy who was hanging about outside the hotel who's main job was doing private tours, but had time before his first tour group to do an airport run. He spoke excellent English and was very chatty - he said that we should go to Xi'an (probably best know for the Terracotta warriors), where he'd studied, if we got the opportunity as it had the best sites from the ancient dynasties. Unfortunately it wasn't on our schedule, and having done a lot of historical sites we were quite looking forward to seeing different things.

We were in Terminal 2 of the airport and it was quiet and easy to get through security. They had free wifi too, which Jen made use of. After boarding the plane on time we were then told it was delayed due to a lack of take off slots being available. So, we got fed before take-off, but we didn't really eat much of the unappetising looking chicken and rice dish.

We weren't too delayed in getting to Hangzhou airport, which again was a new and modern looking building. From there we got a taxi to take us to our hotel on West Lake. In general the surroundings were much greener and less dry than Beijing. But, like in Beijing there were loads of building sites en-route, mainly for what looked like hi-rise appartment blocks. The houses along the road also had a quite distinct look about them that seemed quite specific to the Hangzhou area. The taxi ride took about 40 mins, but was slightly longer due to the taxi driver's meter not working properly and him having to stop by the taxi office to get a new SIM card!

The dancing fountain at West Lake

We were staying in the Hyatt Regency hotel - as a big chain hotel it was very international with better English spoken and a lot of non-Chinese residents. It had a very impressive lobby. There was a slight issue with our room not being ready, but this was sorted out quickly. The room we got was nice, but not as big our one in Beijing. We hadn't paid the extra for a room overlooking the lake. After settling into the room we went for a wander about the bit of West Lake nearest the hotel. We discovered that just opposite the hotel there was a dancing fountain, which performed a music and light show every half hour (we went back to watch the show later when it got dark, but I was particularly underwhelmed, especially as the views across the lake were so amazing anyway). On the lakeside promenade we got accosted by an old man on a mobility scooter who was Chinese, but had learned English (to a very proficient level) by listening to BBC Radio 4 over the internet - he did admit that he found some of the characters with strong accents in the Archers hard to follow (later we passed him again chatting to a group of German tourists in English). We also saw the original (we think) The Grandma's restaurant, which, as in Beijing, had big queues.

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant and despite the very good looking buffet decided to go for pasta (Jen) and a burger (me) as we felt in need of some western food! After dinner we went back out to watch the dancing musical fountain. Later we went to go swimming in the hotel pool, although the set up they had was very confusing. I swam briefly before we tried going for a sauna, but we found there were only separate saunas and hot tub areas for men and women, so didn't stay long.

We planned to get the high speed train to Shanghai when we left Hangzhou, so rather than attempting buying tickets at the station we went to the hotel business centre who booked the tickets for us (they needed to take copies of our passports, because foreigners, who don't have the state issued ID cards, need to give their passport numbers when travelling about on the trains).

Wedding photo shoot

17/04/12 - Jen was unwell overnight with a high temperature and sore throat. We made it down to breakfast for the very good buffet, but then Jen went back to bed. I walked all the way around West Lake (I'd planned to go round a bit and turn back, but once I got near half way I decided I may as well go all the way round) - this took about 3 hours. It was pretty busy with lots of golf-cart-style tourist buses going around the lake, which you had to make way for every few minutes. It was pretty, but there was a low mist over the hill surrounding the lake that meant the views weren't as good as they could have been. I also spotted the first, of what would prove to be many later sightings in Shanghai, wedding photo shoot. Later in the afternoon Jen had recovered enough to venture outside. We briefly walked through the shops behind the hotel and then walked all round the lake again. This time we went slower than I had before and spent more time at some sites like Solitary Hill Island. We also saw barges setting up the big light show that happens at the north of the lake, and a few rowers out doing lengths.

For dinner than evening we went to Chamate (one of the chain of Taiwanese restaurants that we went to in Beijing) for dinner. It was on the edge of lake and we got to eat outside, although it did get rather dark and it became quite difficult eating in the dim candlelight.

Honeymoon: Day 2

11/04/12 - We got up at a reasonable time in the morning as we wanted to make the most of the day and get down to breakfast before it was cleared away. Breakfast in the hotel was nice, although not the best out of the hotels we stayed in - generally during the whole holiday we stuck to eating western food at breakfast (all the hotels had egg stations!), although there was always a selection of Chinese dishes that we could have tried.

Entrance to the Forbidden City

The day's plan was to go to the Forbidden City, which was only about 10 mins from our hotel. The rain of yesterday was pretty much a one off for the honeymoon and on this day the weather was hot and sunny (it stayed like this in Beijing). Walking to the entrance there were a lot of tour guides touting for business and saying that they could get passed the ticket queues quicker, but we just wanted to sort it by ourselves. At the entrance there were huge queues of Chinese tour groups in which each group had there own colour and style of hat. The ticket queue for non-tour groups folks was quite long, but actually took under 10 mins. We then got our audio guide and went into the City. It was interesting place and really big - we probably spent a couple of hours in there, but Jen was quite shocked by her first (and worst of the whole trip) experience of a Chinese public toilet. Near the exit people were being stopped going through by soldiers and there were official looking cars about, so we thought it might have been state officials going by. We went back the way we'd come and found another way through (we ended up at the same place, but after our detour the officials had passed and people were allowed through). Also, whilst in the Forbidden City it was the first time on the trip that Jen had someone request having their photo taken with her (due to her red hair we assume.)

Across the road from the exit was Jing Shan park, which has a happy story of an emperor hanging himself in it! The hill in the park was actually constructed from the soil excavated during the making of the moat around the City. While walking up to the top Jen attracted the attention of a large group of photographer with telephoto lenses trying to discretely take her photo. The tower at the top of the park contained a large Buddhist shrine and offered great views back over the Forbidden City. The park also offered a better second toilet experience than that in the City.

The Forbidden City from Jing Shan Park

From there we walked back down the side of lake in Beihai Park and the side of the Forbidden City to Tianamen Square. There were a lot of soldiers about including some rather obvious plane clothes soldiers/police. We saw the famous portrait of Chairman Mao and headed and through the gate at the north of the Square, which turned out to be the wrong way and just headed back to the Forbidden City entrance! Going back out to the Square we got accosted for the second time, so that a man and his son could get their photo taken with Jen. Initially I was in the photo, but they then asked me to move out the way, so it was just Jen and the man's son! Crossing under the road via the subway (which had X-ray machines) we were in the main part of the Square. We wandered past Mao's mausoleum (not going in to see his body) and saw the changing of the guard. At the south of the Square we went into the Qianmen Gate building - this offered a good view back over the Square, but didn't contain much of interest.

Mao's mausoleum in Tianamen Square

We walked down Qianmen street and went for a pot (well many refills of a pot) of tea at Haos Tea House. We'd not eaten since breakfast, so also had an ice cream from the Hagen Das across the street. After passing a shop for London Olympic merchandise (presumably a reassignment of a previous Beijing Olympic shop) we found a physics-themed footbridge at the bottom of the street. Around this area our guide book had said there were Hutongs (the narrow alleys and courtyards where people would traditionally live) that you could walk round, so we attempted to find them. But, they seemed to have all been flattened for new buildings (we did find some others over the next few days), so we just walked back to our hotel.

We booked dinner at the Pure Lotus vegetarian restaurant, which required us to take our first subway journey. We had to use two different lines, but it was very simple and cheap (20 yuan each). The map we'd brought with us didn't quite extend to the restaurant location (and we hadn't even noted down the address!), so we had to wander around slightly randomly for 30 mins before we found it. It was a rather fancy place with a huge wooden door at the entrance. The food was all served in very elaborate dishes and it looked rather impressive. There was a huge wooden menu that was very confusing. This confusion meant we ordered far too much including a chilli and fake "chicken" thing served in a huge banana-shaped dish (which we didn't really ask for, but just got told about and accidentally brought). But it was all very nice albeit very spicy (given the large amount of chilli). At the end we got complementary fruit served in dry ice!

Complementary fruit

After dinner we went to find bar we had found on the beijinger website, called Q bar, which was supposed to be good for ex-pats. After a 20 min walk we found the bar, which was above a slightly dodgy looking hotel - it was packed, but a bit odd and we couldn't get drink! We left with the feeling that we'd stumbled across a special singles, or swingers, night!?

It was now too late to get the underground home, so we tried hailing a taxi. Eventually one did stop for us. We had a card from our hotel with its address in Chinese script, but the driver had very thick glasses and didn't seem to be able to read it. The driver did seem to have understood the card though and got us back to the hotel for a fee of about £2.40.

Honeymoon: Day 1

It's been over a month since my wife and I got back from our honeymoon. While away we kept notes of what we did each day with the plan to write these up here as soon as we returned. Well it took a bit longer than planned to get round to it, but here is the first of our day-by-day instalments: travels to Beijing (we went to China in case you couldn't guess!) It may be a bit more detailed than absolutely necessary, but it's also there as a reminder to us.

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Day 1 (and a bit)

09/04/12 - Just over a day after the wedding we boarded our flight to China. We flew with Emirates going from Glasgow to Dubai, with just a couple of hours in Dubai airport, and then on to Beijing. We arrived in Dubai airport late at night feeling pretty exhausted mainly due to finally starting to come down from the wedding high. Having realised I'd forgotten deodorant and Jen needed some make-up we did a bit of duty free shopping before trying to find somewhere for a snack. After much indecision we settled on a fish-based cafe where I had a beef sandwich, Jen had a croissant, and we drank some Sprite. This slightly revived us for the second leg of the flight. Originally the Beijing leg was supposed to be in an Airbus A380, but in the end it was downsized to a more standard Boeing 777.

10/04/12 - We arrived at Beijing airport in the early afternoon. We passed through a thermal imaging machine to check if you've got a fever and need to be quarantined, and then went into the impressive immigration hall. We passed through immigration without any problem and after a short monorail ride our luggage was waiting for us (this can often be an issue for me - in the past Jen has blamed my luggage woes on flying with a big back pack, so I'd been made to buy a proper suitcase for this trip). Our taxi driver from the airport was friendly and kept trying to point our things for us to look at, but as he spoke no English and us no Mandarin we just looked, smiled and nodded. Getting in to the centre of Beijing we were mainly struck by the size of the place and the buildings - everything was massive. We arrived at our hotel (the Hotel Kapok) in late afternoon just as rain broke.

Our first room in Hotel Kapok

The hotel had a quite funky facade and looked pretty swish when we got inside. They didn't have the style of room we'd booked available, so they upgraded us to a bigger room (it even had a small outdoor garden area) for a day (this turned into 3 days, but unfortunately not the whole stay). The room was massive, with a huge bathroom, and even came with its own gas masks in case of fire!

Night street food market

After having a brief rest we headed out to get some food and have a bit of an explore. Just about 100m from our hotel there was an outdoor food night market and one of the major Beijing shopping streets called Wangfujing. We perused the food market starting off with corn-on-the-cob-n-a-stick (rather than tucking straight in to the starfish/seahorse-on-a-stick) before heading down Wangfujing. Just off that street we found another small alley containing more colourful street food. With the rain having eased off we headed back to the main street market where we had crab dumplings, fried dumplings,spring rolls and banana fritters, which were all very tasty.

The band at a Qianhai lake bar

Despite the long day we'd got a proper second wind and decided that we'd try and find a pub. We briefly went back to the hotel to check our options before deciding to try and find a bar on Luogu Alley. We also decided that we'd try walking there as it didn't look too far on out map. It turns out that the city blocks in Beijing are larger than they look, but after about half an hour of walking (and seeing our first instance of the Chinese street dancing craze) we arrived at where the entrance to the alley should have been. Unfortunately it seemed to be a building site for a new subway station (a few days later we found out that there was a way through to the alley), so we decided to carry on walking to Qianhai lake where there were more bars. Another half an hour later we found it (after passing a bizarre Christmas display!) and walked round to look at the bars. All of the bars had live music going on in them and none were that appealing, but we wanted some alcohol after our long day and eventually just went into one after being accosted by a bar promoter type. The band in this place weren't that bad, but hadn't attracted much of a crowd. We both had a single drink and left to head home.

I made a slight wrong turn on the way back, but I realised my mistake quite soon and we headed in the right direction back to our hotel. After another long walk we made it back without any problems and quickly got to sleep.

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I expect the following posts will get shorter than this!

In Da'House

If you are looking for a hotel in old San Juan (Puerto Rico) then I highly recommend Da'House hotel. We got taken here by a taxi driver after arriving at San Juan airport and not really knowing where to stay and just asking to be taken to a cheap hotel. The driver did very well as this place is really nice and very reasonably priced. It's in a lovely building with a great local character. It has local art on all the walls. The rooms are modern and clean. There's a roof terrace, with hottub, with views over the whole city. It has free internet and wifi. It's right in the heart of old San Juan. It's a great random find. [I should note that this place has no TV in the rooms and no restaurant or bar, but there are plenty of places to eat and drink just outside it.]

Astrophysicist of the Caribbean 2

Last Friday I embarked on the holiday part of my trip (yes, the rest of it had been purely work-based) as me and my friend (former officemate and bandmate Chris) headed off to the British Virgin Islands (BVI). [Actually the first thing we'd done on Friday (with a few others, in a hired Jeep) had in fact been to drive out to the El Yunque National Forest (still on Puerto Rico) and do a bit of hiking.]

We were going to the largest island in the BVIs - Tortola - which is only a short 30ish minute flight from Puerto Rico. The plane levels out at only 6000 feet before starting it's decent again, but this does offer some great views of the islands.

When we arrived in Tortola we got a taxi across the island to Cane Garden Bay where we we're to be staying for the weekend. The first thing I noticed when getting driven across the island was how steep the place is - the roads are at crazy angles and are far steeper that any I've seen before - but somehow our taxi made it over okay. When I got over the steepness of the roads (and the occasional cow in road) I started to notice the views (and the many chickens!), which allow you to see over large chunks of the island and some of the other islands beyond. It was a really great view when driving down into Cane Garden Bay and realising that this is where we'd be staying.

Cane Garden Bay is apparently one of the most popular locations on the island - it certainly does look very nice and has a really good beach. When you first drive through it some parts have a slightly run down look, but outside of the modern expensive resorts this was how most of the island looked (people seem to leave their houses half finished, or at least they leave them with the option of extending them a bit, so many house had piping and cabling sticking out their roofs for when they decide to build the next floor). It was in reality perfectly nice and our hotel (the Elm Beach Suites) was basic, but very nice - and most importantly pretty much on the beach. We had a relaxing first night and sat around having barbecued meat, a few beers and the local drink - the Painkiller - and the whole place was pretty quiet with a nice atmosphere.

The next day the beach by our hotel became very busy. There was a cruise ship docked in Road Town (the capital of the BVI) and large numbers of people had come through to Cane Garden Bay. This made the whole place not that nice - it was similar to any Spanish beach packed out with touring Brits (and Americans)! We sunbathed and swam in the sea for a bit, but got a taxi into Road Town for the afternoon to get away from the beach crowds. Road Town itself seemed to have nothing really going for it (and according to our taxi driver apparently on Saturdays it's quite dead!) We wandered around for a while, but couldn't find a tourist information office, or any sites to see, so we ended up just having a drink in Pusser's Pub (where we ended up watching the end of the Man U. vs. Spurs FA Cup match). Going back to Cane Garden Bay that evening it had calmed down a lot as all the cruiseship crowd had left. We had dinner in Quito's where later the local band played. The day was slightly disappointing, but our main problem was not having had any plan of what to do.

The next day we did make a plan. We decided to walk west along the coast (the less steep option) from Cane Garden Bay (on the north west of the island, but looking out more south west toward Jost van Dyke Island and the US Virgin Islands) towards the western most tip of the island and see what we could find. Our own bay was also a lot nicer due to it being empty of the cruiseship crowd. After a bit of hill negotiations getting out of the bay we eventually got into Little Apple Bay, where we saw a few people surfing (the waves were pretty small, but there was enough to catch a bit of surf). We stopped off for lunch at Sebastian's on the Beach (a hotel I'd looked at when booking, but was a bit more expensive, which did look very nice). We hired body boards and spent a couple of hours there (I did manage to get a bit of board rash from mine, but it was fun). We next carried on into the next bay, Long Bay, which contained a really nice looking long bay - this place was home to a rather fancy looking resort, which identical modern villas. We attempted to scramble around the rocky point at the end of the bay, which would have lead into Smuggler's Cove, but we didn't manage to make it all the way around due to fear of killing ourselves (there was a plaque near the point we reached commemorating someone who'd maybe been unlucky when attempting to get around) - if we'd had extra gear and more time it would probably been doable. We took the easier road option around to Smuggler's Cove and found a cool beach that seemed popular with the locals. Later (after having a rather strange vegetable/cheese pizza from a very nice woman called Annie, who made us listen to Christian ballads as we ate) we headed back to Little Apple Bay to go to Tortola's "Number 1 Party Spot", the Bomba Shack, which was a literal shack on the coast that had many pairs of pants hanging from it's ceiling. Here we met a group of American's, well mainly this guy Marcus, who we had a pleasant chat with - they we sailing the islands and off to a party on Jost Van Dyke the next day (Marcus did invite us, but we had to decline). All-in-all this was a far better day that the previous one as we'd actually done stuff and been productive.

The next day, Monday, we were leaving, but still managed to get out for a bit of sea kayaking in the morning before our flight back. On driving back to the airport the whole island looked really nice and it felt like a shame to be leaving already after only just discovering what we could do. It was also annoying that we found out that the following evening 800 blues musicians were going to be descending on Cane Garden Bay and playing on the beach!

In general I'd recommend traveling to the BVI, but do have some idea of what you want to do (unless you're happy to just lie on a beach all day). One thing we should have done is try and get on a day's sailing trip around the islands - sailing is the main thing to do there, and it looks a great place to do it. [Do also note that they charge you a $20 departure tax!]

Oh, what a night!

So last night I stayed in the Van der Valk hotel (named, I assume, after the Dutch detective of the same name) in Hildesheim. Now Hildesheim is supposed to be a nice, fairly picturesque, town, but I didn't really get to see much of it as I was only there for an evening. My hotel room overlooked a very pretty, very German looking, square, but my main experience of it was the load bells that peeled every quarter of an hour. The hotel itself was very pleasant and had a good, homely, feel to it. My room was large although my huge double bed was covered by two small single bed duvets! One of the main reasons for going to this hotel was so that we could all get together for a meal with the PPARC delegates. The main restaurant was closed for refurbishment, so we were squeezed into a room next to the bar. The bar was filled with rowdy Germans watching Germany versus France in the Handball World Championships (currently being held in Germany). As I hardly ever order fish at the restaurant I decided to go for the Red Snapper (with rice and mango chutney). I was sorely disappointed though as my fish was bloody tough and chewy, although everyone else's meals looked delicious.

Tonight I'm in the Maritim hotel at Hannover Airport. It's huge, with a giant atrium with hangliders hanging from the ceiling. It seems to be set up to cater for business conferences, but I'm yet to check out the dining and drinking facilities. Hopefully they'll be decent, but it's not the ideal place to be spending a Friday evening.

[Update: I went out to dinner at one of the hotel restaurants (well the only one that was open) and had a great meal - far better than last nights rubbish (and that's not too harsh a way of describing it). As you expect from a restaurant I got the complementary bread, but this came in three different varieties and with butter and pesto - pesto goes very well on a nice piece of buttered bread, although I'd never put them together before. I then got a small complementary starter of some lamb wrapped in pastry and a lemon grass soup - as I said it was completely complementary and not something I ordered, but it was bloody nice. Next came my starter which was some rabbit with salady vegetables, but which also included some chicken wrapped in spinach! Again it was lovely. My main course was a venison dish which was sort of like beef wellington, but with the cow substituted for deer. This came with some fried red onion, some potato, carrot and turnip cakes, something bready that I couldn't identify, and (this being Germany and all) some sourkraut. It was great, and meant that I'd had a total of 4 different animals like a true carnivore. Finally I got a complementary chocolate mousse, which although tiny was very nice, and was made all the better by the fact that the waitress who brought it over was attractive. The whole meal was washed down with a couple of glasses of Weissbier. The meal was great, but the sad fact is that I was eating on my own. It does make me feel rather awkward sitting at a table on my own between courses just twiddling my fingers. After the meal I decided to have a drink in the hotel bar (called Bar Night Flight). After one pint I couldn't take it anymore. I can drink in bars on my own if there's some sport to watch, but just sitting at the bar nursing a pint whilst a lounge style piano player/singer warbles at you was too depressing for me (I also wanted to punch the pianist/singer as at the end of each song he'd repeat the last line in a whisper e.g."I wanna make love to you, baaabbyyyyy".)

Travelling salesman

At the moment I'm away on a whirlwind tour of Hannover's many hotels. I'm in Hannover to take part in a visit by our funding agency PPARC to our very own gravitational wave detector GEO600. Tonight we'll be schmoozing with the visiting dignitaries. Tomorrow we visit the detector site and then head back into Hannover to the Albert Einstein Institute where we will give a selection of talks. The upshot of this trip is that I'm staying in three different hotels over the three nights I'm here. Last night was the Holiday Inn and Hannover Airport. It's a pleasant hotel, clean and modern, and with spacious, well designed rooms. They do a good selection of beers and a nice cheese burger and the staff are polite. As with many of the large chain hotels they have extortionately priced wireless internet though! Tonight I stay at the Van der Valk Hotel in Hildesheim. Then Friday night will be in the Maritim Hotel again at Hannover Airport. We'll see how they compares.

Red stick

A brief description of where I've been in Baton Rouge (i.e. the place I've been at a meeting for the last week):-
It's rather hot and humid during August - luckily most places inside are air conditioned. It's a proper college town, in that everything relates to LSU (Louisiana State University). Their mascot is a Tiger, so there are many tigers in all the merchandise! We're staying near the main campus so are surrounded by frat and sorority houses - some of them look pretty damn nice, but by virtue of them being frat/sorority houses are most likely filled with twats (it being out of term time most of them are empty - hurray!). We've been staying in a hotel which is named after a guy called Lod (yes that's right Lod, short for Lodwrick) Cook, who was an LSU alumni and rich oil magnate - he's met pretty much every recent US president, many movie stars, has an honourary knighthood, and is basically properly in the know - he may however be dead, we're not sure! There are many turtles and herons on the lake near our conference hall. Nowhere has the Fox Soccer Network (even the supposedly "English" pub and grill called the Fox and Hound), so we couldn't watch the Englang versus Greece game - which we won 4-0 by the way. The pub/restaurant called The Chimes has a very good selection of beers on draught, and some nice Cajun style food. The bar called Slinky's has a very well decorated mens toilet! and is very nice for the general dive that it is. There are other things to, but I wont mention them now.

I've been to Baton Rouge a couple of times before and this description is based on my current trip only - plus I'm rather tired at the moment. My next post will probably come from back in the UK.

New York Cares

...so we were in Newark airport with our vocuhers for free things. We take the free shuttle bus from the hotel to the airport. The driver of the bus decides that we don't really want to be staying at the hotel that the airline had planned for us, but instead we want to stay at a different hotel. He tells us that his hotel has alcohol (nod, wink) whereas the one we'd supposed to be going to didn't. We liked his thinking and went along with it. At the hotel we made use of the free dinner vouchers to get some ice cold bottles of Corona sent up to our room - they we're concerned that we didn't want any actual food, but we reassured them that that was just fine. It was now time to fight off the tiredness we were feeling and explore the Big Apple.

We got the shuttle bus back to the hotel, then the airport airtrain to the station. It was then a 25 minutes train ride into Penn Station in New York. Out of Chris, James and I, Chris was the only one who'd been to NY before, so he becames official guide. Apparentlty street numbers get larger from south to north, and avenue numbers get larger from west to east - all laid out in a big grid. We set out to go to 42nd Street - we went the wrong way, luckily we caught this error very quickly and turned around. It's a fairly busy city, well at least it is at about 6.30pm on a Friday. For a while we just wander about a bit along a couple of streets staring up at buildings and dodging all the people. All the buildings are rather high and you're constantly staring up at them. After a while we thought we should actually decide on a destination, so started to head towards Central Park. We walked up a road containing many exclusive looking shops like Luis Vuitton, De Beers and Tiffany's and also the most 80's sky scraper ever, Trump Tower, until we got to Central Park. Central Park contained many people roller blading and jogging as you might expect. It also had lots of horse and carriages, but we weren't tempted to take a ride.

Hunger started to strike, so food was in order. We happened across a restaurant called something like the Brooklyn Diner - we were sold. It definitely looked the part. On their menu they had (ringed by a large red box) the famous cheese burger - recommended by the New York Times (or some such newspaper) as being the best burger in New York. We saw some other people with it and it was large. Again, we were sold. The waitress almost didn't have to ask what we wanted, I said "Three..." and she finished with "...cheese burgers." The burgers were very good, although I can't vouch for them being the best in New York, as I only have the one sample. It seems that we weren't the only people who enjoyed this diner as the walls were covered in small plaques containing the names of famous people who'd eaten there (this is what we assumed anyway). We were in a booth containing Kevin Spacey and Vanessa Redgrave, to name but two - well the two names we actually recognised as being famous people!

Next we decided to go to the Empire State Building - well you've got to really haven't you. This required us to go on the Subway, or at least the fact that we were knackered and our feet hurt required us to be able to not have to walk. We made it to the Empire States Building after eventually finding the right Subway stop and passing the many examples of the classic image of steam coming out of drain covers. We looked up at it and it was tall. By this time it was gone 10pm and we were all feeling very tired. Did we want to go up the Empire State or just go back to the hotel. We were at a large risk of actually falling asleep there and then so we went for the return to the hotel option - sounds boring I know, but we really were incredibly knackered. I go up it next time I'm in New York and I think I'll definitely make an effort to go back. It's seems like it could be a really good city to get to know.

We got back to the hotel about 2 hours later after a series of delays, but finally got to bed for about 5 hours sleep before our journey recommenced. I may right about this later.

P.S. Anyone who gets the reference for this posts title gets bonus point.

Coming to America

On Friday I had the lucky opportunity to try out the new heightened red-alert-critical-awwooooga-awooooga-level security at UK airports. People may have noticed that on Thursday our plucky security services, with the help of those good men (and women) in the Scotland Yard anti-terror unit, thwarted an evil attempt to blow up US bound planes from Britain. And how were these evil doers going to achieve this - well they were going to use that most innocent of phases of matter, something we all know and love in it's many incarnations - liquid (and/or its slightly more sinister cousins, the lotion or gel). This frightful plot led to clamp downs on pretty much any kind of hand baggage on flights out of the UK, especially those heading to the US.

So I (and some colleagues) was going to be heading out to my scientific collaboration meeting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the day after all this happened. After an hour and a half sleep on Thursday night (I was packing and trying to write the talk I was going to be giving at the meeting until late into the night) I got prepared to head to the airport early. Upon arriving at Glasgow airport we were given a leaflet showing the allowed items we could take on the plane, and were issued with our approved clear plastic bag (this weekends must have item!) into which we could place our allowed items. We complied and put our travel documents, wallets and keys into said bags and proceeded to check in our laptops, ipods, phones, books i.e. anything that might provide us with the slightest bit or entertainment on the flight. I didn't have to check any liquids as the only liquid I had were my own vital bodily fluids and I assumed there weren't going to require me to dessicate myself before boarding. Other than these extra restrictions on hand baggage the other security measures didn't seem any different from normal flights to the US - no extra questions, no extra-extra-friendly body searches. So fair enough we had to check all this stuff we'd normally take on the plane, but it's for our own safety and the rules apply to everyone right, we're all going to be equally bored on the plane. We'll actually this didn't quite seem to be the case. People still managed to get books (restricted), magazines (restricted), pens (restricted), packs of cards (restricted) onto the plane. At the extra security check we had before boarding they didn't seem at all bothered! So those of us who stuck by the rules weren't too happy.

The plane trip was as boring as you'd expect, with three rather shit films being shown. I can never sleep on a plane and this flight was no different. I ended up playing songs in my head, but there are only a few that I know all the lyrics to, so my playlist was quite restricted. Due to having had a band practice the night before we left, and one of the songs we're trying being White Wedding, I had the bass line to this on continuous loop in my brain.

By the time we landed (in Newark airport) it was quite obvious that we'd missed our connecting flight. As ever I breezed through immigration and customs - I never really had any problems getting into the US despite many peoples horror stories - the guy who cleared me through even seemed quite friendly and didn't have the usual angry, suspicious look on his face that I've come to expect. We then had to stand around for longer than usual waiting for our baggage as it was receiving some extra checks. We spent some of this time scowling at people who had restricted items blatantly showing in their clear plastic bags - the sheer cheek of it. When the luggage finally showed up on the conveyor belt there was a smattering of applause - well we were in America and they get quite excitable over there (some must have been itching to whoop or call out on some way). Surprisingly my laptop, phone and ipod were in their one respective pieces, without any dents or scratches, and having not actually been stolen by baggage handlers - hurrah! We proceeded to the flight connections desk to sort out some new flights onto our final destination. It was only 3pm in the afternoon, so we thought the possibility of getting connecting flights would be quite high, but apparently not. We were told that the next morning would be the only possibility. However, our airline (Continental) were going to put us up in a hotel for free. They also gave us vouchers to pay for dinner and breakfast. We resigned ourselves to having to spend an evening in Newark - it's just luck that Newark is only a short train ride from New York City! To be continued...