Back in the U.S.

Some of the Smartours group exiting buses at the Shanghai Airport

This was a perfectly flat drawing on the floor of the terminal that looks 3 dimensional from afar

Inside the terminal

Sarah, Maria and Connie after checking in

We're here! We traveled a lot yesterday (to say the least). Our "non-stop" flight from Shanghai to S.F. somehow included a flight to Beijing with a 1.5 hour layover. Apparently, all China Air flights internationally have to arrive and depart from Shanghai. This fact was never conveyed to us by Smartours and caused a little consternation. There was a gap of 4 or 5 hours in our flight times on our original itinerary that was explained by the flight to Beijing.

I thought the flight was pretty easy and we were able to sleep (fitfully) on the 10.5 hour flight from Beijing to S.F. We arrived on Sunday at about 11:00 in the morning and headed for our hotel. We pretty much hit the road running - got some lunch and went out for a cable car ride all around S.F. Hit the bed around 9:00 at night with plans to sleep in as much a we could before heading out today to see Muir Woods National Park. This is about 10 miles north of S.F. and is the closest place to see Redwood trees. We will then return for our evening tour of Alcatraz Island at 4:40 this evening. Sleep and a 2:00 flight on Tuesday brings us home.

The Internet was an interesting experience in China. Access to sites like this one are routinely blocked by the Chinese authorities. When you try to access Facebook or blog spots you receive a message that the internet is unavailable. Ben showed me a way to get around this and I did the best I could when I had internet access. Basically you have to access the internet from a site outside of China. Ben had a VPN (technical stuff) that his uncle Bob uses that has an address in Japan. Once you access the internet from that site you are able to get to the blogspots. We tend to take our personal freedoms without too much thought about them. This opens your eyes to the concept of censorship. I would have liked to have posted much more and will do some more retroactively if anyone is interested.

The airports are pretty amazing in China and I'll post a few quick images here now.

Shanghai 11/27

That's Sarah coming out the door of our hotel (urbn)

The street outside urbn hotel, Shanghai

The gang of four heading towards the gardens in Suzhou

Beautiful vista in the gardens

The Humble Administrator's Garden, Suzhou

I liked the way this duck looked and the reflections in the water

Tranquil

Here we are!

Ni Hao (hello) from Shanghai!

I have access to the internet again - I thought the authorities were blocking me from access to the blogspot but it was just my nephew Ben being on the same site at the same time and forgetting to log off all night.

We spent this afternoon at a town called Suzhou (an hour or so outside Shanghai) and visited a tremendous garden complex. We only visited the garden called "The Humble Administrator's Garden" (one of three major gardens in the town and then returned to Shanghai. We had the use of Bob Roche's driver to take us too and from Suzhow and to the shopping areas. The girls spent some time at The Pearl Market area doing some shopping while Ben and I took the subway to find the stadium where the Shanghai soccer team plays to get a jersey for me. Success, I now have a neat new jersey with Chinese characters on it.

Tomorrow is going to be more shopping and hopefully getting to see the Shanghai Acrobats.

Sorry I couldn't put more stuff out here - there is limited access to this site - more about that after we return.

Beijing in the morning

The Gate of Heavenly Peace

Tienanmen Square as we head up to the flag pole

Crowd of people waiting for the flag raising ceremony

The Egg with the sun rising - a strange site to our smog besotted eyes!

Here's some early morning images from Beijing on Wednesday the 25th. Ben and I headed over to Tienanmen Square to see the Chinese army color guard raise the Chinese flag. After that we ran over to the National Performance Center (The Egg). Then back on he subway to ready for our transfer to the airport and ultimately a flight to Shanghai. A rare day in Beijing - the sun was out and no smog/fog to speak of. Later on the fog settled in and delayed our flight ny about an hour. Nice to see the sun - it's hard to describe how bad the air is in Beijing. Simply, it's bad.....

The Great Wall and Peking Duck in Bejing

Ben and I make our way up on along the wall

Here's the nice sunrise inage that we got up so early for. Total fog!

The group at the very beginning of the walk

Archer's slot in the wall

You can see off in the distance where the next towers are along the walk on the wall

Climbing down from the point where we took the shortcut back to town

Way up there is where we would have been

The Great Wall - We walked from Jinshanling to Simatai. A driver picked us up at our hotel at 5 in the morning - we wanted to see the Wall at sunup. Little did we realize that we would only see the sun twice on our walk for a total of about 20 seconds! The driver dropped us off at Jinshanling and waited for us at Simatai. The total walk was to be 9 kilometers (5.6 miles as the crow flies). The fun part was the up and down along those 5.6 miles. The wall is pretty steep and in disrepair at the place where we walked so it was a nice strenuous walk to say the least. As we left the drop off point a local farmer walked up to join us. He became our guide for the day (unofficially) and told us about the shortcut back to town about 2 hours into the walk. We had completed 12 of the 26 towers along the way and the shortcut took at least an additional 2 hours off of the time we would have walked. One other note - we saw exactly no one else the entire way along the wall. Had we gone to the place where the tour buses go we would have had a hard time taking a photo with no one in it! Not a soul with us - pretty sweet.

This was the old neighborhood "hutong" where Li Qun Duck Restaurant was located

Sign on the wall showed the way down the alley to the restaurant

Duck this way!

Chef carving up our ducks in our private dining room - Check out Santa and the ornament on the window!

We made a point of having Peking duck in Beijing. We had gotten back from walking on The Wall and were pretty hungry so we headed out to look for a place that had been written up in the Tribune travel section. Li Qun duck restaurant is in one of the hutongs (old neighborhoods) and was actually pretty close to our hotel. They told us to get into the area of the hutong and ask the locals. So we did. Ben knew where that particular hutong was and once we got there we saw a guy out on a street and he asked us if we wanted duck. Just a block or so up ahead was a building that had paintings of a duck with arrows pointing the way down the alley towards the restaurant. It was in an old courtyard home that had a common eating area and a private space that we got for 30 yuan ($4). When you walked into the restaurant you passed an open oven heated with some big logs with the ducks hanging over the flames. The chef came to the table and carved up the duck (2 of them) and presented it on several platters. They gave us little bowls of cucumber, onion and the plum sauce to add in with the duck on the little rice “pancakes”. We had some broccoli and eggplant dishes as sides. Fantastic! Sarah had never tried duck before and although Connie tells me I had it in Thailand it was a new experience for me as well.

Travels in The Middle Kingdom

Our China Air plane in San Francisco - Raining, who cares?

Terminal in Beijing after our arrival. HUGE!

Outside the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests at The Temple of Heaven

Outside the National Stadium - The Bird's Nest

View from inside The Bird's Nest

Roofline of The Bird's Nest - way up high!

The Aquatics Center and The Bird's Nest

Sculpture of Mao outside a gallery at the 798 Art District

Interior of the National Performance Center where we saw a Chinese Opera

11/22

It’s early in the morning Sunday, Nov 22 here in Beijing and we’re getting ready to head out for our first day in China. This should be quite interesting to see how everyone reacts to the jet lag. The hotel we checked into last night was really nice. The Marriott Courtyard Beijing is centrally located and is within walking distance of all the “major” things we will want to see in Beijing itself. The Smartours folks have told us we can fly to Shanghai early on Wednesday to meet up with Bob Roche and his family for a Thanksgiving dinner the day before Thanksgiving. We were a little concerned that Smartours would object to our leaving the group but they were fine with it.

This morning we plan to get up and have our breakfast (included each day with our hotel room) and then walk over to the Temple of Heaven. This is one of the main old architectural sites and is in a large park. We will see Tai Chi and what life is like for locals on a Sunday morning.. Last night it was 26 degrees and it’s supposed to be in the 40’s later today. The only other scheduled event is the Peking Opera later this evening at “The Egg”. Connie just said “I’m excited to see it”.

Day One is over – we got a LOT of things done today and Connie may have been excited to see the opera but my goodness……….

After a fine breakfast – a mix of Chinese and “Western” fare we were off for a walk to the Temple of Heaven Complex. It was pretty brisk when we hit the streets at about 8:00. A 30 minute walk got us to the Temple of Heaven (or Tian Tan, which is more correctly translated as The Altar of Heaven). An entry fee of 30 RBM (Yuan) gets you an “all access” pass into the park and all of the buildings. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests “has become to symbolize Beijing almost as much as Tian’ an Men” according to our guide book”. The circular tower topped by a conical roof of dark blue tiles and a gold knob is perhaps the most beautiful building in the entire city. This temple was the place where earth, symbolized by the square shapes including the base of the enclosures, communicated with heaven, signified by the rounded top. One of its many claims to fame is that it was constructed without a single nail. Lots of people out doing morning exercises, ballroom dancing, singing, flying kites, etc. Even a couple of guys snapping off bull whips. Go figure!

After a little extra walking (the guidebook showed a subway station where it wasn’t) we headed over to the Olympic Green. Pretty cool! We were able to enter the National Stadium (The Bird's Nest) and walk around and see it from every angle. We could not go into the Aquatics Center (The Water Cube) but we walked all around it and stopped in their souvenir shop for a few trinkets. It felt pretty good to actually walk around where the Olympics had been.

We then had quite an interesting cab ride to an area called 798 Art District which consists of a lot of artists studios and galleries. Ben got him to take the 5 of us in one cab and off he went. U turns galore – seeming indifference to traffic signals (Ben said that’s how the Chinese drive). We had some lunch and browsed the art before heading back to the hotel.
We rested about and hour and headed back to the subway to the National Performance Center (The Egg) for our nights performance of Peking Opera. The kindest thing I can say is that it’s an acquired taste! Pretty hard to follow (all Chinese of course) and very stylized. Connie read that there are 18 classical Chinese Operas and a performer does one part for their entire career. This wasn’t one of the 18, it’s more modern. We mercifully left after the intermission – I literally could not have stood another minute of it! They had made us check our cameras at the door but we were able to get some images of the building after we “escaped” the performance. After we escaped we stumbled on to a display of the Magic Flute which was being performed in another portion of the building. Maria said that the Mozart cleansed our palates from the Chinese opera. The building itself is incredible – the images can’t begin to do it justice. I hope to get some outside images tomorrow when we go to Tienanamen Square and The Forbidden City. Sorry I haven’t been updating as much as I’d like – the hotel charges a pile of money on a daily basis so I’ll update as often as possible. All is well with us and I think we’ve done a LOT of things in a single day. More later……

11/21

We're here! It's 10:30 in the evening on the 21st and we've checked in to our hotel after transfer from the airport with NO problems. The flight was 12 hours and wemt off like clockwork. When we got to the airport and met up with the Smartours guy (Owen) he told us he saw Maria's son (Ben) at the Mariott! So, we knew that Ben had gotten to the hotel and we went out for a meal at a noodle place after we checked in. Pretty tired now - up at 6:0 tomorrow and off to the races! Much more to follow.........

San Francisco en route to China 2009

San Francisco cable car and The Buena Vista - where Irish Coffee was created. "Best in the world" per Debby Sanders.

Connie and Maria and Alcatraz

Sarah and I resting outside the San Francisco Ferry Building

The first leg of our trip to China has completed! Thursday we flew from Chicago to 'The City by the Bay" - San Francisco. Totally uneventful, plane loaded on time and actually arrived in SF 1/2 hour early. Found the BART station and got to our hotel (Villa Florence) a nice boutique space near Union Square around 2:00 in the afternoon. We then spent the next few hours seeing the sights, wandering around the city...... Did a LOT of walking, this is one hilly place, to say the least. Just woke up and decided to post something to try and remember how this works! After some breakfast this morning at Sears, "Famous for small pancakes" we'll jump back on the BART and get to the airport for our flight to Beijing this afternoon. Air China departs at 2:00 P M and is scheduled to arrive in Beijing at 5:55 P M on the 21st. Because of the international dateline we'll lose a day. The scheduled flight time is 12 hours so hopefully we'll get some sleep along the way. This should be interesting because our body's clock will think it's 2 in the morning when we get there! I think we'll transfer to our hotel and then crash! Then it's get up the next morning and hit the streets running (or at least moving). My nephew Ben should be joining us at the hotel (he lives in Shanghai) and will serve as our unofficial "tour guide" while in China. More later.........

Illini beat Michigan 38-13

Ready for some hoops?

Windy day at Memorial Stadium!

Jason Ford finishes 79 yard touchdown run

Well, well, well. How much more fun when the Illini actually win a game! The entire game changed on essentially one play. A Michigan wide receiver had broken away for what looked to be a 20-7 lead. Defensive back Terry Hawthorne chased him down from behind and made the tackle at the 1 yard line. The referee had to look at the replay and Michigan figured to score on the next play - but no. They failed on four tries from the one and the fourth caused yet another review. The ruling was that the ball carrier's right elbow had touched down jusssssssst before he broke the plane of the end zone - first down Illini! The Illini had a 99 yard drive culminating with a 70 yard touchdown run by Mikel Le Shoure. Amazing. Illini 14, Michigan 13. More amazing yet was the finish to the game. A 2 yard touchdown pass from Juice Williams to London Davis. A three yard TD scamper by the Juice. Another long touchdown run by Jason Ford (79 yards) and the crowd went home happy. Still in the cellar of the Big Ten but 1-5 in conference is better that 0-6! Go Illini!

Juice Williams 3 yard TD run

Williams to London Davis TD pass

Michigan QB sacked, Illini recover

Beijing and Shaghai

Getting ready for a 10 day trip to China in November to Beijing and Shanghai. Connie and I will be travelling with my daughter Sarah and Sister-in-law Maria and will be meeting my nephew Ben who will be our tour guide. I'm sure he's thrilled! Ben lives in Shanghai and will be flying to Beijing to join us at our hotel. After 6 days in Beijing we will then fly to Shanghai where we (hopefully) will join Maria's brother Bob and family for a Thanksgiving dinner at their home. Lots of sites to see and not so much time to do it! Everybody is pretty excited! Our Visa's are in order to enter China - Americans are required to have a visa that is good for 90 days visit to China. We're waiting for our tickets to arrive for our Air China flight from San Francisco to Beijing. Smartours (whom we traveled to Thailand in the past offered this trip and we couldn't pass up the deal). The price of the tour and inter-China transport was cheaper than just flying from Chicago to Beijing. Plus, we get 10 days lodging and some meals. They assure us that we do not have to travel with the tour group - merely present ourselves at the departure time to fly from Beijing to Shanghai. Thus Ben the travel guide! He's taken a lot of people to see the sites and I hope he's not too bored with doing it all again. Maria, who is an architect is quite interested in seeing the Olympic sites and there's a chance we can swim in "The Cube".

We'll be flying to San Francisco a day early to ease the pain of the 14 hour flight to China the next day. Sarah is a little apprehensive about the length of the flight (4 or 5 hours is her max. flight to date). I told her that it's not a fun thing to do but the rewards will be worth it. I'm sure we'll recover quite nicely. When we return we're going to spend another 2 days in S.F. to decompress from the trip before returning home. Keep watching for my many reports on activities while in China!

Illini vs Illinois State, September 12, 2009 - Drove down to Champaign for our first Illini game of the season.

The new statue of Harold "Red" Grange on the West Plaza outside Memorial Stadium

Here's an Amish family buggy in Arthur, Illinois an Amish community of 4,500.. We spent the afternoon in Arthur and attended the Straw Broom festival in Arcola.

Although the Illini won, bad things are in store for this season, I'm afraid. Not so good against a team that was not so good. Quite a time I showed my bride on our 21st anniversary! Anyway, here's a little video shot with my Sony camera.

Here's Eddie McGhee scoring on a one yard run:

Videos taken with Sony camera

Here are some videos I shot with my little Sony camera. I forgot to use it most of the time. I have some video of the waterfall that is pretty cool but I shot it vertically and can't figure how to flip it.

Here is a group of indigenous people singing on the steps of a cathedral in Quito.

Heading home 3/08

Blue boobies in silhouette
4 boobies

View out the window at the airport - That's the Ecuadorian flag on the right. Adios, Ecuador!!!

View out our hotel window at about 6:00 in the morning on our final day in Ecuador

We were out of touch from the Internet for quite a while - sorry no posts. Just got back from a nice typical Ecuadorian food dinner in Quito. We're up at 6:00 tomorrow to head to the airport. The mainland of Ecuador is really amazing - the 2 nights we spent in the Andes were pretty spectacular. Once we get back I will update the blog with all we did and anyone interested can take a look. So, we're all alive and well and look forward (somewhat) to our own bed tomorrow night.

UPDATE

Well, it seems Montezuma's revenge has struck. Connie has taken ill in the middle of the night - poor thing. And, once we got home I came down with something as well. 102 temperature and chills you can't believe! I think Connie must have eaten a bad shrimp at the nice Ecuadoran restaurant mentioned above. She made it home a little ashen but was able to eat a little pasta when we returned to good old Chicago. We're both glad this didn't happen earlier in the trip - that could have been real ugly with a capital U.