Travel


I regularly use Priceline to book a hotel in Seattle near the airport for layovers. Getting a great room for about $60 is really nice. But i just nabbed a rental car for three days while in Seattle too…

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The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has a list of about 900 sites worldwide of significant cultural or natural importance.  I have been to the following ones…

  • Mesa Verde
  • Yellowstone
  • Grand Canyon
  • Redwoods
  • Pueblo de Taos
  • City of Cuzco, Peru
  • Machu Picchu, Peru
  • Lima, Peru city center
  • City of Quito, Ecuador
  • Chichen-Itza, Mexico
  • Banff & Jasper in Canada
  • Great Wall, China
  • Imperial Palace, China
  • Temple of Heaven, China
  • Longmen Grottoes, China
  • Angkor, Cambodia
China - Luo Yang train station

About 5 hours later we arrived in Luo Yang… home to the Longmen Caves UNESCO World Heritage site and the Shaolin Monastery – the home of Shaolin Kung Fu and Zen Buddhism.

China - beer can detail

“…brewed with selected natural materials. This kind of beer is very popular in USA.”

China - a beer on the train from Xi'an to Luo Yang

Employees plied the train cars selling soups, beverages, and even jewelry. People slept. Jordan read. Pepper and i talked about the wedding. I had a beer.

China - Xi'an train yard

The tangle of trains that head to more rural areas of China… Rural is a very loose term here.

China - Xi'an train schedule

You know which train is leaving from which platform now? Yeah… this is what makes travel difficult in areas lesser frequented by foreigners.

China - Xi'an train station

In the afternoon of our second day in Xi’an we went to the train station and negotiated the masses. I have had bad luck at foreign train stations so i was on high alert… Here’s a glance to one side of the first floor of the station. We already had our tickets so we could avoid this mess. I took a panoramic set from here and will stitch it together later.

China - Xi'an city wall and rickshaws

A pair of rickshaw drivers kept each other company in the fog atop the Xi’an city wall.

China - Xi'an city wall

Pepper borrowed my camera and snagged this surreal image of the Xi’a City Wall on our second day in the city.

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