Beijing

This is a short post about a trip to Beijing for Chinese New Years (this year the first day of new years was Jan 23). So I've been to Beijing multiple times, but never for Chinese New Years and never had such a lazy time as this time. Last time I was there was for the Olympics in '08 with a few friends and that was a blast. This time was a lazy trip of eating, food and sightseeing. I'll just focus on the part of the Great Wall we visited.

I've been to the Great Wall a few times, but never been to a section where there wasn't a thousand other people crowding beside me. We went to a section of the wall called 'Water Great Wall' because of its location beside, well you guessed it, water! There was maybe like 15 people other people visiting that day because it was a) freezing (-8 degrees celcius) b) Chinese New Years and people go elsewhere and c) it's not as popular

Nonetheless it was a real cool part of the wall, despite not being able to climb on it. We hiked around the area and spent some time on the frozen lake. Far better than the popular locations like Baidailing. Cool, literally and figuratively (ha..ha..).

Budapest and Searching For Vampires in Romania (and failing)

Last post on the backpacking trip. As I write this I’m chilling at Nathan’s place in London – being minimally touristy. Trip was loads of fun, but it sure is nice not having to carry around a backpack with me all the time, to not have to wear flip flops to the shower, to be able to sleep in a nice bed without being woken up by some other guy snoring, to not have to carry a map around with me all the time – all little things that can be annoying while traveling on the road. Well not really annoying – just not as easy as lounging at a friend’s place and having no real agenda.

Budapest

You know, I’ve heard so many things about Budapest but never really had an image of Budapest in my mind. So when I got to Budapest by myself (Nathan had to stay back in Vienna for a few more hours to wait for his left-behind-on-the-train-backpack to show up at the lost and found at the railway station), I didn’t know what to expect at Budapest. After walking around in the evening, this image now pops up when I think of Budapest:

A large palace on top of a hill and bridges across the river.

And of course Budapest wasn’t just the palace on top of the hill, or otherwise Nathan and I would’ve been so bored for the 4 days we spent at Budapest. There was a “House of Terror”, a museum about communism in Hungary, Memento Park, a park with a collection of statues that were situated around the city when the USSR was in power, Szechenyi Baths, a Turkish bath, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and a few other sites. We went at a snail pace (even slower than the norm on our trip already) at Budapest since we had so much time. As for food, by this time we were starting to get sick of Eastern European food…but nonetheless still had some delicious regional cuisine, like goulash, while mixing in Burger King into our diet. 

In the House of Terror museum, they recreated the interiors of where they would keep prisoners who resisted the party. This toilet was…awesome…

 

We walked into a Christmas fair on Budapest’s biggest street for tourists/shopping.

In Memento Park. This statue used to be in Budapest, but after communism fell they moved this statue along with others to the outskirts. It was far - we took a public bus to it which took about an hour of travel time each way– but it was pretty cool to see the park.

Szechenyi Baths (photo from some website). I didn’t take any photos for obvious reasons, but the Turkish bath experience was really unique. It was really cold outside (like ~3/4 degrees Celcius) and the main heated “baths” (more like pools) are outside. The place was bigger than I imagined it to be, with three large heated pools (with the hottest being around 36 degrees Celcius), a few smaller interior pools, and some saunas.

As a result of the cold, we scurried  in the cold in our boxers from pool to pool, which were filled with people lounging– a very memorable experience. And definitely very relaxing hanging out in the heated pools.

After Budapest, we took a 12 hour overnight train to Brasov, a town in Transylvania, Romania.

Brasov, Bran, and Sighisoara

We stayed at Brasov, a relatively unexciting but pretty city, and took day trips out to Sighisoara and Bran to see an old medieval town and a castle. Nathan thought Sighisoara, which is the birthplace of Vlad, Prince of Wallachia, otherwise known as Dracula, to be quite unworthwhile since it took us about 5 hours round trip to get to a place where we just walked around for 1.5 hours. I thought it to have a nice small old medieval town feel to it making it quite worthwhile despite traveling so much to see it.

Bran Castle, which is what most people go to see in Romania, was quite a cool castle, but nonetheless no what I expected. I expected it to be extremely gothic, but it turned out to be quite tame in terms of the gothic decor. More pretty than intimidating.

  View from the hills of Brasov – quaint town.

Train we took to Sighisoara was a tourist attraction itself – it was reaaally old school.

Bran Castle – not that intimidating/gothic right? Kind of just like a cute little castle on a hill….and I didn’t find any vampires.

Bucharest

Bucharest is the capitol of Romania, and despite being in Romania, a lot of the central parts of the city look like Paris, thanks to the efforts by its communist leader after WWII who had a thing for Paris. Nathan left without really seeing the city since he had to go back to London early to deal with some stuff. I enjoyed walking around the city on a sunny day, marveling at their large administrative building, which is the 2nd largest building in the world after the Pentagon, among other buildings which were quite aesthetically pleasing. I didn’t want to wake up late the next day and miss my flight so I had a grandpa night – sleeping at 9pm.

The Palace of Parliament was humongous, and I have to say despite being built under the reign of a communist (or maybe because it was done under him),it looked pretty good.

Not too shabby buildings in the center of Bucharest.

Sour ox-tripe (stomach) soup – a Romanian specialty and super delicious.

This boulevard is supposed to mimic Paris.

Back in London now, I think I’ve decided that I won’t really take many touristy photos and thus won’t really blog about it. I’m going home to Hong Kong next week so my days traveling are numbered – quite sad but I sure don’t mind home at all!

Guess I’m going to take a break from blogging on my travel blog for a while…but hopefully not too soon because traveling is too fun. Maybe I’ll turn this blog into just my musings about life - just until the next time I travel…

The Sound of Music: Austria – Salzburg, Vienna

Salzburg

I  never watched The Sound of Music as a kid. I watched Snoopy (Charlie Brown) and Transformers. When I told my girlfriend online and Nathan at different times, I was met with the same outrage. WHAT??? And then instantly they would sing a song from the movie.

So after we got to the hostel in Salzburg from Ceske Budejovice, we put down our luggage, Nathan went off to talk to Michelle on his computer, and I went off to the TV room, sat myself down, and watched The Sound of Music.

Good movie/broadway show turned into movie with catchy songs, but definitely a little long.

Salzburg itself was definitely as pretty as the movie depicted it, even though the weather was no where as nice. Nathan and I decided to just stroll around the city for our first day, stopping in at the Dom, getting a good feel of the city, and ending our walk at Nathan and my first ever beer hall experience.

Statue of Mozart. He was plastered everywhere, on chocolate, on liquor, on postcards, etc.

That’s not a real person on that sphere – it’s “art”. Also behind is Salzburg Castle

You pick out a mug (we picked the 1L), clean it at a fountain, and they fill it up with beer. Awesome. Many of you have probably done it before, but I was impressed, OK?

On our 2nd day, despite Nathan’s protests, we went on a 2 hour hike on the hills of Salzburg. We got to explore Salzburg more and snap some nice photos. I’m going to go on the record and say that Nathan eventually appreciated my push to go on the hike.

With a background of the snow capped mountains of the Alps, Salzburg was damn nice.

The hike gave us some good views. And it was fun.

Vienna

I have to say I’m not the most musical person – meaning I’ve had a history of sleeping in operas, in broadway shows, concerts. However, even I have heard about Vienna and its musical tradition. So in our two nights in Vienna, Nathan and I got to see 2 shows – Swan Lake, and a concert with music composed by Schubert and others. For both of them, we got standing tickets since we weren’t baller enough to get sitting tickets. As I result of being forced to stand, I can happily report that I didn’t fall asleep.

As for the city itself, all I can say was that there sure were some rich people living here – the Hapsburg empire/dynasty that ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the 1920s was BALLER. Nathan and I got to see the apartments where they lived, as well as their summer palace. Extravagance at the maximum.

The whole block of the Hapsburg’s rich and extravagant buildings. 

This is their cutlery….CUTLERY! In contrast, I use plastic plates and cheap chopsticks.

Our standing tickets for Swan Lake – 4 Euros and I didn’t fall asleep, what a deal!

 

The sight of the music concert hall was already well worth the 5 Euros we spent on standing in the back.

Wiener Schnitzel…this place had some XL ones. We were so full we barely ate dinner.

 

Last but not least, two pictures dedicated to the apple strudel. Top one has nuts in it too. A half eaten one is here on the bottom. It’s basically like an apple pie but with much less of that sugary liquid in the typical American style apple pie.

From Vienna, we took a 3 hour train ride to Budapest. A tip to y’all who might travel in Austria: OBB, the train for Austria, offers Sparschiene, which are discounted tickets to international locations (which is weird, since international travel is more $$ usually). So for my 3 hr train ride from Salzburg to Vienna, it was 47.50 EUR. For my 3 hr train ride from Vienna to Budapest, it was 19.90 EUR (which I bought online). Insane.

Next up? Budapest!