CHINA
ART
My first solo trip abroad with a commercial tour company was a wonderful 3-week trip to China in September, 2002 with Grand Circle Tours. The first stop was Beijing, and the interactive map below shows you my route. This means you can click on the map to select a city -- just follow the route and click when you see the hand pointing to a spot. Distances in China are so vast that to get from one city to the next, we had to fly; so during our 21 days, we took 5 flights within China. Considering the fact that we were on a river boat on the Yangtze for one week, this was a pretty concentrated dose of trekking through airports! I must say that the arrangements were handled very well by Grand Circle -- we always got to our planes on time, and no luggage was lost. But it kept us hopping!
I think the overall title of my journal should be "China, Old and New" because there was a constant contrast wherever we were between the old ways and the new -- ancient monuments and ways of life, contrasted with mind-boggling modern engineering projects and Western-style touches. It was an amazing experience!