We arrived in Zhangjiajie!

First the bad news: We still haven't managed to upload any pictures
to picassa. Whenever we had internet access it was always painstakingly
slow so the mere idea of uploading pictures makes you shake your head
in bewilderment.

The good news is that we now arrived in Zhangjiajie after having a
wonderful time in Wudangshang. In case Wudangshan does not instantly
ring a bell it's the place where the movie 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon'
was filmed.

Oh - and now more bad news.. I was just told that he place is closing
down now so I have to close for now and continune tomorrow..GRBML!!

We love Beijing

so it has been almost one week now and not a single entry on our blog. Well guess what - beijing rocks but internet access in China sucks big time. blogspot.com ? blocked! facebook? blocked! etc etc

well fortunately I found some way to blog anyway (thanks collin!) To get to the next annoying thing right away: transfering pics from the camera to the laptop using the usb cable doesn't work right now. It is painfully slow and then at some point it just aborts. Guess i need to get some CF card adapter USB dongle from somewhere.

Apart from that there pretty much only good news though. Our hotel is great. We finally managed to visit the great wall today which was also great. We went to Simatai and not Badaling. The latter is crowded while we were almost on our own. Admittedly that is also partly due to the fact that weather wasn't perfect. It was in fact a bit foggy and the view hence was not as good as it could have been. Still it was quite a nice experience. We were quite tired when we got back home but had to go out for dinner after a short break because I was enormously hungry.

After we pretty much stuffed ourselves with nice Chinese food it was time for a massage. A one hour oil massage for around 10EUR - for that money you won't even get your middle finger massaged in Germany... and it was great.

After that we did some shopping and then ended up where we are sitting now. A nice small cafe in a Beijing hutong. And that is where I close for today. Tomorrow we are off to Luoyang and I hope we will have internet access there so I can hopefully write some more and maybe upload some pictures..

at the airport

after a slightly stressed car ride to the airport Stuttgart we've finally arrived. After a little snack we are now sitting at our gate waiting for the boarding to commence. Derya just realized that brining only a single small book with her was not the best of all ideas. She therefor just wandered off to find something worthwhile to read in one of the airport shops (which quite frankly suck ..)

That's all for now. I'll report back once we arrived in our Hotel in Beijing. But that is a good 12h from now I suppose o_O

tomorrow!

Finally we are almost one our way to our first stop on our 4-week-trip: Beijing! The bags are pretty much packed and ready and I hope we haven't forgotten anything vital that we will miss later on!

By the way, we should have internet access in most of the hotels we stay at so if you are using skype give us a call - user nickname is: "pingsifu" :)

Now this pic does not have anything to do with our honey moon whatsoever, but I just thought it's a nice one and I could share it here :) Only one thing left to say: meeooow!

getting in the right mood

Not that we are not already in the mood for traveling through China, but to fuel our desire to conquer China even more we started watching "Paul Merton in China". A 4-episode UK-tv show in which a British comedian travels around China. Enormously entertaining and also quite interesting I must say. Just head over to video.google.com and search for "Paul Merton" and you will find all 4 episodes for your viewing pleasure.

preparing for take-off

only one week left before we start our 4 week trip to China! So about time to check if we have got everything we need.. clothes, some medicine, some books, etc etc.. talk about being excited!!