Worst Meal Ever

After the Great Wall and Tea House we were very hungry. Our next event was attending a traditional Kung Fu show (which was awesome! However there were no pictures allowed). We had a little bit of time to eat and walk around the neighborhood around the theater.

As a self-proclaimed foodie, I wanted to eat some authentic Chinese food. And no, breakfast didn't count. Our guide recommended a nearby restaurant and helped us order. The night's menu: dumplings.

The first thing they brought out was a warm drink. It tasted like liquid bread. Seriously. If you took bread and added water in a blender you could have this drink. Heated, of course. Now I love bread, but this was borderline disgusting. Maybe a little butter would have helped. Or some jam.

Before the first sip

I wish I had captured the face made after the first sip. Unfortunately, I was not fast enough. Blech. We opted for two styles of dumplings, which was too much food for two people. The first was a lightly fried dumplings with pork. The second was a boiled dumpling with beef and leeks. Both came with a vinegar sauce that was 99.9% pure vinegar. And both dumpling styles were very disgusting! Blech!

Additionally they brought out the water in which the dumplings were boiled. In a bowl. Do we drink it? Wash my hands in it? It tasted like warm, slightly starchy, water. Absolutely the worst food we had in China. We were quite disappointed. And still hungry.

Checking to see if I can spit it out without being seen.

Yuck!

Luckily our hotel had some pretty awesome breakfast options. The buffet was stuffed with vegetables, stir fries, dumplings, soups, yogurt, fruit, and traditional Western fare like omelets, toast, and cold cereal.

 My favorite things were sauteed mushrooms and yellow squash. They had quite a heavy dose of pepper which was a new preparartion to me. I also loved the fried tofu and sesame salad dressing. It definitely made up for a not so great meal the night before!

It started with a picture...

...and ended with over 1,000! Exhausted and teary-eyed, we are home safe from a week in China. Seven planes in seven days is my limit. We had quite an adventure - nineteen hour days, pollution, frog legs - that I cannot wait to share.

I used Pinterest to create our China itinerary. Pinterest with a dash of TripAdvisor. I am the planner of this adventuring duo, but I was feeling some pressure to make this trip spectacular. It may be the only time we make it to the Communist country so I wanted to make sure it knocked my socks off. But gave them back, of course. I like my socks.

I enlisted Dustin to find activities that he would be interested in doing. And that's when he found the picture.


From Pinterest

The "Bridge of Immortals" in Huangshan, China. We decided immediately that we had to see this area and thus it created our travel itinerary. Unfortunately Huangshan is in southern China and is not near any of the major cities. After a few days of trying to sort out the logistics of traveling domestically I was seriously considering scrapping the whole idea.

Dustin and I rarely do guided tours. We love the flexibility of being able to travel at our own speed. We also love exploring cities on foot. So many of our discoveries have been while wandering around (sometimes lost!) in the evenings or between tourist sights. After building the itinerary, I decided to use a tour company that would provide an English-speaking guide during our travels. My Mandarin consists of foul language learned from Firefly so having an intermediary sealed the deal. Price tag: a steal!

So off to China we go..... not. We were scheduled to fly early Saturday morning, but late Friday we discovered our flight was being delayed. Very very last minute we bought different tickets so we would make our international connecting flight.

After twelve hours of traveling and some awesome airplane food (Thanks, Delta!) we arrived in Beijing. Our tour guide, Sherry, met us at the airport with our driver and swiftly tucked us in to our hotel for the night. I was quite exhausted.

A bit unnerving...

In our hotel we found some interesting things. The bathroom had a scale. In fact, every hotel we stayed at in country had a scale. Additionally, we found the two of the above mask in each room. In case of...????

Hotel in Kyoto

Our trip to Kyoto was a little last minute. With the weekend also being a Japanese holiday I had a hard time finding a hotel. Two co workers spent time calling or looking online for me. I spent hours searching the English websites. I even went to the base's Tour and Travel department to see if they could find something. The man that helped me recommended we stay in nearby Osaka and take a train over every day. Whew! We just need a room over our head!

Well, that's all we got.

Awkward hallway

Big for Japan! Nothing on the walls was strange.

What is this? I don't understand. Where's my card?

Step-up into the bathroom. Not fun in the middle of the night.

Woohoo!

There is no scale here but this is about the size of one person.

It was convenient to the tourist areas in the city; albeit not up to the price tag we were charged for the weekend. The beds were "western-style" which means "really hard and uncomfortable". While looking around I was startled to find that the Gideon Bible was not in its customary place.

One positive was the breakfast buffet every morning. It had a mixture of tasty food and the best raspberry bread!

Dustin's Breakfast

Yum!

So after a yummy breakfast we filled the water bottles, tied our sneakers, and hit the road. We've got some sights to see.

Pension Angelica

When I began planning this vacation I knew I wanted to stay somewhere different. I didn't want to stay in a big hotel (not that there were any in Minami Aso anyway), and I wanted something close to the trail heads. I found a pension (bed and breakfast) that sounded perfect.

Pension Angelica.

It was the most amazing experience! The family was so welcoming and I feel we have made lifelong friends. The meals were fantastic (more on that later).

Pension Angelica

Side gardens and entrance

Tatami area of room

Western-style low beds

Personal toilet

Dining room

Lobby Area

Bath Area

Our days started with a phenomenal breakfast in the dining room. Then we went about whatever activity we wanted for the day. When we returned to the pension we would shower and soak our sore muscles in the hot bath. A wonderful dinner led to sitting in the lounge area laughing and talking until the late hours of the night.

Our hosts have three children and one night we played card games with them. The goal was to teach English and learn as much Japanese as possible. During our conversation our host brought up a movie quote that bothered him. He was watching Back to the Future and Michael J Fox is called a chicken. This led to a very long discussion on English language idioms. Ever try explaining idioms to someone who speaks English? Try explaining it to someone who doesn't primarily speak English!

We laughed about movies, cultural differences, animal sounds (bun bun - pig and wan wan - dog), school schedules, video games, and children. Between the Google translate app, funny charades, and poorly drawn pictures we spent many hours together.

Hotel

Just a quick post to show something funny Dustin ran into during his layover in Tokyo. His hotel room was listed as follows:

Date:  2012/02/12
Check-in:  18:00
# of Nights:   1
Plan Type: Relax Stay (1 person(s))
Room Type: Standard single, one semi double bed

A what? Oh, oh, you mean a twin.

No, no twin here. Just a slightly larger mattress size than a twin, but not quite a full.

Okay, fine. A semi double bed.

Daiichi in Ryogoku

We stayed in a miltary hotel for the first part of our vacation because it is just much cheaper ($39 a night!). Unfortunately they were all booked for the holiday weekend. A woman I work with really helped us out and booked a hotel with a great view near Tokyo Disney. We were able to take a shuttle bus to Disney (for free) and had complimentary buffet breakfast.

This is our first time staying in a Japanese hotel! We weren't sure what to expect...

Small door!

Inside it was pretty standard. We did have reservations for a bed instead of a futon though.

One cool feature was this small box by the door. As soon as you enter the room you insert your key paper and it turns on the lights and air. The room was comfortable without the key, but with it we could make it cooler or warmer. If you remove the key all the lights and air kick off in ten seconds. It was a pretty nifty device and I'm sure saves lots of energy.

The best part of the room was the view. These pictures are really bad.

Tokyo Tower

Our reservations also included a breakfast buffet. The Japanese breakfast is a wee bit strange.... there were lots of soups and fresh mackeral sitting out. We opted for a more traditional breakfacst and had scrambled eggs and toast. The food looks the same, but the taste is just a little bit different. Not bad... just different.

Hotel Discoveries

Some interesting finds in our hotel room:

A tatami (畳) is a type of mat used as a flooring material in traditional Japanese-style rooms. Traditionally made of rice straw to form the core (though nowadays sometimes the core is composed of compressed wood chip boards or polystyrene foam), with a covering of woven soft rush straw.

Tatami is derived from the verb tatamu, meaning to fold or pile. This indicates that the early tatami were thin and could be folded up when not used or piled in layers. Tatami were originally a luxury item for the nobility. Rooms completely spread with tatami came to be known as zashiki (literally, room spread out for sitting), and rules concerning seating and etiquette determined the arrangement of the tatami in the rooms. It is said that prior to the mid-16th century, the ruling nobility and samurai slept on tatami, while commoners used straw mats or loose straw for bedding. The lower classes had mat-covered dirt floors. Tatami were gradually popularized and finally reached the homes of commoners toward the end of the 17th century. (Source)

The milk is good for more than a month. Today at the commissary I saw milk good for two months!

Our hotel came with one packet of coffee. Apparently the Marine Corps has their own brand of brew. It was not good.