Day 2: Great wall of China... Kids Edition

China tales continue...... See here for our Day 1, Our itinerary and some pointers before travelling to china with kids

"Great Wall", this remains the unanimous highlight of the entire trip of 14!
The older kids of course knew what the "hoo haah" was about... and the little ones, well were just sharing the excitement.

The day started with a trip to the Jade Museum and it was as touristy as it sounds. But we did find an amazing hidden 'picturesque' spot and of course the photo taking began and we had to pull everyone back in the bus saying "enough with the pictures man!" But it's never enough!

As the roads winded to the Great Wall, all guests were gasping and oohing and aahing. It's much bigger than any picture you may have seen, its more mesmerizing and the mystery of why it was build in the first place leaves you asking more questions! We got off, geared up, bundled up and started the "hike"

My nephew, 2.5 years of age is super active and believes in running more than walking, so rightfully so, my brother and sister in law decided to enjoy the foot hills of the wall and just catch a breath! The rest of us started the 'trek'

What a trek it was!! The steps are high, uneven and rough, but it inspires you to climb more and conquer this wall.

My friend bundled her baby on one of those carriers and climbed up... yes all the way to the top. God bless her soul. She did more than any of us combined.
The hike and the climb to the top is worth it. We were blessed with great weather and the higher we climber, the stronger the sun got and more layers came off. The kids were competing with one another, and definitely my friend (fittest of us all) kept up to their speed and reached the top.
Please do this hike with your kids. Please do, yes you will be slower, they might complain, carry water, candies and hats, but please hike up. The sense of achievement my 5 year old, Little Lady felt was amazing, she still recants with utmost pride! My Chatterbox has hiked plenty before this, but I feel the amazement of a man made wonder with such rich history left her speechless!

The views, well a picture speaks a thousand words.

Our descend was of course quicker and honestly more "treacherous". We paired up and climbed down and again, my friend had the baby tied to her back... I think she deserves a standing ovation or a really nice leg massage!!! Of course I came down to my nephew jumping with joy and giving us high fives! The sweet innocence.

After a traditional Chinese lunch, we returned back to the hotel, by now, bone tired. But again, the "rule breakers" that we are... we all had had our own experiences to make that evening! One family went on to see a mesmerizing show of the dynasty. One family decided to stay back and just enjoy down time with the kids and do local shopping and well the rest of us, once again boarded the local train and headed to the silk market. And we had fresh orange juice from a vending machine, yes FRESH. I have a video to prove it and content kids to talk about it with!

The market itself, what an experience! I don't think I have it in me to bargain or withstand the aggressive selling they do!


The ladies were done in for the evening, imagine, girls saying no for shopping!!
We took a cab home with the kids and pretty much collapsed after some food and packing up. Sumit and our friend returned victorious after some more shopping and finding an Indian restaurant with delicious food, yep, I was jealous!

The next day was an early start to check out, head to a medicinal museum, Summer Palace and then onwards to Shanghai-Wuxi. We bid adieu to this city, the old and the new!

Day 1: Beijing the splendor of walking down history!

So lets do this....
I thought I will collect all pictures from the 4 families that traveled together to China, make pretty albums and then share the blog post.
Well that never happened, I have not even seen my own pictures yet!!!

But I should definitely get to writing about China, else, well I will forget!

Day 1: Beijing: Tianamen Square, Forbidden City, Hutong Tours

Our first destination was Beijing... we landed in the evening at our hotels right in the city center which for us "rule breakers" is amazing!!
Why "rule breakers?", i will get to it! I promise!

Day 1: Jet lag kicked in and we feasted on the breakfast at 6 am and had loads of coffee, fruits and local deliciousness.

Our first "touristy" thing to do was of course: Tianamen Square, Forbidden City!!
We boarded the bus, got our ear pieces ready and walked and walked. Tianamen Square has 109 acres and laden with square tiles and at any given time, it is claimed that over 100,000 soldiers can stand on those square tiles in uniform lines! that's magnificent and impressive. We walked, the kids were tired and jet lagged, it was cold, but we trudged along!

Took our favorite jumping shots, and moved on to Forbidden City.

All the "Silk Route" stories came to life. It was splendid. Our guide was well informed and above all would spin tales of luxury and comforts while us regular people would wonder, man!! At the same time the contrast of lives of the kings to their "servants" would shock us and really the disparity and lack of human respect would make us teary eyed.
I am glad this forbidden city's history is over and I can walk on the beautiful courtyards and remind my daughters, human life is human life, no one big, no one is small!!!

The architecture, the uniformity, the Feng shui elements and above all a courtyard with no drainage pipes (since the stones are laid out in 7 floors below the ground level and the drains are below the 7th level) amazed me the kind of engineering and ingenuity that era of builders had. It is a tour highly recommended, though touristy, it is just worth it!

The garden at the end of Forbidden city was just amazing. There was a local Chinese school trip and looking at those kids giggle at us, give us hi fives and respond with laughter when we greeted them with "Nee Hao" was one of the best experiences I feel. No matter what you look like, laughter is universal!

A little secret to surviving Forbidden City: Get a tour guide before hand and if you can take a private tour. In our group we had 40 people and the tour guide was good, it turned out to be more expensive and due to sheer size, we lost some elements!

We went for late lunch after and the vegetarians headed to Pizza Hut, my goodness, I have not had pizzas as good! There was also a dessert orange pizza. Who knew!

In the evening we returned and decided to take it a little easy which of course for us means, freshen up and back on the road! And here is where the rule breakers kick in..... but the "rule breakers" and explorers we are..... we looked up maps, took a local train and headed out for the Hutong tours. Hutong is "older Beijing" with narrow alleys, old houses and magnificent old school architecture.

This was an experience, since it involved us taking the wrong exit at the train station, being lost walking an hour in bitter cold with the kids and then eventually finding the place which resembled "A red lantern".... I mean that area was lined with karoake shops, pizza places dotted with dim sum houses under the iconic red lanterns of China under the willow trees.  Aaah, it was worth it!

The kids by now were beyond exhausted so a few of us headed back in cabs this time. I few of us hung out a bit more and then took the cabs back! I do wish we had taken the right exit to spend a little bit more time here, but I think being lost in the alleys, nudging the kids along a little more, avoiding their tantrums with candies and stories will be a memory! But these kids were the true stars of the day! After a 14 hour flight, a jet lagged morning, they pretty much stayed happy and enjoyed the process with us!

Of course, we returned to our hotels and had massages booked, 90 minutes of bliss and we knocked off!!

Next Day: Ooooh, the highlight: Great Wall of China

China: Travel nice to knows

With any international trip, one thing you need to know and plan for is logisitics. The other things that might be helpful is what should I plan for beyond the itinerary. Since I just got back from China and jet lag is still keeping me wide awake. What better way to use the time to document a few nice to knows before you travel to China


Visa:
 For China, check with the consulate for their latest on visa requirements for your country and status. But they are very efficient and very organised, so it was a quick 5 day for us to secure our visas!

Passport: 
Ensure you have at least 6 months validity on your passports, I had to renew 50% of my family passports prior to the trip

Phone:
We used phison pro for VPN and WeChat and translate downloaded on our phones! I highly recommend WeChat for this trip, it translates any conversation with the tour guides. Other thing that helped us was downloading English Maps for the cities, having DiDi (Uber in China). Getting a local SIM is advisable, I pretty much hogged my brothers phone for any calls. Please carry battery packs!!

Food: We were 7 vegetarians and 7 non vegetarians in this trip. I will of course write this from a vegetarian point of view.
Please carry food, ready to eat packages, oat meals, cereal bars, biscuits, snacks. Yes you will get vegetarian food, but will be really tough to ensure it is perfect. For us, when in doubt, we didn't eat.
Having said that, our tour company had pre-arranged some meals and having warm rice with boiled vegetables and some flavor was a life saver.
All our hotels had breakfast and it was lavish. We pretty much spend an hour hour daily to ensure we were well fed for the day. For most of our trips, we like a heavy breakfast, since then we can be out and about more.
You will find Pizza Hut, Sub ways in bigger cities and trust me, the Pizza Hut in China was AMAZING.....
Plus fruits, oh man the fruits! You will find all the fruits including dragon fruit and rambutan!
As a vegetarian I say, China is not about a culinary experience but more about ensuring you have food and energy in your system!

Clothes: We traveled in end of November, so was fairly cold. However we got really lucky with the weather. But as any cold trip, jackets, layering, definitely hats and gloves. The winter here was very dry, so we moisturized heavily and chapped our lips consistently!

Shopping: If you go to any of the local markets like Silk Market in Beijing or the AP market in Pudong, be prepared to haggle, walk out and definitely be prepared for very aggressive sales staff. We were accosted, told off and also pressured! It probably deserves its own blog with the stories, however its fun as well. I mean its China, they really have mastered the mass production and the quality!

Transportation: Due to the tour, we were very connected from cities to cities with the bus, however we did explore on our own in Beijing and Shanghai.
Beijing and Shanghai: The city is well connected with trains and very easy to maneuver. And yes, the trains do get crowded. The cabs are pretty affordable, but please based on recommendations of millions traveled before me, dont take the unmarked cabs! My brother and Sumit took a few local trains (at 300 km/h) and were amazed at the country's infrastructure
The food in local flights is well nothing to write home about!

Kids: We traveled with a lot of kids with us. People are really kind and polite, we were given seats on crowded trains. Strangers stopped by to entertain a crying kid, they played with them and above all they were really amazed at us 'foreigners' so they kept asking to take pictures with the kids. The kids loved the attention and happily obliged. Any tourist attraction is crowded so needless to say, please be attentive. Miss V made a lot of fun of me, since every now and then I'd panic and she would be right behind me to 'scare me'. Not cool!

Language: Yes, this is definitely a big one. It is hard to find English speaking locals. But hey you are travelling to experience this. So please dont be an ass. When you call someone, first say:"English Please" and they will try to get someone to help out! People are very polite and will really try to help out, or use translate to help! I was ordering a fresh noodle salad at one local store and I had 10 shoppers (none spoke English) who stopped by and really helped to ensure my food was vegetarian as the salad lady mixed ingredient only after making me sniff it

Water & Tea: Nope, you are not going to iced water easily here. Most of the places served warm water like the pizza hut even. We loved it and saw locals carrying their tea in hot cups and just refilling with hot water wherever they went. The tea culture was really interesting and it really explains their clear skin!

Hope you travel to China sometime!!! Sometime soon!

China... an experience

4 families.... 8 adults, 6 kids ranging from 20 months to almost 10 years of age making a 12 day trip to China. What did you expect?

We expected, fun, frolic and lots of memories and man.... it was all that and more!

Let me first get the following out of the way: This was a first one of the 'organised tours' we did and boy was that an experience. It was definitely very well organised, very hectic also very touristy at the same time. We covered a lot in the places in China but at the same time did waste some time at those 'sell ups of Jade market and Pearl Factories'. But not planning the minutiae details ourselves, travelling with such a large group and above all getting brilliant time together was perfect!!!

Now back to trip itself.
Our itinerary
Day 1- Day 3.5: Beijing
Day 3.5 - Day 5: Wuxi
Day 6: Suzhou
Day 7: Hangzhou
Day 8-10: Shanghai
Day 11-12: Shanghai- Disney

As you can see, lots of places visited and lots and lots of pictures and above all, memories to last a while, a long while!

I am not sure writing about every minutia detail of the trip would do justice, so i will stick to highlights!

For me, my biggest highlight was meeting my brother, SIL and my nephew. They flew in to do the trip together and though we were always touring and going from one place to the next, just having them sitting in the bus behind me and taking silly pictures of my SIL sleeping was just the best.
Dearest friends from Chicago decided to do this trip together and the giggle at the silliest of stories is perfect. I think travelling with friends and family is special, you can be yourself even if that means huddling the group to be on time!
Sumit and I rang in our dozen years together! Yep, we celebrated our anniversary on this trip. And it was amazing, since we fought a little, we enjoyed a little and as always fell in love a little bit more!

We scaled the Great Wall, wandered in the halls of the Forbidden City, lazed around at tea plantations, got massages, experienced jaw dropping Olympic Ceremony, rode the fastest train on the planet, cruised through canals and Shanghai skyline views and of course said Hello to Mickey in the Shanghai Disney!

All with a group of "my peeps"

More details to follow, but for now I have to leave you with this... the kids we traveled with are champions and troopers. We were all jet lagged, but they were super excited, barely any tantrums and above all they were more excited at learning and experiencing China and being respectful of knowing the world is larger than them!