pixie_bebe

I only really had a weekend to see the city – but I maximized every minute of it. I ate well (low brow, high brow), went on a fantastic walking tour led by the Chicago Architecture Org, learned a lot of the city’s history, checked out the fantastic Art Institute, saw the cool Millenium Park, etc., etc…. I can totally see myself living happily in this city :D

We totally underestimated the amount of time to allot for Xi’an. We stayed only two days halfway through a two week vacation. We figured 1 day for recovering from the first week and 1 day to go see the Terra Cotta warriors. Well, there is a lot more stuff to see then that! Xi’an was the capital of the various Chinese empires for thousands of years before Beijing became the capital. There’s a lot of ancient history to see. We saw where Yang Guifei would go during the summer for her spa baths. The museum in Xi’an is worth a trip. We didn’t have time to travel further out of the city to see the monasteries, the panda presevation park, etc. Next time…!

The food in Guiyang is absolutely amazing! It’s all about spiciness and the numbing. The geography of the place is interesting as well. You have flatness of the land with stubby hill-like mountains and lots of water. It’s pretty temperate weather (especially compared to Hong Kong or Xian or Beijing).

but there was definitely a ton of good looking people. I was only there for one night on my way back home from Grand Cayman. I really like their open air We ended up staying up through the night and spent it at a pretty cool salsa club on Miami Beach.

Would love to return to go diving – supposed to be good!

The birthplace of Fryderyk Chopin, his childhood home still stands and operates as a museum for the composer. You can hear concerts at the house in the summer time.

Definitely heavenly! :)

Saw Orchard House, home of the Alcotts.

We stayed at a place on Seven Mile Beach. We actually got certified in diving for this trip. Compared to diving in the Pacific Northwest, Grand Cayman was just bliss, absolute heaven. No 7 mm for me!

My souvenir of the trip was a big ol’ hickey that a stingray decided to give me. Plus, at the same time I was being molested, a huge tuna fish decided to nibble at my left pinky. You can imagine my panic!!! :)

This was the end of our trip to Europe and we were touristed out. We spent our few days in Praha just wandering about the city, eating good food, soaking in the cafe atmosphere, being romantic. After Paris, Amsterdam, etc…, Prague also felt extremely affordable!

I didn’t much like the first hostel we stayed at so we moved the second night. Sir Toby’s hostel is definitely the highlight of my trip! They have another location which is closer to the center of the city called Miss Sophie’s.

Prague felt grittier than any of the places we saw that Spring. We actually got “rushed” twice while boarding onto a bus and onto a train! These big burly guys suddenly came out of no where to swarm around my boyfriend, pushing me to the side. Fortunately, we took the usual travelling precautions and all our important papers were on me, underneath layers of clothing – so they went away with nothing!

Ah! I could go on and on about this city. I hope I get to go back one day!

so I walked away with a poor impression of the city. We had a few hours to wait for our train to Prague so we ventured out of the train station, but didn’t go very far. My impressions were of a cold city, business-like, shiny tall buildings. We also happened to walk in on a rally and a man tried to pitch communism to us before we convinced him that we really didn’t understand German. Reading other people’s posts have made me feel that I definitely missed getting a feel for the city.