Shanghai, China

Here's where the adventure truly begins as we start hopping our way across China and Russia.  No more English-speaking waiters and western food buffets for us anymore.  

Somehow we missed the memo that Facebook, Google apps and a long list of other sites are blocked by the great firewall of China.  Since Blogspot is hosted by Google, these entries were obviously a bit delayed in getting posted. We're forced to use Microsoft Bing for searches and maps... we are truly roughing it now.

We have our first little logistics snafu.  Since our cruise ship was so big we didn't arrive at the downtown International Cruise Terminal as we expected - we arrived at a port on the outskirts of Shanghai. A new map and a long metro ride through some scruffy neighborhoods gets us back on track. On the plus side, we get to see parts of Shanghai that the tourism board doesn't promote. Our hotel is next to an identifiable city park so we were able to make the adjustment without a major problem.  We were pleasantly surprised to find that most major street signs are also in English so that helped a bunch too.

We ended up with a great hotel here in Shanghai.  One of the challenges for this trip was picking hotels and neighborhoods in all the cities.  I did lots of searches and read lots of reviews to try to find our version of the Goldilocks hotel.  Not too big - not too small. Not crazy expensive - but not super budget. Not a chain hotel - but with a front desk that speaks English. Not in a completely touristy neighborhood - not in an area we don't feel comfortable.  Our Shanghai hotel was just right: mid range, friendly and in a relaxing tree-lined neighborhood. It even has a roof-top happy hour patio. Hooray TripAdvisor! 

We found Shanghai to be a very modern city with some old school ways still mixed in here and there.  There's a Tesla showroom in the shopping district, a Wolfgang Puck outlet on restaurant row, french macaroons in the pastry shops and skinny jeans on the hipsters.  Yet on the next block you'd come across a dried fruit cart on the back of a bicycle and packages stacked high on a delivery bicycle.  There are tons of fancy shopping in the nice areas of town... but then it gets a little bit scruffy if you start wandering down the side streets and alleys.  Teenagers everywhere are taking photos of everything with their iPhones permanently attached to selfie sticks and elders everywhere are practicing their Tai Chi exercise.

We happened to arrive during their mid-Autumn full-moon Festival. It's kind of like our Thanksgiving with family gatherings and food traditions. Our hotel gave us some traditional mooncakes upon arrival, they come in all different flavors - from savory to sweet - but evidently not 'tasty' (at least the ones we tried).  They're shaped like the full moon to symbolize the togetherness of family... awww.

We have perfect weather our first day and take advantage by walking off some cruise calories.  We definitely love that these large cities are very walkable and have pretty city parks for lounging and  people watching.  The restaurant and shopping diversity of the big cities is also great but we're probably not ready to trade our suburbish house and lawn for a 5th story apartment anytime soon.  For us, it's a great lifestyle to visit - but not live full-time.

Typhoon Dujuan hit China on Monday causing lots of problems in Taiwan but just bringing us a downpour of rain here in Shanghai.  Even though it added to the weight of my pack, I'm glad I brought the umbrella. And Brian thought I should leave it at home... definitely worth it's weight today.  Since it was just a misty day to start with, we take in a little culture at the art museum and a little scenery at a couple of the iconic tourist spots.  Lucky for us we did most of our wandering during the decent weather and we have a cooking class scheduled during the heavy rain. Brian trashed out a pair of shoes walking through downpour on the way home so at least he has something to shop for now.  

We also experienced the Shanghai scooter madness.  They drive on the sidewalks, in any traffic lane and through red lights.  It just doesn't matter - they heed no traffic laws, yield only to buses and definitely don't even hesitate when buzzing by pedestrians. 

We try our best to sample the local foods whenever we travel. So we ate a bunch of street food in Shanghai - both during our own explorations and with a local guide.  Probably the most unusual thing we ate was twice-cooked water snake.  If you can get past the idea of snake and all the little bones, it 'tasted like chicken' (way better than mochi balls!).  Instead of dominating the post with a bunch of street food shots, I'll add most of them at the end of the post.

I love dumplings! That's my "happy dumpling" face in the above picture. We ate so many dumplings that I may have finally overdosed - for a while anyway. Not only did we eat as many as we could, we also attended a dumpling making class at a local cooking school. Check that one off my bucket list. Despite Brian's "concentrating dumpling" face, ours did NOT turn out as pretty as the professionals' but we ate them anyway. More dumpling glamour shots are at the end of this post.

We sweat it out a bit as our reserved train tickets to Beijing arrived to our hotel at 1:00 am the day we were scheduled to leave - but at least they arrived.  Hopefully the Siberian train tickets will also be there ready for us when we get to our Beijing hotel.  On to Beijing...

"Once a year, go someplace you've never been before." - Dalai Lama

Street Food!

Twice-cooked water snake - sounds weirder than it tastes.  Fried up and spiced so it's kinda like chicken wings - although probably not going to show up on the BWW menu anytime soon.

Crawfish boil!  Tastes like crawfish.

Jianbing - an incredibly tasty crispy crepe-like thing that will someday take the world by storm. If you're looking for a killer food truck idea, this is it.  Crepe, scrambled egg, bean paste, fried wonton and some secret stuffs.  We could have eaten about twenty of these.

Scallop-ish thing with garlic.  Tastes like scallop and garlic.

Eating healthy with BBQ-spiced fish and veggies.

Can't eat street food without some meat on a stick - this happens to be lamb with a chili spice rub.

Roasted eggplant, smeared with garlic served with grilled buns.  Simple but delicious!

Stir-fried street noodles!  Check out the jet-engine fire under that wok. Very tasty.

Stir-fry Sichuan-style pork and celery - very similar to the typical Chinese-American takeout but fresher and lightly sauced.

Dumplings!

Pan-fried buns filled with pork meatball and pork soup. Bite a small hole, slurp out the soup then eat.

Boiled dumplings filled with pork and celery.

Steamed dumplings - filled with spinach-like veggies on the left and pork & soup on the right.  The pork/soup ones are called xiao long bao and are the signature dumpling of Shanghai.

Pot-stickers filled with pork.  My favorite - I definitely need this mega dumpling pan to handle my at-home dumpling cravings. Alas, it wouldn't fit in my backpack.

Dumpling roulette.  Never try - never know.

Hand-made by American tourists.

Japan

Today we pulled into our first port in Japan.  Land!  Hoorray!  WiFi! Yippee!  But we've now learned that you only really need about 10 minutes of internet access to update emails, read the important Facebook posts, catch the latest campaign drama and browse sports scores (what? Cubbies in the playoffs?).  Hopefully we can keep that good habit of unplugging from the internet time-sinkhole when we get back home. 

Japan is a very easy place to love. We found the people to be incredibly friendly and polite to travelers. They are very willing to try and understand our mangled Japanese and charades when we're ordering at restaurants and shops. It's a very welcoming place to visit.

Tokyo/Yokohama was our first Japan port city.  We had a quick layover in Tokyo during a previous trip but we were still very excited to get off the ship after nearly a week trapped on the ship. Whew! Just being able to walk around and explore on our own restored a little bit of sanity.  First stop was to find some lunch that didn't involve a buffet (we're quite clearly a little fixated on food during this trip).  We wandered into a tea room'ish type place and had a Japense version of a combo meal.  It included a rice bowl with sashimi tuna and avocado, miso soup, green tea and for dessert mochi balls served in sweet adzuki bean soup.  If you've never had mochi, imagine some very chewy, zero flavor gummy balls.  I'm sure there are mochi fans out there but we haven't acquired a taste for them yet.   

Our day in Tokyo was during one of their holidays so the famous Tokyo fish market was closed - guess we'll have to hit that next trip.  However, because of the holiday, we lucked into a bunch of neighborhood festivals.  Very fun!  There were local food vendors, music and unicycle dancing.  Wow- had never seen that before. 

Kobe was our second port in Japan. Hey look! Kobe has craft brew too! Sake! Of course we had to hop on the metro to the brewery area to take the tour and do some sampling.  We learned about the proccess of making it and all the different styles and flavors - they even had a sparkling version.  You know me - I love any drink with bubbles in it so Brian didn't get much sampling of that one.  Our only previous experience with sake was the sake bombs you get in the US - kinda like if our only previous experience of beer was shotgunning Natty Light - so we definitely have a better appreciation for the good stuff now. 

Brian dropped some Yen in a pachinko machine - it's an interesting cross between a pinball machine and a slot machine. There were lots of bells and flashing lights but we had no idea what was really  happening. In the end, it ate up all the Yen he fed it so I guess it works about the same as any machine in any other casino. I wanted to take a picture of him playing, but the manager gave me a stern stare when I pulled out the camera so you'll just have to google pachinko if you want to learn more.  

The last port city was of Miyazaki - the area reminded us a little bit of the Oregon coast. This was another very small town off the regular cruise ship paths.  Again, we were the largest cruise ship to ever stop in this port so they were a bit overwhelmed by the rush of tourists.  

Oddly, when we finally got off the ship, we found most of the resturants were closed.  Didn't they get the memo that two thousand fat and leaky wallets were about to splash into town?  We did luck into one great little sushi spot that was willing to let us slip in for a late lunch. The waitress got a giggle out of what the Google translation app spit out during ordering but it must have been close enough.  We had some excellent tasting and very pretty looking sushi.  I have no idea what any of it was - but it sure paired great with the cold beer and local atmosphere. 

There were also some food stands at the dock as we got back on the ship.  As you can see by the expression on my face I'm still not a fan of the mochi balls, even grilled with teriyaki sauce.  Brian gave me points for trying them again. I'm kind of hoping this is the only country that really gets into those chewy gummy balls. 

We noticed that Japan is such a clean place, part of the reason is everyone buses their own table - what an idea!  We also experienced their crazy high-tech toliets, buttons for everything.  Some with pictures on how to correctly use them.  We are definitely losing to the Japanese in toilet technology. 

As we travel through these port cities it's very visable how much industrial infrastructure is needed to supply the world with stuff.  These are very busy ports with huge ships coming and going all the time. It's all very interesting for us coming from land-locked Iowa and Colorado.  This photo even has all three modes of transportation we're taking on this trip - trains, boats and automobiles.

We're not looking forward to cramming all our stuff back in that small little backpack but we are definitely ready to move on to the next leg.  After two weeks, three countries and ten time zones, we're completing this segment of the big journey - the transpacific cruise from Vancouver, Canada. Next up is Shanghai, China.

"One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." - Henry Miller

Pacific Crossing - At Sea

If you read an earlier post, you know this is one of the key segments of the trip - a two-week repositioning cruise crossing the Pacific Ocean.  We are definitely in the youngest age bracket on the ship because who has the time and vacation to take a slow boat to China?  Professional cruisers, that's who. These are retired people who practically live on cruise ships six months or more out of the year and know all the tips about cruise traveling.  They all have platinum membership access, book the nicest staterooms and know the best times to make dinner reservations. The other three-quarters of the ship passengers consist of loud packs of elderly Chinese traveling home for the holidays via boat instead of plane. No surprise that we're the odd birds on the ship.

This cruise has eleven travel days at sea, a quick refueling day at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, then a couple stops in Japan before we finish in Shanghai, China. After nearly a week of consecutive sea days we're settling into a nice relaxing - if slightly boring routine. While we work to keep interested during the long sea days, the bigger challenge is resisting the never-ending call of the buffets. Who ever thought that scheduling an exercise seminar on "How to Lose 14 pounds in 14 days" at the begining of a two week cruise has a twisted sense of irony.  Here is Brian enjoying his "all you can eat" bacon for breakfast. That's okay because it's low carb and gluten free, right? 

After breakfast we head up to the lounge Brian calls 11-Forward because Brian's a nerd and likes to pretend we're in the Star Trek bar (anyone out there know what the heck he's talking about?).  We find a cozy little corner in the lounge and camp out for the day.  We read on the Kindles, make lists, play card games, drink gallons of hot tea and wander in and out of semi-interesting lectures. 

Of course we take a break in the middle of the day to join the lunch buffet frenzy. Dang good thing they have a decent salad bar to balance out the tempting dessert display.

In an attempt to chip away at all the buffet calories, we try and get a little excersie in the afternoon.  Fortunately there is just enough space in our tiny little cabin to do some 7-minute workouts consisting of some simple calestenics. Thanks to our friends, Jodi and Kay, for introducing us to this fitness app! If we've been especially tempted by the buffet that day, we'll hit the fitness center treadmills too.  We also always try to take the stairs since all the old folks are using the elevators.

Another form of exercise on the ship is full-impact shopping. This is what happens when you bottle two thousand consumers on a ship for a week and then spring a $10 Madness sale on them. It's a whole different kind of feeding frenzy!  Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately) because I have such a small pack, I don't join in with the Madness mob.  Gotta prioritize my future souvenir purchases over these piles of plastic purses and cheap scarves. 

We've come up with the analogy that cruise ships are like a mini floating Las Vegas.  There's a casino, lots of buffets and lounge acts of varying talent.  There are cheesy evening shows, high-priced drinks and fancy-pants restaurants.  You can even get married here.  While the cruise director keeps saying, "relax, you're on vacation", we're much more in the mode of using this cruise as a transport ship.  A cruise is a very comfortable and civilized way to travel but still isn't our favorite way to vacation.  I'm sure we'll be missing all these luxuries when we're crammed on the train in the middle of Russia.

As mundane/boring/repetitive our long days at sea are, we are definitely enjoying the lack of Internet access.  You can pay for it on the ship of course (ka-ching!), but we've decided to consciously unplug ourselves from the world for these two weeks.  It's both challenging and calming.  It took a couple of days to stop the habit of pulling out the phone to ask google a question or kill a few minutes on Facebook while standing in line.  But now the brain is starting to retrain itself to focus on one thing rather than flit from distraction to distraction.  On the down side, Brian had to wait two weeks to find out who won the Iowa-Iowa State game. Yes, somehow, he survived. 

One side benefit to traveling west like this is that we gain an hour of sleep every time we cross into a new time zone - which is nearly every evening on this cruise.  We should finish the Pacific crossing well-rested, well-fed and ready to explore China. 

"One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure." - William Feather

Pacific Crossing - Dutch Harbor, Alaska

Half-way across the Pacific we stop in Dutch Harbor, Alaska for refueling and reprovisioning.  It's a very small island in the Bering Sea that definitely isn't on the normal cruise ship circuit.  We are the largest ship to ever port in this small town. It was such a big deal for the locals that they came out to take more pictures of the ship than we did of the island.  If you've ever experienced RAGBRAI, you have an idea how a mass of visitors can overrun a small town.

You might recognize the town as the port for the "Deadliest Catch" from the Discovery Channel reality show - one of the captains was on the cruise giving talks about his life. The highlight of our day in town was chatting with a veteran fisherman at the local pub. Carlos, was heading back home in Mexico after just missing his third child being born. For nine months out of the year he works on the Alaskan fishing boats. He works thirty tough days on the boat and then gets only two days on land until he heads out again for another month. That sure puts our week of long sea days on this cruise in perspective!

We couldn't stop in Alaska and not enjoy some great local fish-n-chips at the harbor pub - a great pairing of food and location.  And hey, look!  Alaska has craft beer too!

We lucked out in wildlife spotting while in Alaska - although we weren't fast enough with the camera to capture any on film (or on bits or whatever the phrase is for digital cameras).  We saw a humpback whale in the bay, a couple of huge bald eagles and salmon finishing their spawning run.  It's amazing how this community scratches out an existence here in this rugged and stark country. Here we pose like the tourists we are in front of some crab traps. For us they're just ambiance but for the community they are the key to their livelihood.

"Real freedom lies in wilderness not in civilization." - Charles Lindberg