The city, the expo, the people, the feeling, the food, the…

To go in, you go under the lake sorrounding the building, really cool…

now, for all of you campers who are not sure what to think, Fragrant hill is actually a bigass mountain, looking over the city.

initially, one would think this is a place of great serenity and reflection…but getting there changes this. entirely.

it’s packed with people, really packed.

now climbing it is a completely different story. one which i was not entirely prepared for… standing at the bottom of the hill, it doesn’t seem like much, until you’ve been climbing for an hour on those stairs and are still only about middle way up.

all-in-all there are a couple thousand steps i reckon, but hey, it’s all about keeping that heart in top shape, right?

but once up top, it is a damn fine view. especially on a windy day when you can actually see the city (other times, there’s just too much smog to see anything…pics below)

for the lazy, there is a cable car going up, but that kind of defies the entire purpose of the thing. you can’t really find inner peace while seated for 15 minutes next to a person who takes pictures of you

but i digress, here are the pics

The way home was the worst ever…7 hours of standing on a train packed like a crowded bus…do not travel without a seat in China!

so now that the backdrop is done, the immersion follows: last-minute decision, as always, to go to xi’an and then to luoyang and then to tai’shan and home. a 1-week tour.

this is all nice in theory, and as we are former consultants, we made a plan a, then a plan b and c and d. and now comes the tricky part, finding train tickets. we called a ticket agent to get tickets to xi’an, none were available. so plan a dies.

next call, are there any tickets to luoyang? no. plan b dies, so does plan c.

next call, any tickets to another random city that would make plan g. but no.

so we go to the ticket office to see if we can come up with any alternatives there; and they had tickets to jinan, which is a city close to the holy mountain tai.

so we buy the tickets, and it’s 4-5 hours to get there – with this:

of course we are leaving the same night, as all the plans got screwed so it doesn’t really matter when we leave….

trying to find and book a hostel in jinan is probably one of the most difficult tasks, as this city seems like the only one in the world where hostelworld doesn’t have anything listed )

so we get to jinan, and immediately try to buy tickets to xi’an or to luoyang. none are available from jinan either. funny shit.

so we go and embark on a quest to find a hostel. seems pretty simple in theory, but as it turns out, every hotel, every hostel and everything else is booked )

so we get into a cab and explain to the taxi driver that we want to go to the centre, of course, he doesn’t understand… but after a couple of minutes and another 5 taxi drivers, someone finally understands and we’re on our way. getting there was the easy part as it turns out, the hotels in the center were also all booked. but thankfully, we found a couple of local guys who spoke english and were willing to help, so they  took us to a place, a block of flats, where we could rent a room.

and without further comments, this is the place we got:

and the city is pretty amazing, all the buildings in the center are full of lights and led-s and what-not. it’s pretty cool. and of course we played some games with the locals, which was fun.

the next day it’s time to go to tai’shan. one of the four holy mountains.

one thing that might interest you is that there are 6660 steps to go up and, of course, the same amount to come down.

but to keep it short, i’ll try to illustrate it in pictures:

UPDATE: thanks for the votes!! as most of you would like more text in the posts, and i like you, there will be more text from now on