James – Page 2 – Our Trips Around The World

First half summary （前一半小总结）…

中文翻译在里面

We’ve reached the midpoint of our trip and I thought I’d blog a little. We’ve been having a blast sightseeing, eating and people watching. It’s really nice having Zhaoyang blogging for several reasons. Number one, she is way more diligent than me and more importantly it’s a great way to remember all the things we have done. And because she is writing for her family in China and using Chinese, she can write with more feeling (according to her) than she might if writing in English. And because I’m translating for her, with the sometimes unhelpful google, we get to talk about what we did and form a better shared memory of the daily events.

A Rainy Day in Berlin （下雨的一天）

Thursday, July 12th

Sorry to those waiting for another awesome collage of pictures and thoughts from Zhaoyang but today in Berlin it rained all day and we stayed home to catch up on things and get some much needed rest (vacation is tough!) Zhaoyang ventured out for a little bit for some shopping and then we both went out with our umbrellas to scourge for some Pork Knuckle; unfortunately we only ended up eating some mediocre Thai food.

We’ve got a full day planned for tomorrow. Going to head over to the Brandenburg gate area … hopefully will take a lot of pictures!

See you tomorrow.

7月12日星期四

今天算是我俩各自记录的，虽然大意相同，具体细节略有不同 😂 今天柏林下了一天雨，我俩没有出门，正好可以休息一下（休假旅游不容易啊 😅😅😅）我在民宿附近转了一转，发现这里有好多超市，而且相隔不远，竞争相当激烈啊。晚餐的时候，雨还在下，但小了很多，我俩本来打算去一家德国菜饭店尝试德国菜，比如猪肘子，德国肠，酸菜什么的，结果最后不幸的是在一家味道很一般泰国菜餐厅解决了晚餐。下雨正好在家计划明天的行程，明天打算买4天的柏林欢迎卡，可以随便坐公共交通。很期待明天看到不同部分的柏林。

布鲁日100年前 – 100 Years ago – “In Bruges”

Today we are visiting Bruges to explore this beautiful town of cobble stone streets and canals lined with medieval architecture – and now, including throngs of tourists. We first went through the Beguinage community, formerly a loosely religious order of women who lived there without taking vows but was originally inhabited by nuns of the Order of St. Benedict dating to the 12th century.

今天我俩去布鲁日，去探索这个有着鹅卵石的街道和依运河而建的中世纪建筑的美丽城市，现在这里充满了游客。我俩先到了贝居安会院，这个地方最初是一些修女居住的地方，后来变成一些有宗教信仰但是没有宣誓的女人们居住的地方。

Driving through Cathedrals towns North of Paris

One of my goals on this trip is to recreate some of the paths that my father took on his trip to Europe in 1949. On Thursday we rented a car in Paris and set off on a day long journey that would take us to Soissons, Laon, Peronne, Amiens and Beauvais. I ended up cutting out visits to Coucy-le-Château and Château de Chantilly to save time, but the Cathedrals we saw were all worth it!

Screenshot 2018-07-01 20.05.39 — Our 400km route through northern cathedral towns

What are these symbols?

We’re seeing them all over Paris …

Heading to Paris!

Arrived 🙂

Arrived in London!

Cornwall with my Dad (和父亲一起重游康沃尔)

I travelled to Cornwall with my Dad. Of course he wasn’t there physically, but his memories and pictures accompanied Zhaoyang and me as we trekked through the Cornwall countryside, backroads, tiny roads and towns with his picture book in hand looking to find the exact locations he and his sister were in 1949. There were some successes and some failures but the adventure was more than worth it.

今天我和父亲一起重游了沃尔康地区。当然他并没有真正的在那里，但是他的记忆和照片伴着我和赵杨同行。手里拿着当时他拍摄的照片，我俩走在沃尔康地区的各式各样的乡间小路上，海滩和岩石上，试着找出1949年他和他妹妹旅游时驻足的每个确切的地点。这些寻找有些成功了，有些失败了，但是这种探寻很值得。

A word from the translator

Zhaoyang is doing such a creative job in blogging, one that I don’t want to try to compete with. My job has lately been to translate her Chinese into something readable and expressing her original feelings. As anyone who has read a bing or google translation of chinese will know, they do a piss poor job with nonsensical paragraphs of gibberish.

On Our Way!

Well after all the planning and packing and stressing we are now finally relaxing at the airport waiting for the flight (that is now delayed by 30 minutes :), although apparently we’ll still get in on time!

We’re flying on Finnair which is part …

Planning, Planning and more Planning!

We started planning for The Big Trip in the fall of 2017 just after Zhaoyang received her US Citizenship. Previous thoughts of traveling were always met with groans regarding how difficult or impossible it is for a Chinese citizen to get a Visa. So now, with a US passport in hand, the world was at our feet!

Leaving in two weeks …

Well we’re starting to get excited now! Zhaoyang finished her finals and so she has more time to spend thinking about the trip. We’ll be flying to Helsinki on a Tuesday evening and arrive late in the afternoon on Wednesday. This is the farthest north I have been in a long time. In June, the sun doesn’t set until almost 11pm!! So we’ll still have plenty of daylight after we arrive. I hope there are dark curtains on the windows because sunrise is at four in the morning!