Highway Hotel Pingyao

Hi all! <br>Pinyao was beautiful! Absolutely freezing cold though! Hat and scarf and ten layers kind of cold! How unexpected! I've a rucksack full of bikinis :) Hope John Cotters got some thermal fleeces ready for South America! In China loads of the couples wear matching t ...

I had a place picked out in Pingyao to stay that I had found in the Lonley Planet book. What good luck that the owner comes to the train station every morning to greet people and offer them a room. Harmony Guesthouse is so wonderful and Sarah and Jackie (their English adopted names) are very friendly and helpful. It has a very hostel feel to it and everyone who stays there becomes part of the family.<br><br>As usual I slept poorly on the ...

... Putzfrauen schon im Zimmer waren, nichts gefunden haben und die Sache weg ist. Diesmal hatten wir aber mal Glueck und der Ring hing noch immer am Haken im Bad!!!<br><br>Wir wollten aber weiterhin noch am gleichen Tag nach Pingyao aufbrechen und die Fahrt sollte immerhin 8 Stunden dauern, so hiess es keine Zeit verlieren, weil es nicht so toll ist erst mitten in der Nacht anzukommen. Da der Bus nicht wirklich die erste Wahl war, haben wir uns erstmal um ein Bahnticket ...

... tot het internationale/niet-chineze nieuws. Op veel plaatsen hebben we geen toegang tot BBC websites en geen Engelse kranten.We kunnen ons de ongeruste berichten van het thuisfront voorstellen. (zeker omdat jullie wel dagelijks door de media op de hoogte worden gehouden en daar waarschijnlijk ook beelden bij zien. Die laatste hebben wij zowieso niet). We hebben vandaag de nieuwste krant gezien (die was van 25 april, dus nog niets bekend). We hebben begrepen dat veel mensen ...

... then blamed the inflated price on freight, at which point I realized I was way too wound up and was being a ***** by taking out my minivan angst on him. I professed the beer to be worth the 8 RMB, we smiled at each other and got to the business of hot pot. <br><br>The next morning, I was in a good enough mood to admit that Pingyao was very cool. Lots of beautiful buildings and lanterns, but it is all being strangled in a coal caused smog. It sticks daggers in the throoat, there is no ...

... the walls both Mr French and decided that someone had totally miss calculated the distance between the walls and the temple. Both of us are huge bike riders and as he has several notches under his belt over me that would make others listen to him long before me (he is a sports teacher in France and played on the French Water Polo National team and even made it to the trials in Perth Australia for ...

... Qing Dynasties. Pingyao County is 94 kilometers (58.4 miles) southwest of Taiyuan. With an area of 1,260 square kilometers (486.5 square miles), it has five towns and nine villages under its prefecture. Unlike those cities or counties south of the Yangtze River, Pingyao was not endowed with charming natural scenery but with a group of accomplished businessmen. Pingyao was ...

... was run by a friendly man who decided that we liked to dance and so broke it down in the most psychedelic way. We were still pretty tired from the day before so for much of the day we sat around and read. In an effort to experience local culture, we secured ourselves a bottle of Pingyao liquor. It tasted like synthetic chemicals added to tequila, but travelling on a dime doesn't allow for second choices, so we enlisted a fellow traveller from ...

This stop was a bit of a chance to chill out and get away from the feeling of always being in the city. Well, in reality Pingyao is a city (few places in China are not!) but at its core is a walled town which is charmingly old-fashioned and laid back. Only problem was although the place was quite pretty and quaint looking it still had the big city pollution and smog! There isn't really a ...

Here are a few pics from our last night in Beijing, and our first day in Pingyao. Pingyao is a very interesting town. It's a UNESCO world heritage site due to it's authenticity. We just arrived here, and haven't seen all the sites, but loading pictures takes time (my blog site is tough to update sometimes) and effort so I will start now. Here are a few shots I took today. Stay tuned for a blog post and some more pics sometime soon. - J