登长城 Climbing Great Wall

Great Wall 

This is the second time we climbed the Great Wall. Hers was during school excursion while mine was during overseas meeting. We started early with a "booked" car, and I was excited to use my DSLR to capture the great wall this time round. Or more correct to say that I was climbing the Wall with my wife the first time.
Weather was good. Initially, my wife shared with me she thought we could take cable car up or only reach a certain point of the Wall would do. However, we not only climbed section by section and we also reached the point - Peak of Mutianyu Great Wall.
I like to trek with my wife. And this includes climbing the wall. I wanted to explore the villages nearby too but I was too ambitious. We took almost half a day to go up and down (we took cable down). This time we did put in much effort as we have not been exercising regularly. In fact, the most tiring part of the entire trek was the starting journey to the first gate of the Great Wall!!! 
Not sure if it is silly. I felt the urge to complete all other Great Wall tour if I could next time. Will the Great Wall be so distinctive? I chose this Great Wall as my colleague and guidebook reommended it as the best scenic Great Wall. Another thought rose for me to come again during different seasons.
I am a person who dun mind going back to the same place. I believe that there are always different feel, different stories to tell, different experiene each time. Which country have you visited more than once, and you will like to go back again?

玉渊潭的传说

Due to the Japan Earthquake, we had a change in itineray to Beijing instead. We didnt really plan to go Beijing as JJ and me had been there before.  For me, I vaguely remembered the place I stayed, the Great Wall and the museum, and of cos the Beijing duck. 

Sakura@Beijing

I wanted to see Sakura and I remembered my bro-in-law said before he had a few of the Sakura trees back in his London hostel. I decided to try my luck to search for Sakura sites in Beijing since the trees also exist and thriving in even faraway countries.
To my joy, there was one such site in Beijing and the park seemed to be very big. A particular advisory caught my attention - "Sakura Flower's Petal rain" (Direct translation). In my imagination, I thought it would be as romantic as what we had seen in Japan.  So, decided to give JJ a surprise while I slotted in the visit in our itinerary.
The park was easy to find. There were stalls selling goodies and drinks - but different from those stalls in Japan in terms of varieties. We chanced upon many flowering trees but we focused and headed towards the Sakura site. We found them. I was happy to be able to see Sakura despite the fact that we were not in Japan. However, the feeling of seeing Sakura in Beijing seemed different. We didnt picnic there. Not becos of the crowd, nor the mini "sand storm". We just had some tibits packed in JJ's bag and scurried off due to "stormy clouds".
In a way, I can appreciate why there are still so many people going over to Japan to enjoy the Sakura season. The feel is different. Initially I wanted to "spice up" the Beijing itinerary, but the visit made me want to visit Japan again in time to come. It is difficult to replace or substitute two different itineraries if the nature and character of the two different countries vary.  I tried to collect a few flowers but they didnt manage to survive the journey back to our hotel via packed trains. Yes, I tried to mirror what I had done in Japan to this trip. 
Each destination is different. Each place has its uniqueness for discovery.

Book of Sakura

There are a few NY resolution. One of which I have shared is to bring my family to Japan. This time, my wife will be following me to help realise one of my dreams. I rem that I need to provide her a book of sakura next time we go Japan - the last trip was cherry blossom Tohoku and we wanted to ID the sakura trees.

There are many species of Sakura trees. As a beginner, I read that we could easily distinguish them by a few simple rules - no. of petals, colour of flowers and the shape of the trees. For petals, there are common 5-petal flower, 20-petal ones and even 100-petal ones. Each type of petal has its own Jap name which I have yet to comprehend and rem. For colours, we saw white, pink and yellow ones before and this also helps differentiate the species. 

There are also shapes of the trees that ID one from another. The weeping ones are quite different from the V-shaped ones. By "weeping", you can image how the shape of the tree look like, tears dripping down in divergence. There are much more to learn and I will try to "teach" my wife and even my family for the coming trip if the sakura season is still on. This time, maybe not the sakura "cake", but more of the "sakura mood". 

~Sakura Sakura~   

恭喜发财

Happy Lunar New Year. This new year a bit different - Visiting relatives in a new status as married persons. New year visiting has changed over the years since I was born. As a child, new year meant to be visiting many relatives and I usually dun like to wear new clothes as they kinda uncomfortable for me. As a youth, visiting became comparing height, studies & acting "cool" in front of all my cousins. As an adult, visiting became a rare get-together, visiting my beloved granny and my papa's auntie. We started to skip CNY visitings on day 1 and 2 and rather go overseas on these two days. Visiting became a chore as relatives tend to ask about when would I be settling down and about work....

As we progress, visiting relatives' places became "consolidated" i.e. all will just gather at a particular place e.g. granny's place and we will just "tumpang" the red packets and request granny or uncle to pass them to our relatives. This year, we did the same. Just that granny had left us and we went to auntie's house with auntie as the "elder" liao. Granny's stuff all kept already, a bit different and strange. Dunno why but I started to miss visiting relatives during CNY. We used to eat sumptous dinner at granny's "Circuit Road" house. All of us would be there, played and made noise whole day. Now, all our next generation are not so close anymore. Perhaps, we dun even recog one another on street. I recalled once when I was on the road, I had to horn the car adjacent to mine to make my eldest cousin realise I was just besides them! I pray and hope our families will be knitted together and sis and family and my wife and our family would have warm and happy lunar new year every year. I will make an effort to knit the family together, with our kids building strong kinship. New year should be memorable for them. The "Chia" tradition of slotting red packet under the pillow will carry on this generation, next generation and many many generations down the line.  Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Avignon - A different side of France

Bridge of Avignon

Sur le pont d'Avignon
On y danse, on y danse
Sur le pont d'Avignon
On y danse tout en rond
After our Paris trip, we headed straight down to Avignon. I have planned this portion to see the walking tours of the famous artist behind the "Sunflower in a vase" works - Vincent V G. We didnt plan much but only on the train ride to Avignon. It was a different side of France - pretty hot like Singapore. I read from the guidebook that there was a very famous bridge in Avignon and hence the Avignon bridge automatically became one of the sites to visit. We went near evening nite to do a picnic there and also to check if we could view any sunset.
It was very nice and beautiful place. There was also a free ferry service to and fro across the bridge. We didnt try as we had missed the last boat across and so we sat on the grass watching the changing colours of the blue sky. It was a lovely evening. Something more lovely on the way.
I read from the guidebook that there was a nursery song about this bridge of Avignon - something like our nursery song London Bridge. Dear mentioned that the French were likely to want to have their own song instead of singing London Bridge.  We wanted to hear the nursery and so we googled and surfed.
It was a very nice song about gentleman and ladies dancing at the Avignon Bridge. The song is still very vivid in our minds. Lucky me that we went into a shop and bought a very cute musical box for my dear. Now it is one of her fav.
Nursery song. Bring out the child of us. Bring out the romantic part of me.

Paris Pyramid

Edited post ~ I liked to draw reference to the big Museum. I dun think I could rem the routes. I dun think I could do so if I was back in the Museum searching for the Mona Lisa Paintings or Vincent's Sunflower paintings. Guess only those who stayed there long enough, just like me in 4-yr-U, could do so without blinking the eyes.

One funny point about the pyramid to share - Recently we caught a French show and one of the scenes was at the Lourve Museum. The "Mummies" joked that there should be a pyramid to be built and not many people caught the joke. To those who travelled to Paris, they should be aware of the "pyramid" they spoke about in the show. This time I was fast and could catch the humour.

It is interesting to re-read this post and I can't rem the emotion then while writing this post. I only rem us taking a photo in front of the pyramid. There were many people right from the start of the queuing downstairs.  Interesting, I could rem a lot of people trying to pose in front of this pyramid. At this point in time, we still dunno if we would be travelling back to Paris again.

I like this pose. Full of excitement.  Can also feel the big structure towering over many of us. 

蒙娜丽莎的微笑

"蒙娜丽莎她是谁
她是否也曾为爱寻觅好几回
她的微笑那么神秘那么美
或许她也过感情的千山万水
才发现爱你的人
不会让他的蒙娜丽莎流眼泪"

I have shared the tips of visiting a huge museum. For the louvre museum, this tip was handy - zoom straight to the paintings that you would like to see.  We definitely wanted to take a look at the famous Mona Lisa. Many people were queuing to see the painting. It was much smaller than what we expected as we saw many huge paintings - even ceiling paintings. I wonder if Mona Lisa was expecting so many people viewing her portraits? Smile is usually associated with Mona Lisa - did we also realise that she should have other less cheerful moments?

I recalled a Chinese song about Mona Lisa when I was blogging this blog. The  title of the song was the other extreme - the tears of Mona Lisa. For me, I thought many people like to see or hear the brighter side of the day. Not many people also choose to hear or see the less bright side of the day. Many times, we wanted to hear good things especially when the day was already very dull and stressful. But it is actually during this time when family talk, close friends gather. Hearing good things is good but sharing not so good things is also good. I recalled Mario once shared that many of us were actually "friends" in name, we didnt really share. To be able to share is actually a step closer. Only close friends share. That's why I like to use the word "share". Of cos, when we are willing to share, we need to take some time to listen too.