Ramble On

We left the city and that took quite a while, but once we got out, we were on a highway, passed a GIGANTIC monument to Genghis Khan, and then turned down a gravel road and into the highlands of Mongolia. We drove for two more hours through some of the most sweeping and gorgeous, remote landscapes I have ever seen and arrived at our ger camp just before dinner. We pulled up a hill to a grassy overlook area and parked the car. We were greeted by staff, and then, I kid you not, a yak was fetched to bring our luggage to our tent/room. I should take a moment to say here that I found the Mongolian people all to be very beautiful. They have high cheekbones and a ruddiness to their complexion that is gorgeous. Their faces are round but structured and they have uniformly kind eyes, slanted up and out. Everyone I saw seemed like they had been born in the region except for two people at our camp, and it was truly lovely to interact with such beautiful people, inside and out. Our beautifully a...

Cara and I left the calm oasis of her apartment in Liangmaqiao at about 9:45am Saturday morning and headed into the thick of Saturday traffic in Beijing, which Cara explained to me is extraordinarily bad. It took us about an hour to get there, and when we did the crush of people outside the station was overwhelming. It took us a while to figure out that we had to go through a ticket check outside the station to actually get in and get to our train. We were stressed because we were getting close to our train’s departure time and we still needed to get food. We had heard the train food was pretty terrible and though we had an epic snack collection with us, it wouldn’t be enough. No one was answering our questions, or taking our orders at Subway. It’s strange, we were asking for the things one always asks for, and Cara was asking for them in Chinese, and her Chinese is excellent. But people just sort of could only hear and see “foreigner” and they either willfully chose to ignore or m...

I arrived in Beijing on Tuesday night, August 30. When I came up to the airport and started walking through, I noticed how similar everything felt. So many of the things I find in every airport, in every city everywhere were there in Beijing. Of course, there was a different feel to it all but there was also something very familiar about everything too. Cities are strange, the more I see the more I realize that there are certain commonalities between all of them and its a rarity to see very distinct character in a city. I did find it in Beijing but you really have to go looking for it. Cara met me at the airport and I was so very thankful for that. She navigated me back to her neighborhood. We sat down at a restaurant after getting off the airport express subway line and arriving at her metro stop and had a quick drink and a snack and then walked to her beautiful apartment a few minutes away in the diplomatic residences right across from the American Embassy in Beijing. The be...

We woke up the next morning ready to tackle the last of our road tours: Snaefellsnes peninsula.  The way we were pronouncing the name, it sounded more like Snapple-sneeze.  We found out from our chef at the restaurant on Saturday night that it was pronounced Sn-AY-fell-snis. However you say it, it certainly held the most stunning views of our entire trip.  We headed north out of Reykjavik around 8am, getting to our first stop on the Peninsula around 10am, just as the light was full and still low in the sky, creating a heavenly glow against the cliffs and the huge breaking waves in Arnarstapi's overlook. It was dangerous to stand on the overlook for too long because, although it was clear and sunny, the winds were 50mph and it was hard to stay upright.  When we opened our car doors we had to hold on to them so they didn't fly away from us.  But my oh my...that view.  That sea!  I wish I had more to write for you about what we saw, but basically we...