Into Varanasi

The Chinese couple I'd met up with in Agra hadn't booked ahead a place to stay in Varanasi; Vera tried to call a few out of the Lonely Planet, but the only one that had an availability was also ridiculously expensive.  So, they (Vera and Wang) decided to go with me to my hostel, and just see if there were any openings there.  Once we got out of the train station, we made our way to the prepaid rickshaw/taxi stand, and after waiting around a bit for the guy to come back from wherever he'd wandered off to, we paid an amazingly cheap 95 rupees for a motor rickshaw.  We and our backpacks were crammed in, and off we went into the chaos.  It took quite a while--nearly forty minutes winding through really ridiculous crowds and traffic; nothing looked like a city worth traveling to yet.  And, I think our driver hit every pot hole possible.  Several times I nearly squawked when he ran up onto the curb to get around a slightly slower moving vehicle in front of us.  We took the rickshaw as far as possible; he let us off at one of the little alleys leading into the old city.

In the oldest part of town (and old means old here...Varanasi's history goes back nearly four thousand years), there are few roads, just little winding alleys that twist in every direction.  Vera was wishing we had a guide; I don't think she thought we'd ever find the place.  I led the way, and we wound through little alleys, working our way closer and closer to the river, for twenty minutes at least.  Now and then I'd ask a shopkeeper which way to Munshi Ghat, which I new my hostel was supposed to be near, to stay on course. We passed so many different hostels and guest houses that I was beginning to be afraid we'd never find it; the shopkeepers didn't seem to have ever heard of it.  But finally, I turned a corner, and there it was.

The view from my window

Unfortunately, they didn't have any extra rooms from Vera and Wang, so they headed out to try and some of the myriad places we'd passed.  I haven't run into them again, so I hope they had good luck.  I was showed to a room, only then to have some confusion while checking in; apparently, they aren't so good at checking their online bookings, and it turned out they didn't have space for me after all, but they could get me a place in the hostel across the alley for the same price.  I asked to see the room at the other place first, just to make sure they weren't trying to dump me off somewhere crappy.  As it turned out, the new hostel room was way better than the one I'd reserved in the first place, so I complained a bit more and then finally accepted somewhat gracefully.

Looking down the ghats along the river

The new room is on the fourth floor (slight drawback there, but I guess I need to keep my stair-climbing muscles in shape, since I've got to return to my fifth-floor apartment in a couple of weeks), has its own (clean! unusual around here...) bathroom, and even a tiny little balcony.  Best of all, the view out the window looks out over the Ganges River.  The only real downside is that the bed is pretty hard, although still not quite as bad as the ones in China.


After settling in and resting for a bit, I went out for a walk along the ghats.  The ghats are the steps along the riverside; every hundred feet or so is a different ghat with a different name; the one around the corner from my hostel is the Munsi Ghat, right around in the middle.  I walked along the riverfront, passing by cows, sheep, goats, dogs, ducks, people, and the excrement of all of the above, boats, touts, foreigners of every type, priests with long beards, dreadlocks, and loin cloths guarding tiny closet-like temples, a public cremation, etc.  It sounds like a madhouse, but really, I was surprised it wasn't much worse.  I was prepared for Varanasi to be beyond crazy, but it really hasn't been bad at all.  This is supposed to be the place with the worst salesmen, boat touts, and rickshaw drivers, but I've actually been hassled less than usual so far, and everyone's been quite polite.  Let's hope it lasts.

At the Pizzeria 

My destination was the last of the major ghats, the Assi ghat.  It was supposed to be a nice area around sunset, and there was a pizzeria there than Lonely Planet promised was wonderful. The location of the pizzeria was nice; one a balcony framed by trees, overlooking the water, but the pizza was disappointing.  I ordered one with onion (way too much), pineapple, and capsicum (which is what they insist on calling bell peppers here); you would think those things would add flavor, but it was the most bland and tasteless pizza I've ever had.  I only managed to eat half.  The place is also famous for their apple pie, but after seeing how the pizza turned out I didn't bother to try it.

I was just a little nervous about walking back along the ghats after dark, but it turns out that they're fairly well lit, although the big light poles like you would find in a Walmart parking lot don't really add much to the ambiance.  Also, I almost immediately fell in with a Canadian guy; his two friends were busy talking with each other, so he and I talked as we walked almost all the way back to my ghat. I was going to head up the stairs, but then I saw a crowd and colors and light around the curve of the river.  I wandered just a couple of ghats down to find that the ganga aarti, the river worship ceremony held at sunset every night, was in full swing at Dasaswamedh Ghat.

 The main spectacle was two groups of young men, each dressed in identical red and gold robes, going through the ritual movements with various fire-censors and other articles.  Quite a crowd was seated on the pavement behind them, and the water was crowded with boats full of people who had pulled up to watch.  As this post is already getting quite long, I'll leave it to the pictures for the full description.  I spent a while watching from various angles.  The things I was most impressed with was that, even in the press of people, they'd actually left a passageway free to make your way through and past the event.  That kind of courtesy is almost unheard of in my travels... Anyhow, it was a pleasant and colorful way to end my first day in Varanasi.

The Ganga Aarti ceremony

The Train to Varanasi

One of my favorite things in India...masala chai.  Wang bought me
and Vera some for breakfast  on the train.

After more than the usual amount of crazy taking a night train, I did finally make it from Agra to Varanasi.  I had bought a ticket nine days ahead of time, but even then, all I could do was get on the waiting list.  I usually buy sleeper tickets (the cheapest, and probably least comfortable, option), but this time I decided to splurge a bit and move up a step to 3rd class AC.  Bad move, unfortunately...the waiting list for sleepers moves a lot faster, because there are a lot more bunks.  Even though I started at number fifteen on the waiting list, which in sleeper would have been no problem, at time to leave for the station I  was still only at number five.  At my hostel, I met a couple of Chinese travelers, Vera and Wang, who were in the same situation--they were number three and four.  One of the guys who works at the hostel took pity on us and made a few calls to see if we were likely to make it, and finally he went to the station with us and, with much running around and craziness, managed to get us sleeper tickets, for nearly triple the normal price.  However, that was fine with us at this point, because the only other option for getting to Varanasi (the train the next day was sold out, too) was to hire a car and driver, which would have been much more expensive than that (about $60 a person, a small fortune here).  But we made it.

The view from the window near Varanasi...
somebody said the yellow is mustard plants.

Once on the train, the drama wasn't over.  We crammed into a small area with several other foreigners and an incredibly patient and welcoming older Indian couple.  We met three Americans and an Israeli girl; two of the Americans had somehow bought tickets to share a bunk, and a top one at that.  I was told to just hang out there for about half an hour, and then the conductor would come and tell me where to go, so me and my stuff just took up space and got in the way for a while.  Finally the conductor came by, and gave me the top bunk just next to this crowd of people--until about 2 am.  Then, I and the Chinese couple were to move to the bunk on the other side of the original compartment.  Until then, the Chinese girl shared a bunk with the one American girl with a bunk.  All of this could have been a nightmare, except I had the good fortune to get in with a crowd of people who were determined to make the best of it, and everyone just laughed and lived with it.  The train was the most crowded I've been on in India; quite a few people were sharing bunks, and I saw one man sleeping on the floor.  Turns out there's a big festival going on near Varanasi, so that might be the reason.

Actually, I was more comfortable than ever before--for one, I finally had the bright idea to arrange my jackets and scarf on top of my bag of shoes to make a better pillow than usual (I usually use my blow-up neck pillow wrapped in scarves, but I offered that to one of the American girls who was sharing a bunk; I figured I should share with someone less comfortable), and two, it didn't get as cold as it usually does on the train at night.  However, I guess just because of the stress and craziness, I didn't get much sleep; I was quite comfortable, but my mind just couldn't wind down very well.  Oh, well.

For some reason, I was thinking that the train was supposed to arrive at eight-something, so at eight something I cleaned up all my sleeping paraphernalia and all, only to find I'd been mistaken at the train was scheduled to arrive at 10:30.  Except it was by now running two hours late.  It wasn't too bad, though, between my kindle and the company around to talk to (now joined by a French guy from Bordeaux who explained how he broke up with his girlfriend while  he's spending a year traveling in Asia, and she's dating someone else now, but when he gets back she'll break up with that guy and get back with him...), the time passed agreeably.  Around one we finally arrived...

The train station in Varanasi

Kumbalgahr

Driving in Rajasthan

On my last full day in Udaipur, I decided to get out of town.  According to the guidebook, there are several sights worth seeing within driving distance of Udaipur, so I asked the guy who ran the hostel about how to get out there.  And that's how I found myself bumping along the backroads in a little white car with a driver/guide named Jebbar.  My destinations for the day were Kumbalgarh and Ranakpur, but the drive itself was well worth the trip.  We drove through villages, along rivers, up and down switchbacks over a mountain, through desert areas and farmland.  Several times he pulled over to point out old men perched on the back of cattle, hitched to a huge stone disc; as they circled the disk, a waterwheel pumped water up into the irrigation ditches of the adjacent wheat field.  The winter here is the growing season--the highs are in the 70s, while in the summer, the highs of over 100 and monsoon rains make growing things less convenient.

The villages we passed through could have been any time in history; the only thing that showed that the 21st century had arrived were the advertisements painted onto the sides of various buildings.  Cows and goats wandered the streets, and I saw many women carrying huge baskets on their heads.  The women were the bright spots in the rather drab colors of the landscape and dusty roads; poverty is no reason here not to dress in the brightest colors of saris.

Jebbar was a good talker; he explained the farming methods as went along, and the names of the villages, and pointed out all the best views.  He told me a bit about himself, too: he is one of six children; four brothers and two sisters.  The oldest brother and sister are married, but the rest live together in Udaipur.  He and his younger brother are both drivers.  His family is Muslim, although he says that being a Muslim in India is a bit different than being one in an Arabic country; according the the laws of Islam, men shouldn't see women who are not in their family, but there's no way to avoid it in India, where many neighbors are not Muslim and don't  wear headscarves.  Besides, he works with tourists.  His family is from a small village in the countryside, but his father moved the family to Udaipur when he was a child; there's no work in the village.  Every summer, he goes back to the village; for many years, he would stay a month with his grandparents, living without electricity or running water, but loving every minute of it; now that they are gone, he still goes, and visits cousins.

I'm glad I got the chance to take this drive.  For several years, I've tried to make it a point when traveling to not only see the cities and their famous sights, but also to see something of nature.  I'm glad I got the chance to see the countryside of India, away from the tourist crowds.  

Udaipur

I have so much to write about...but I am so tired.  But I really need to get caught up, at least a little bit:

I arrived in Udaipur on the sleeper train at about nine in the morning.  Next time I have the energy, I'll write more about that experience.  [Edit: post added] Anyhow, I got a tuktuk to my hostel, which turned out to be wonderful.  I have my own little room off of a sunny courtyard; the doors are a light turquoise.  There is a little restaurant on the roof, with a view out over the city.

I'll write more about my experiences later, but here are a couple of pictures:  the first is of the palace at sunset, as seen from a boat out on the lake.  The second is the sunset over the lake.  Udaipur is a beautiful place...

And now, it's later. Okay...I was quite frozen and a bit hazy from a night of uncomfortable sleep.  So, after I checked in and unloaded all my stuff, I headed up to the rooftop restaurant.  I sat in the sun, ordered tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich (the soup was wonderful, some of the best tomato soup I've ever had, but the sandwich was dry and tasteless), and read while I thawed.  I enjoyed the view out over the city from up there.

Finally, in the afternoon I got up the energy to head out into the town.  One of the hostel owners gave me a map and directions with how to get to the major things, but I apparently didn't listen too well.  That, and things didn't look like I expected them to look, so I missed the landmarks I was supposed to be watching for.  I was wanting to go down to the lake and walk along the shore, but it turns out that there are buildings down to the shore, and it's not the kind of lake front you walk along.  Not knowing that, I figured walking downhill would lead me to it (Udaipur is built on hills; it seems everywhere I went was uphill both ways).  No matter, though, the walk through streets lined with shops of every sort was interested in itself.

Most of the shops were designed in a very different way than I'm used to:  a ditch runs alongside the road, and there is a step over it into the shops, which are set up a step from the road.  The shop fronts are completely open across the front, and the floor is completely covered with a huge mattress-like pillow.  Everyone leaves their shoes at the entrance, and the shopkeeper sits cross-legged on the pillow behind or next to his (low) counter.  The customers also sit down to examine the wares.  Some of the more touristy shops do not follow the pattern, and are arranged just as a western shop, but the local shops all seemed to be that way.

Anyhow, I finally turned back, and after asking a few shopkeepers (more than one, because the first one looked confused and I could tell he was just pointing a random direction because he understood I was asking for directions, but couldn't understand where I wanted to go), I made it to the city palace.  Before going in, I walked down a little side road to a small opening onto the lake, and I realized the layout of the city; there was no walk along the lake, just different points to come out to it.

The city palace is the most popular sight in Udaipur; I had planned to wait to go there the next day, but it was still only about 1:30, so I had plenty of time.  Udaipur was the capital of the kingdom of Mewar, before India was united.  The palace was built by the Maharana Udai Singh II in 1559, and used by the ruling family for the next three hundred years.  

After I finished touring the palace, I bought a ticket for a sunset boatride on the lake.  The tickets for the boats are quite cheap during the day, but they double for the four and five o clock boats; however, sunset is really the time for the best views, so they know what they're doing.  The boat ride turned out to be wonderful; the city palace and the city behind it were golden in the sunset light.  The boat went out to a small island, entirely covered by a very elegant hotel and gardens, and then back to the palace. The top picture was taken from the boat, and the bottom one looking back over the lake just after I got off the boat.  What a beautiful day...

I went back to the hostel, and went up to the little rooftop restaurant.  At this point, I still hadn't had any actual Indian food, so I ordered some Chicken curry, which didn't turn out exactly as I expected, but tasted good.  I also ordered dessert...how could I resist when I saw nutella pancakes on the menu?

The Indian Railway System

Part of traveling in a new country, especially a large and complicated one with its own way of organization like India, is learning a new transportation system.  Fortunately, the India railway system is pretty well organized, and you can register to buy tickets online.  However, I needed a copy of my passport to register, and my passport was at the embassy until the day before I left.  (Only afterwards did I find a copy in the bottom of my bag that I'd forgotten about)  So, I wasn't able to register until the day before my flight to India.  I bought my first train ticket immediately, from Mumbai to Udaipur--but I was number 73 on the waiting list.  Apparently, in India, since the train tickets are cheap and easily refunded, people just buy several tickets ahead of time, decide later which they actually wish to use, and then just cancel the rest at the last minute.  But still...70-something?  It seemed like a long shot I'd make that train. 

However, I checked the status online the morning after I arrived in Mumbai, and I was already to 34, which was better than I expected.  I went by the train station, though, to train to buy a tourist-quota ticket to be sure, but there weren't even any of those left.  The guy at the ticket window told me there was no way, with 34 people ahead, that I'd make the list for that train; my best shot was to come back first thing Monday morning and try to buy one of the higher-priced last minute tickets for that day's train.  

But, Sunday morning, with the original train supposed to leave that afternoon at 2:45, I checked again.  Number 12!  I decided that it was worth the bother to go to the train station (to add to it, not the one near the hostel, but one in a suburb) to just see what would happen.  The website said that the final update would be at noon, so I stayed at the cyber cafe until then, to see if the status had changed any...and lo and behold, I  had made the train!  There it was, my carriage and seat number.  Carriage 9, seat 71.  It was even a lower bunk!  

So, I headed to the train station in plenty of time, just to be sure.  I had nearly two hours to wait once I got there; I hung out with a couple from New Zealand while we waiting; they were somewhere on the same carriage, but several bunks down.  

My ticket was on a sleeper train, which is a much more basic carriage than the sleeper trains I'm used to in China or Europe.  In China, you have sheets, comforters, pillows, heat or AC, etc...Here there were open windows, and vinyl-covered pads on the bunks.  Fortunately, I always travel with my fleece blanket, and the warm air coming in the windows felt good.  At least until about eight o' clock.  Then it began to feel a bit cool...everyone shut the windows.   By ten it was downright cold air coming in around the leaky windows.  I got my fleece jackets out of my backpack.  Unfortunately, my bunk was closest to the end of the car, right next to the bathrooms.  The area between carriages had a large opening, and a strong blast of cold air was coming in.  By midnight, I got up and put on also a sweater, and a scarf, and still shivered and froze through the night.  The Indian people around me were cold, too.  It took me until about one in the afternoon the next day to thaw enough to take the fleece jacket off.  

Mumbai continued

Mumbai continued...

I wandered along until I got to the Gateway of India, a huge arch right by the water, which was built in honor of the last time the King of England made an official visit during the early 1900s.  The idea was that it would be a fitting place to welcome the monarch on future occasions, but then India  got its independence, and so now it's more a symbol of the period of time when they were struggling for independence.  It was nice enough as memorial arches go, but nothing really spectacular.  I guess I had expected something just a bit more...colorful.  

Anyhow, I took a rest sitting, along with many other people on a ledge in a shady area near the arch.  This was probably my favorite part of the day, just people watching.  I wish I could wear a sari...it seemed every woman who walked by had an even more beautiful one, in every color, turquoise and pink and yellow and purple and orange.  The outfits with the pants and the long shirts and scarf look like they would be cool and comfortable. Most of the passers-by were Indian, but there were also some western travelers; I would try to guess where they might be from.  Men tried to peddle the hugest balloons I've ever seen, and the men with postcards and maps were quite persistent.  I did buy a few postcards, but it didn't seem to deter others from trying to convince me theirs were better, even when I told them repeatedly that I already had some.  

After that, I got a taxi to another part of town--and the taxi rides themselves are some of the best sight-seeing--to find the Hard Rock.  I really wouldn't have chosen my first day to eat American food, but I wanted to go there, and I don't know that I'll get another chance.  It was pretty good, but not as good as it usually seems to me, but that's probably because I just had plenty of western food in Beijing.  Oh well, another to add to my little mental collection of tacky travel souvenirs.  Another Hard Rock, another country.  

I went back by the Victoria Terminus train station, which isn't too far from where I'm staying, to take pictures of it lit up at night.  It is a quite fancy train station--that's a picture of it in the last post.  Victoria Terminus is its old name; it has an Indian one that is the official name now but I can't remember it at the moment much less spell it.  

I spent the rest of the evening booking future train tickets and hostels at the cyber cafe, and then headed back to the hostel.  Before going to sleep, I talked for a while with two of my roommates, a teacher from Finland and a recent college graduate from Denmark, and the Danish boy played his guitar.  

One last thing:  all of the trucks around here have "Horn OK Please" painted on the back.  I love it. 

Anybody know the origins of that phrasing?  

Exploring Mumbai

Mumbai.  Well, here I am at last...I woke up to sunshine streaming in the window, and a warm breeze blowing.  I could hear a bit of traffic down below, but not too bad since the hostel is on a smaller side street. Someone on a balcony somewhere was practicing some kind of flute or pipe, in just the melody you'd expect  to hear in India.  I got a "shower", considering the water was cool, all I had was face soap (I have to buy some shampoo), and I forgot to take my towel in there.  Anyhow, I felt better.  It's amazing how much easier it is to get up and get moving in the morning when there is sunshine and warmth.  In Beijing, there was no window in the room, and I knew I would be leaving the warm hostel room to thirty-degree weather, so there wasn't much incentive to get moving.

I first stopped by an cyber cafe (the same one I've returned to now), and then went by the train station to see about buying a different ticket to Udaipur; I bought one online, but it's a wait list ticket, and as of this morning I was still number thirty on the list (down from seventy-two when I started, though!); however, the guy there said there weren't any others available, so I'd have to come Monday morning and buy a more expensive last-minute ticket.  I'm still watching the original one, though--as of tonight, I'm up to twelve.  I just might make it.  I'll come back down here in the morning and see how it stands; if not, I'll do the Monday morning thing.

I then took a few hours to wander around.  There was a map of a 'walking tour' in my Lonely Planet book; I don't always mess with those, but I realized I was right at the end of it, so I could follow it backwards and pass most of the stuff I wanted to see anyhow.  I saw the sights: the university, the guys playing cricket in the park, the Gateway of India, the famous Taj Mahal Palace hotel.  They were all nice, but nothing that would take your breath away; the real Mumbai isn't the sights, though.  All day I was taking pictures, but not feeling like I was capturing much at all of the feeling of Mumbai.  The pictures show buildings and roads, but they can't capture the warm breeze, the honking of the taxis, the variety of people passing by.

More tomorrow--the internet cafe guy wants to close and go home.

Sunrise to Sunset and Then Some

I couldn't post while on the plane, obviously, so I'll revisit that experience just a moment here, before I dive into India.  

I've always enjoyed flying, but instead of getting more and more comfortable with it, it seems like I get more and more nervous these days...oh, not about flying itself, or crashes or that sort of thing, but about lost luggage and delays and bureaucratic issues.  Maybe it's just having more luggage, a tighter schedule, and more expensive tickets the older I get...I mean, it's hard to get worked up about a Ryanair flight that just cost three euro, carry on luggage only, and if it all goes wrong, you can always just take the train...

Anyways, I guess it was left over nerves from waiting until the last minute for my visa, but I kept expecting something to go wrong; some missed connection, something...but everything went like clockwork.  The only minor annoyance was that they charge 8 yuan for a bottle of tea in the Chengdu airport, which is highway robbery.  Oh, well.  I'd sure pay 8 yuan for one now; why isn't bottled iced tea available everywhere?  It always makes me appreciate China to travel elsewhere, and that's the thing I often miss the most--the bottled drinks are better in China than anywhere else (yes, including the U.S.).  Mango juice, peach juice, various teas, other fruit juices, plus all the normal stuff like Coke and Sprite. I've had a heart burn all day from drinking Pepsi.  I finally found a bottle of apple juice just now...I hope I can find more.  

Anyways, whining digression aside, the flight:  I flew out of Beijing at 8 AM, changed planes in Shanghai with an almost seven hour layover (but I much prefer long layovers to short ones; I hate being rushed)...another digression--I'd rather have spent the layover in the Beijing airport than the Shanghai one; the Shanghai one mostly has overpriced, overly fancy food, when I really just wanted something normal...okay, where was I?  Oh, yes.  Flight out of Shanghai at 4:55 PM, to Chengdu.  Now, it was the same plane from Shanghai to Mumbai, but even if we were going on, we still had to get off at Chengdu and walk through the customs thing and then get back on.  Anyhow, left Chengdu at some time or other (I'd lost track by then, and it's not on the  ticket since, officially, we were just "continuing" the flight) and arrived in Mumbai at 1 AM.  Despite the late hour, the airport was hopping; this is one of those cities that never sleeps.  

I found an ATM, and the taxi stand, and made my way to the Windsor Hotel (hostel).  The pillow is ridiculously small, and the showers are cold, but I'm overjoyed to have a mattress that doesn't feel like a piece of wood with a sheet on it (which is how the Chinese like it).  I might have mentioned all that in my last post, but I'm too lazy to go look right now.  Anyways, Mumbai.  I like it.  

As for the photos:  the first is the sunrise over a neighboring airplane as we boarded in Beijing; the second is the sunset as we took off from Chengdu.  

Hello from Mumbai!

Hello everyone!  After all the crazy, I actually made it to India, so the real crazy can begin.  All I've done so far is walk down the street from my hostel (comfortable bed--but then, anything is comfortable after the hard Chinese beds; cold showers) to the cyber cafe, but I like what I've seen so far.  The weather is amazing--70s and sunny right now.  Being warm is such a wonderful feeling after wearing five layers all the time in Beijing (and in Wuhan before that, too, for that matter). 

Actually, it was a little weird--I just wore jeans for the flight yesterday, without any other layer underneath--and it was pretty uncomfortable.  They felt scratchy.  I hadn't thought about it, but I've always had on either pajama pants or cuddle duds (long-underwear type things) under my jeans for weeks. 

Well, now I'm off to the train station to see about buying a ticket to go to Udaipur in a day or two; I bought a ticket online, but I was on a pretty long waitlist.  But, there might be more options at the station.  Then I'm going to go explore a bit, and hopefully find a Hard Rock to add to my cheesy, touristy mental collection. 

Got my Indian Visa!

FINALLY, I GOT MY VISA! I was really getting nervous...my flight is tomorrow morning.  If the visa wasn't ready on time--and we're talking about dealing simultaneously with both Chinese AND Indian bureaucracy--then it would have been a huge headache trying to change my flight and all.  But it was ready! On time!  

So, I should not be on here typing this, as I have to get up in four hours to leave for the airport, but, you know.  It'll be too early to take the airport subway line thing, and it's hit or miss as far as getting a taxi, so I, along with an English grandmother, mother, and daughter (who also teaches in Wuhan) who I met at the hostel here have a hired car to take us, for less money than it would have taken for us to take taxis separately.  We leave at five.  

So...I need to go sleep a bit.  My next post will be from India (assuming everything goes according to plan)!  

One more picture from Beijing...the weather was absolutely perfect today (no smog!), so I walked around a bit after I picked up my visa.  I went by St. Joseph's, a catholic church here; touring a church made me feel like I was back in Europe just for a moment there.